How depressing are your A1 texts?

[Guest bennyb]

i suppose it's not as depressing as some of the books. but we did Kite RUnner for group 4 and at an all boys school it was as bad as you can get

then again, we just did an imaginary life and that was depressingly boring

[Bandev]

One of my friends did her EE on An Imaginary Life and she hated her EE, and I can comprehend you boredom with it because I did Fly Away Peter which is also by David Malouf, which I found to be quite boring.

[winter]

HMS - I *might* be able to give a more depressing list - I'm not sure seeing as I've not read some of the texts on yours.

School's Free Choice

1. Disposessed by Hogkins.

It's about loosing the land due to the effects of the drought. Very real, although written around ten years ago. Loosing the land meant a loss of the family home, the family business, a way of life, and ... everything except the family, which was also falling apart. Depressing.

2. Antigone by Sophocles - of the Oedipus Rex trilogy - as morbid a central character as they get.

3. Selected Australian Poems by various poets. Mostly about how much the poet missed his homeland - being either Australia or Europe/UK. Or about the desolate deserts (literary technique, alliteration!) and forests, and wars.

4. Dream Stuff by Malouf. I remember wars, murders, and gruesome coming-of-ages.

Detailed Studies

1. Macbeth - Shakespeare. Need I say more? Death and blood imagery - yay!

2. Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood. The school decided that this was about bullying, but it's also focused on *who* we are, and who we perceive ourselves to be at different times. Certainly depressing - bridging the mental gap between past and present, imaginary and real.

3. Selected Poems of Emily ****inson. She was a morbid recluse, and every poem but one of hers that we studied was explicitly about death, the other being about a religious afterlife transition.

4. Selected Poems of Robert Frost. Most of these seemed to be about death too - "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" being one of the most prominent.

5. Selected Poems of John Donne. These were the sole 'light' in our selection, and they just *had* to be about sex. (I give up on the clergy)

6. "A Modest Proposal" by Swift. This essay was about cannibalism as a solution to Ireland's poverty and famine crisis. Funny, but depressing as only a satire can be.

You will also notice that we did SIX detailed studies, rather than the required FIVE.

World Literature

1. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Not only depressing plot-and-story wise, but also plain boring to read. I nearly threw the book at the wall numerous times, but... that would have bent the pages!

2. One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Scholzynichyn (okay, so I can't spell the name). Depressing.

3. The Cherry Orchard. A satire-like commentary on the impoverished Russian aristocracy. Depressing.

4. Selected Stories by Chekhov. Very depressing - the ones that we studied/I used for WL1 at least.

Genre Study : Drama

1. The Importance Of Being Earnest - Wilde. Depressing as a satire. It's *meant* to be a comedy, I know, but people are actually like that, which is sad.

3. A Streetcar Named Desire - Williams. About someone so upset that she resorts to a fantasy reality, and the way this fantasy is shattered by the 'grounded' brother-in-law.

4. Death of a Salesman - Miller. Just plain sad - so many things that could have changed. Very like an ancient tragedy, I suppose.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Do I sense a very Russian touch in your WL books? Well they had to be connected didn't they.

And we read A Modest Proposal as well. In a way it was amusing in a twisted kind of way but yeah, I get what you mean.

Ah I guess it has to be depressing to have things to talk about...

[winter]

Yep! It's either depressing, or about sex, or both.

I just love the way it all ties together though.

And yes - WL is all Russian. They select the books according to the cohort's subject selection - for example, this year we have 80% doing History, in which they cover Russia, so they chose Russian texts. Two years ago they chose Latin American texts, because many of the girls were taking Spanish ab initio. They work really hard to tie them in, but I've been lucky in that I don't take History, but love Russian Hist anyhow.

... doesn't that make me sound like an IB Nerd through and through.

[luami]

You can't get worse than Thérèse Raquin. Very depressing and disgusting, well that's what most of my peers and I thought

[cixelsyD]

Try "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or "The Sorrow of War"

[Dcool]

Yup I just read Perfume. Twisted is definitely the word I'd use it for. I was a bit...erm...grossed out by the orgy scene at his execution. Well...grossed out is not the right word, it's not precisely that...I don't know. Anyway, the middle dragged a bit but the end had me hooked.

ROFL. I remember having this really weird conversation about sex in English when we were reading Miss Julie. Something about her (Julie) being on top. Don't ask what took us to that convo, I have no idea. We go off tangent a lot in my Eng class. What was weirder was the class was 4 girls, 1 guy and a male teacher.

Oh and there was this explicit scene in The Handmaid's Tale, but we didn't read that together as a class.

I can imagine. LOL. I had a guy in my Geog class - his dad was the IBC and our Geog teacher. Imagine a conversation about population that somehow drifted to contraception and why our teacher only had 2 kids.

Haha.. the gud side of all those depressing, incest, tragedy books

that we have to slog with everyday of our IB Courses

Gr8 fun! =D

[Guest cl0ckw0rk0range]

In my class we read:

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Medea - Euripedes ( i think.. i forgot - its been a while)

Othello - Shakespeare

The Vist - Friedrich Durrenmatt

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

I think out of all these Clockwork Orange was the most NON-depressing text.

The rest made me want to cry.

Brave New World - the boy hangs himself at the end

Medea - the mother kills everyone around her

Othello - (still reading) - but its pretty obvoius that othello will be doomed soon

Waiting for Godot - the plot itself isnt necessarily depressing, but you anticipate that something WILL happen - but nothing does..

And the book that seroiusly made me want to cut myself (im not emo thougH) waas

The Visit. I mean from the beginning I knew it was a "tragi-comedy," it says so on the front cover.

But WOW... the whole town turning against you and murduring you to obtain money? now THATS depressing. and the greek chorus at the end just emphasizes this pessissm.

I thought it was my shcool that chose depressing books from the ib list. turns out, that the list itself contains pretty much pessimistic books.

how drreadful. maybe the ib is trying to strain as psychologically, on top of the all the homeworks, tests, ia's, labs, ee, and cas??? who knows.

But im glad to know that this just wasnt my school - thanks for brighting up my dayyy

[Guest julz_90]

my book list is from german a1 hl, so I think it won't tell you much... however, I must confirm that what you all wrote is true for german literature also all books are about suicide or sex or both themes connected.

I post my booklist anyway... at least for max who takes german a1 as well... and maybe the other know some of my world literature books, or you're interested in german literature (although, in this case, I would rather advise you NOT to read some of these books )

part 1

banana yoshimoto - kitchen

haruki murakami - the elephant vanishes

milan kundera - unbearable lightness of being

part 2

franz kafka - process

wolfgang goethe - faust

romantic lyric (different poets)

peter weiss - abschied von den eltern

part 3

arundhati roy - the god of small things

robert musil - törless

elfriede jelinek - die klavierspielerin

ingeborg bachmann - simultan

part 4

jeffrey eugenides - the virgin suicide

frank wedekind - frühlings erwachen (spring awakening)

unica zürn - dunkler frühling

judith hermann - sommerhaus, später

[spaceisland]

I always think it's neat comparing works... I'm actually pretty fond of a lot of ours!

Part 1: World Lit

Hedda Gabler/Doll's House

The Visit

The House of Bernarda Alba

Part 2: Detailed Study

Pride and Prejudice

Selected Poetry

Hamlet

Non-Fiction Novel (tba?)

Part 3: Groups of Work

Beloved

The Awakening/Welty

Atwood/Findley/Mansfield

Things Fall Apart

Part 4: Detailed Study

Macbeth

Like Water for Chocolate

The Importance of Being Earnest

Life of Pi/Tuesdays with Morrie

[Guest JSand]

I never realized schools had so many options on the books... I'm not really sure on how these would be sorted out into the parts, but here are some of the books we've read or are going to read that I can remember at the moment (some of these might even be stuff we just read, and aren't for IB, not really sure):

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

Shakespeare - Measure for Measure

Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek

Dangarembga - Nervous Conditions

Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter

Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

Wright - Native Son

Thoreau - Walden

McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Rulfo - Pedro Paramo

Shakespeare - Othello

Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

Garcia-Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Fuentes - The Death of Artemio Cruz

As far as I've noticed it seems like we've put the most focus on 100 Years of Solitude, Pedro Paramo, and Artemio Cruz, which are for World Lit I believe. Not sure why we focus on Latin American literature so much... Interesting reads though. Really mind-boggling, weird stuff.

[cixelsyD]

For me, it's:

The Tempest

The Awakening

The Outsider (The Stranger)

The Sorrow of War

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Hamlet

Heart of Darkness

The Great Gatsby

The Metamorphisis

A Streetcar Named Desire

Mother Courage

We also studied Of Mice and Men.. but I don't think it's for IB

I believe the only non-depressing text is The Tempest....

Edited October 22, 2007 by cixelsyD

[Guest szobl]

im actually quite new to the IB (2-3 months) and weve done these books until now:

Mother Courage (Bertolt Brecht)

King Oedipus (Sophocles)

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)

All tragedies, all kinda depressing. i thought it was conincidence but it seems like its gonna stay like this...

[spaceisland]

I adore Oedipus... We studied it during Pre-IB, but we didn't really go into depths with it at all. We just finished Macbeth which was filled with happy things like murder, and the decayal of civilization and all mankind... Now we're reading "Like Water For Chocolate"- I'm excited, my teacher gave it to me last year to read and I love it. I guess it's depressing in some lights, but it is so quirky and filled with magical realism that it is funny.

[Lil]

Mine are ok but some of them are really boring:

Part I

Euripides - Medea

Frederico G. Lorka - The home of Bernarda Alba

Henrik Ibsen - Nora

Part II

V. Popa - The choise from lyrics

M. Crnjanski - Migrations

Part III

D. Cosic - Roots

B. Stankovic - Impure blood

V. Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

Part IV

Ivo Andric - The Damned Yard

B. Pekic - New Jerusalem

Jorge L. Borges - Imagination

[Max]

I'm doing German A1 SL and our books are quite depressing too: Perfume, The Reader, The Assault, Chronicle of a Death Foretold... Just to name a few of them. By the way, Giulia, we're also reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

[ffaholic]

I only know 5 of my texts.

For World Lit. - we're doing Like Water For Chocolate (a mexican novel) the genre is magical-realism, and it's all about a girl named Tita who's love marries her sister, etc. I didn't like it as the prose was very basic and the characters were one-dimensional

We're also doing Death and the Maiden (a women who was raped puts her "supposed raper" on trial in her home) and Lysistrata (during the Peloponesian wars, the women decided to have a sex strike to stop the war)

We're then doing The Wars and Hamlet but I'm not sure as to which part it is for.

Edited October 28, 2007 by ffaholic

[Guest lestat]

Mine were OK, mostly depressing though. I think that's a running theme in the IB PBL.

Part 1:

Sophocles - Oedipus Rex

Achebe - Things Fall Apart

Part 2:

Allende - The House Of The Spirits

Marquez - Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

Borges -Labyrinths

Eliot - The Wasteland

Part 3:

Shakespeare - Hamlet

Donne - Poems

Frost - Poems

Woolf - A Room Of One's Own

Austen - Pride And Prejudice

Part 4:

Brecht - Mother Courage And Her Children

Miller - Death Of A Salesman

Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Marlowe - The Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus

Happy Times!

[Guest fierybabe14]

Mine are depressing too

Part 1

The House of the Spirits

Perfume

One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

Part 2

Macbeth

A Modest Proposal

The Great Gatsby

Part 3

Hedda Gabler

A Streetcar named Desire

Death of a Salesman

Part 4

Lines to Time

Medea

The Secret River

Searching for the Secret River

Why couldn't my school choose any decent texts?