How depressing are your A1 texts?

[Bree]

So, I'm doing German A1 and tats wat we hav to read:

PART 1-WORLD LITERATURE

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- Chronicle of a Death Foretold (title says evrything)

Emile Zola- Therese Raquin (suicide)

Gustave Flaubert- Madame Bovary (suicide)

PART 2- DETAILED STUDY

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing- Nathan the Wise (dunno, but i think nobody dies but its bout 3rd crusade... death again ^^ and religion which is depressing too....)

Goethe, Schiller, Hoelderlin- Selected poems

Heinrich Mann- Professor Unrat, literally meaning "Professor Garbage," (tries to kill ppl)

Carola Stern- In den Netzen der Erinnerung (no idea how to translate this one! but its bout ppl after WW2, sad and depressing again)

PART 3- GENRE STUDY

Berthold Brecht- The Good Person of Szechwan (depressing cos its bout how bad ppl are...^^)

Friedrich Duerrenmatt- The Visit (bout revenge and someone dies at the end)

Max Frisch- Andorra (bout hate and suicide at the end)

Henrik Ibsen- a doll's house (tries to kill herself)

PART 4- SCHOOL'S FREE CHOICE

Bernhard Schlink- The reader (suicide, Nazi Germany)

Stefan Zweig- Royal Game (Nazi Germany, torture)

Primo Levi- If this is a man (KZ, torture, death...)

Various Authors- Poems of the time of war (WW2, death, Hiroshima, KZ...)

[avident]

They're very depressing. From adultery to death, to rape, to gangrape, and all the way up to going mental. Sure is fun doing A1.

[laryxle]

Ours aren't that depressing compared to you guys, well so far at least.

Right now we're doing Moliere's School For Wives, Like Water for Chocolate and Antigone. The theme is treatment of women I think.

Then we're doing detective fiction, the real inspector hound, skull beneath the skin and a couple of others.

I hope it doesn't get more depressing than that.

[Vvi]

Whoever got to read Pride and Prejudice for one of their texts is dead lucky, I love that book. And Scade has Amos Oz, who is regarded as one of the best Israeli authors ever.

Our theme is "moral dilemmas", although I swear it's actually "people going crazy". So many of our books are about mad women especially.

Part 1:

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)- Acting it out in class wasn't fun, I had to be Blanche and the most awkward moment came when Mitch was supposed to rape me. Not to mention that Stanley's an ass, Stella is spineless and Blanche is vain.

Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)- Prequel to Jane Eyre. The way in which Antoinette slowly goes mad, coupled with the vivid descriptions of the lush foliage and colour of the Caribbean are haunting. Add voodoo in there, and it's a crazy person's book. Aontoinette is morbid and the racism that is present is disturbing. Nevertheless, I liked it.

Poetry Anthology (Varied authors)- I remember some poem about vultures, it wasn't very interesting in general. One poem was in relation to ****ens' Great Expectations, our teacher went into a little too much detail on the sexual elements of the poem and got a warning from the principal after some extremely Christian girl complained to her mother about it.

Can't remember the last book.

Part 2:

Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte- The book is too long, Jane's "morally upstanding" nature is irritating and the Victorian ideas of terror and gloom, with howling wind and gargoyles, don't do anything to scare me. And Jane's ardent love for Mr Rochester is just pure desperation.

Animal Farm (George Orwell)- Animals killing each other and emulating Stalin? Enough said. I hate it.

Measure for Measure (William Shakespeare)- The deputy left in charge of the town while he Duke is away refuses to let a nun's brother off the death penalty (which he got for adultery) unless she agrees to have sex with him. The nun's refusal to save her brother by doing so is selfish and the deputy's perverseness is despicable. And Shakespeare is hard to read.

War Poetry (Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon)- The both of them wrote incredibly bitter poems about everything to do with war, from the trenches to gas attacks to girlfriend's having affairs while their men were away at war. Nothing funny there, all of it is dead gloomy and you can sense the animosity in every line.

Part 3:

A Dolls' House (Henrik Ibsen)- Nora's whiny, childish characters is a turn-off. The lying throughout the play and the insipid nature of Torvald isn't great either.

The Father (August Strindberg)- Laura is crazy for power, Adolf has no control in his house, the grandmother is crazy and sees spirits, and the nanny is far too religious. The husband dies of a heart attack (caused by his wife) and leaves the reader wanting to never get married.

Therese Raquin (Emile Zola)- Disturbing "study" of human nature. Dark and gloomy description of Paris, disgusting murder of a friend and violence between husband and wife. Moral: hope you're not French and living in Paris.

Heat and Dust (Ruth Prawar Jhabvala)- I seriously hope no one else has to read this for IB. It's about the British in India, some promsicuous woman who arrives there searching for her promiscuous grandmother that had an affair with a fat ugly prince. The promiscuous woman that's not dead has sex first with some Hindu convert (all she can ever write about in her diary is his huge "member") and then goes on to have sex with some Indian commissioner in the village. She's just a ***** basically in the 60's that finds out her grandmother was a ***** too. Great story for a family reunion. There are no literary features to analyze and the story is pointless as the woman discovers nothing special about her grandmother.

Part 4:

Talking Heads (Allan Bennett)- Funny moments in British stereotypes, but the murders that happen in suburbia are chilling. And the way he reveals events, making you slowly piece together all the evidence, always makes you go "No, it can't be. No. No one would do that". However, his style is repetitive (and we only read 2 monologues of his). Too easy to guess what will happen if you've already read one example of his work.

An Ideal Husband (Oscar Wilde) - I love this. The wit and sarcasm is right up my street.

Professional Foul (Tom Stoppard)- About ethics in Czechoslovakia in the 1970's, philosophy and football. Boring. Supposedly an important play in it's time because it showcased the totalitarian regime, but the Cambridge professor had no personality and they actually read out huge extracts of essays on ethics. I slept through the movie.

Death and the Maiden (Ariel Dorfman)- My teacher is saving this for last because apparently there is nothing funny in it. It's about torture in a South American country during one of the dictatorships.

[CocoPop]

So far we've only covered world lit texts and poetry for the oral presentation:

World Lit:

The Outsider

The Metamorphosis

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Poetry:

A whole book of Sylvia Plath - a woman who killed herself by putting her head in an oven, so basically every poem is about suicide.

[faerie]

Okay I have no idea in what categories the English books go (they don't tell us in class grrrr), but here they are, in no particular order!

The Bluest Eye--Toni Morrison (child gets raped by her dad... this was graphic and just awful!!!)

Brave New World--Huxley (ugh... dystopian crap...)

The Scarlet Letter--Hawthorne (I'm not sure if this was actually IB or if they just made us read it over the summer for kicks, but it was awful)

The Bell Jar--Sylvia Plath (actual not terrible, a better counterpart to Catcher in the Rye)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold--Gabriel García Marquéz (gross, silly, stupid. the only plus side was that it was short)

The House of the Spirits--Isabel Allende (actually really good, despite coup/incarceration/rape at the end)

Anna Karenina--Tolstoy (way too long for its own good, you were wishing for Anna to just die already by the end, and then there are like 100 extra pages of nothing... but not overly terrible)

Hedda Gabler--that German playwright (watch Hedda while you read it. it's really cool)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?--another playwright (sooo confusing and also really terrible to read--"hump the hostess" anyone?--but it was interesting to examine the relationships...)

The Merchant of Venice--Shakespeare (this was supposed to be a comedy?!)

Hamlet--Shakespeare (we knew he would die in the end, anyway. actually really fun to do oral commentaries on!)

Mill on the Floss--George Eliot, who is, in fact, a woman (could we have skipped this, rewound maybe 50 years, and read Jane Austen? please?! this was an awful, terrible book with no point whatsoever)

Selected Poems--John Donne (oh, look. it rhymes.)

[Tevaerua]

depressing literature:

SYLVIA PLATH- need i say more?

the sorrow of war- the title is a pretty good indication of the many joys in this book!

[leepsyle]

Ours so far:

Part I:

My Antonia - Willa Cather

Poetry of Robert Frost

Poetry of Emily ****inson

The Lives of Animals - J.M. Coetzee

Part II:

Second Class Citizen - Emecheta

Matigari - Ngugi

Paradise of the Blind - Duong Tu Houng

This Earth of Mankind - Proemadya Toer

[narathiel]

Part 1 WL

Metamorphosis from Kafka- depressing once you start thinking about it

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzenitsyn- a chill goes down the back of your spine as you read it and it gets worse and stays there as you start to analyse the text

The Outsider Camus very hard to empathize with such a character. Amazing creation by Camus

Part 2:

Merchant of Venice- depressing in some ways

War Poems by Sassoon and Wilfred Owen- oh yes, very bad, and really get you thinking about those times and how bad it must have been

The Great Gatsby too vivid to be depressing for me

The Crucible- very emotional but not exactly depressing. I love this work by Miller though and recommend it as it is historically accurate with great English.

Catch 22 depressing yet humorous and ironic. A fun read.

The books and texts we have not read also look depressing. It seems hard to write about happiness and explain it as well as sadness. The more complex a story gets the harder is to leave out this emotion and stay with happiness. Do you people have any books which radiate only this type of emotion?

[Tilia]

Part 1 WL

Metamorphosis from Kafka- depressing once you start thinking about it

We read the Metamorphosis in German, and I'm glad I didn't have to analyse it too deeply.

By the way, does anyone the list with prescribed texts for languages A1?

[Lingva]

Just out of interest, what books have you studied?

I'm doing English HL and the list for my class is as follows:

Part 1 - World Literature

Voltaire: Candide*

Gabriel García Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera

Orhan Pamuk: The White Castle*

Part 2 - Detailed Study

Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems

William Shakespeare: Hamlet*

Henry James: Washington Square*

Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own

Part 3 - Groups of Works: Drama

Aphra Behn: The Rover*

David Mamet: Glengarry Glen Ross

Sophocles: King Oedipus - WL

(our teacher hasn't yet chosen the last one)

Part 4 - School's Free Choice

John Berger: To the Wedding

Leonora Carrington: The Hearing Trumpet

Samuel Beckett: Murphy*

Primo Levi: If This Is A Man - WL

*the ones which I particularly enjoyed

[alereyes228]

I take both English and Spanish as A1 yet here's my English list (A1 Spanish wasn't optional and I dislike it so I can't remember all we've read)

Part 1

Chekov's Uncle Vanya

Ibsen's Doll's House

Kafka's Metamorphosis

Part 2

Sheakspeare's Hamlet

Selected Poems (Keats and Eliot)

Part 3

Miller's A View From the Bridge

Oedipus Rex (I should know the author but I don't)

Amadeus (again, should know the author yet I don't)

Part 4

DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Burgess' A Clockwork Orange

Heller's Catch 22

[Bishup]

I have done Candide by Voltaire. It's very philosophical and hard to grasp what it's actually on about. As you're in a class with a qualified teacher who is obviously going to go through the book I wouldn't worry about it too much, I'd just be aware that it's slightly odd. Other than that I have not any of the books you've mentioned, apart from Hamlet.

[aya91]

Part 1

Allende: The House of the Spirits *

Puig: Kiss of the Spiderwoman

Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Part 2

Shakespeare: Hamlet *

Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Achebe: Things Fall Apart

Poetry: Donne*

Part 3

Miller: Death of a Salesman

Williams: The Glass Menagerie*

Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Fugard: Master Harold... and the boys*

Part 4

Austen: Pride and Prejudice (if there was a star for a work I particularly didn't enjoy, I would put it here )

Scott-Fitzgerald: the Great Gatsby

Ishiguro: Remains of the Day

Sophocles: Antigone *

Edited January 31, 2010 by aya91

[Eydie]

not sure what categories they fall into, just a list here.

Madame Bovary - Flaubert

Waiting Years - Enchi

From Sleep Unbound - Chedid

Nineteen Eighty Four - Orwell

Brave New World - Huxley

We - Zamyatin

Never Let Me Go - Ishiguro (HL)

Macbeth - Shakespeare

Importance of Being Earnest

Streetcar Nmed Desire and Other Plays

Fly Away Peter - Malouf

Does anyone think this is an unusual list of books?

[Dreamer94]

Ummm, the only part I know for sure that we're doing is:

Part 1 (World Literature)

1- Crime and Punishment

2- The Stranger

3- The Metamorphosis

Part 2- Detailed Study

Hamlet

A Collection of Essays (George Orwell)

Part 3

The Great Gatsby

Tess D'ubervilles

Part 4

1- Madame Bovary

2- The Handmaid's Tale

3- Beloved

4- Pride and Prejudice

Edited May 12, 2010 by Dreamer94

[laryxle]

Part 1 -

Like Water for Chocolate

The School for Wives

Antigone

Part 2 -

Hamlet

Emily ****inson Poetry

Clear Light of Day

And some guy's essays, i'm not sure who though...

Part 3 - Poetry

Pablo Neruda

Gwen Harwood

And I don't know the other poets we are doing

Part 4 - Detective Fiction

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow (WL)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Skull Beneath the Skin

The Real Inspector Hound

[slizzie]

I'm doing/done

Part 1 - world lit:

Death in Venice - Thomas Mann

Metamorphosis - Franz Kafta

Part 2

King Lear

Orwell Essays

Selected poems -Donne

and maybe Age of Innocence by Wharton

Part 3

Scoop - Evelyn Waugh

Coming up for Air - Graham Greene

Candide - Voltaire

Part 4

Selected Poems - TS Eliot

A Room with a View - Forster

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce

Le Grand Meaulnes - Alain-fournier

I thinks that is not all too..

At my old school, I did part one and some of part four, which were:

Antigone, School of Wives, Like Water for Chocolate, and crime novels.

[KyleAdams]

I have only been through the first semester of 4 in A1 HL. We haven't read a single book with a positive ending yet. I think these are our school's choice novels though, not the required.

Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton: Of the three main characters, one dies, the other two lead lonely lives when they truthfully loved each other.

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe: The main character kills himself at the end. Misfortune riddles the entire story.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy: The world has been destroyed, everything is covered in ash. Most of the human race is dead. All animals are dead. Most of the surviving humans are cannibals. The sun is blocked out by ash. Probably the archetype of depressing literature.

[idIB]

Hmm, our book list is mainly about death/depression, madness and sex.

Part 1:

Lysistrata (Aristophanes): a play about a sex strike to stop a war

Like Water For Chocolate (Lauru Esquivel): she never gets to marry her loved one, but still manages to have lots of sex

Death and the Maiden (Ariel Dorfman): a woman taking revenge on someone who allegedly raped her

Part 2:

Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller): about a man who never reaches the American Dream and commits suicide

Hamlet (Shakespeare): everyone dies except Fortinbras

The Wars (Timothy Findley): rape, WW2, death, more rape...

Collection of Poems by Neruda, Rimbaud and Rilke: some are about love, some about death, some about war. Rimbaud was generally crazy, so...

Part 3:

The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald): depressing story about a man beaten down by his social class

King Lear (Shakespeare): again, everyone dies, save two

Collection of Essays by Orwell: he wrote about the invisibles of society, which usually indicates imporverished situations...

Collection of Poems by Yeats and by Tennyson: not too bad, save the allusions to depressing Greek mythology

Part 4 and 5: (Haven't read yet)

The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood)

Metamorphosis

1984 (Orwell)

Heart of Darkness

Edited January 21, 2010 by idIB