How depressing are your A1 texts?

[Sonneteer_Trombonist]

I'm in English A1, and here is my list. Someone dies in nearly every book, and a lot of these books were hard to swamp through.

Part 1

Madame Bovary - I found it boring until the last few chapters, when I started to enjoy it (is that odd?)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Confusing and often cringe-worthy. It's about a guy who is killed by the brothers of a woman he may have deflowered who was cast aside the day after her wedding because her new husband found out. It's in non-chronological order and needs a few reads to make sense.

Siddhartha - This one was a good read, I thought. We watched the movie too. That was a riot.

Part 2:

Poetry by Keats, Frost and Yates: OK, to be fair, this was interesting

Hamlet: Very depressing, and it was hard to swamp through

Macbeth: Yet another Shakespearean tragedy

Ethan Frome: The only thing I remember about this book was that it was depressing and there was a pickle jar

Part 3:

Waiting for Godot: Ahh, Theatre of the Absurd, where would we be without you? Likely someplace sane.

Hedda Gabler/Doll's House - These books were quite fun. We had to perform scenes from the plays.

The Importance of Being Earnest - Amazing, amazing satire. This was the best book we've read, I think.

A Streetcar Named Desire - Haven't read it yet

Part 4:

Jane Eyre: We only spent two weeks studying this one because we ran out of time. The book itself is enjoyable if you have the time to absorb it all.

A Bird in the House: Most painful piece of literature I have ever studied. We spent months and months studying this tiny little book about a little girl growing up in Canada on a farm and we analyzed that thing to death.

Oedipus: Can't get much more twisted than that.

Night: I think everyone should read this book at some point. Still, very very depressing.

I once asked my English teacher in middle school why we didn't read anything happy, and she sarcastically replied, "One day, I woke up and I won the lottery. The end! Now, didn't that intrigue you? Doesn't that provoke some serious discussion? Didn't that make you THINK?"

Edited January 27, 2010 by Sonneteer_Trombonist

[IB NERD 101]

PART 1-WORLD LITERATURE

Yukio Mishima- About a bunch of nihlitsic boys who are Oedipal (one of which watches his mother undress through a peephole) and muder a man to restore order to a chaotic world! Creepy!

Isabelle Allende- The House of The Spirits- This was a good book, amazing! But includes rape and death.

Garcia Lorca- The House of Bernarda Alba- Short play ends with death (hanging)

PART 2- DETAILED STUDY

Keats and Purdy Poems

Asar Nafisi-Reading Lolita in Theran- No death, but a very good memoir.

Shakespeare- Hamlet - tragedy

Achebe- Things Fall Apart

PART 3- GENRE STUDY

Atwood and Siliva Plath Poery

MacBeth

Toni Morrison- Song of Solomon

Dostylvoky- Crime and Punishment

PART 4- SCHOOL'S FREE CHOICE

The Wars

Rohinton Misry- Such a Long Journey

The Eyes were Watching God

[ameatypie]

Lol, i started IB a couple weeks ago and we are doing a little poetry atm. We have to study Ted Hughes - there is a poem called "The Matrydom of Bishop Farrar" - all about how he got burnt at the stake. Very depressing. There is another one, i cant remember the name, but a guy goes into a forest, looks up, and there are rabbits, crows, cats, hares, dogs.... all manner of animals hanging from trees by their necks. Nice.

--

On a brighter note though, its Robert Frost next - much more relaxing

[aya91]

haha wow, that was some list Our works aren't that bad... Actually yes they are, now I think about it

Free Choice:

Antigone (3 deaths)

The Great Gatsby (2 deaths)

Pride and Prejudice (I'm pretty sure none, but it was so boring I consider it depressing)

The Remains of the Day (Ditto)

World Lit:

The House of the Spirits (lots of deaths, but you know despite all the rape and sadness it was a good book... Depressing? perhaps)

One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (EEhhhhghhhhhhhh.... depressing and hit-your-head-on-the-desk boring. And that's what makes it depressing)

Kiss of the Spider Woman (I'm not homophobic, I swear. I just found it a little bit disgusting. Just the extremely graphic parts. I didn't actually read the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure someone dies)

Detailed Study:

Hamlet: I think it's just easier to say, few survivors... pretty much sums it up. I loved it though.

Things fall apart: as the title suggests, things do fall apart in the end. They also kill an innocent boy all for the matter of pride.

I know why the caged bird sings: Ah, finally one with a happy ending. The setting may be depressing but it is a happy story, and at least the protagonist can't die in the end cause otherwise she wouldn't have lived to tell the story.

Selected poetry, John Donne: Ok mostly it's just depressing that someone that arrogant could have been called a genius. Gah.

Groups of works:

Death of a Salesman: Poor Willy... as the title suggests, it doesn't have a happy ending.

The Glass Menagerie: I thought it was a happy ending but others disagree. It wasn't that depressing, really!

Waiting for Godot: Oh god... Existensialism really makes you see how idiotic people are, and that's depressing.

Master Harold... and the Boys: I loved this play. It suggested hope in the end, which fixed the dissapointment of the ending and the sadness.

So I guess our works weren't that bad. I think most classics have some element of tragedy because... Well it speaks to human emotion! We are slaves to drama.

[Carmen]

Part 1 (World Lit Papers):

- Antigone by Jean Anouilh. DEPRESSINGLY TRAGIC. Need I say more?

- A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Not that depressing. But Torvald's condescending manner was just like HOLY COW.

- Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Definitely depressing. We watched a film version too and that was really, really depressing.

Part 2 (Oral Commentary):

- Macbeth by Shakespeare. You really get to feel for both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth.

- Othello by Shakespeare. Pretty tragic. Iago's manpulation is amazing. He is totally good at what he does.

- Wilfred Owen poems. OMG so sad. About WWI, and he was fighting the propaganda.

- Robert Browning. Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess were just scary, but considering that he was writing gothic poetry, it's fine.

- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Yeah Wuthering Heights is a bit of a depressing book, considering the love between Cathy and Heathcliff.

Part 3 (Written Commentary):

- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Not really depressing at all haha.

- The Wars by Timothy Findley. Yeah really really depressing. War, rape, sacrifice.

- Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. Pretty depressing, considering the ending. Especially the fact that they COULD HAVE BEEN right for each other, and Emma didn't have to go out to try and find "love".

- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles ****ens. The whole French revolution thing makes it a bit depressing, but the real thing is Sydney and how he sacrifices himself for Charles and Lucie's happiness.

Part 4 (Free Choice):

- Dubliners by James Joyce. Really depressing, especially Joyce's idea surrounding a family.

- Night by Elie Wiesel. So depressing, especially the part where his father dies. Oh man.

- Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The only depressing thing about this is how boring it is haha.

- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Love this book! But obviously completely depressing. Neglect, abuse, sacrifice, duty. All in a short novella.

Most of the books I study are quite depressing, but there are a few exceptions, of course.

[Rhianna Fisher]

Out texts for our IOC are very depressing.

We have:

Macbeth - Everyone dies. Lots of blood

Edger Allen Poe - Bricking people up in walls, hanging and taking out the eyes of a cat, killing people in their sleep because they looked at you funny...

Bruce Dawe - They are all war poems.

That is HL, SL get to do Much Ado About Nothing instead of Macbeth, which I supose isn't quite as bad. It's almost as if the teachers want to depress us!

[Need Help Like NOW :)]

World Literature:

1. A doll's House

2. So long a letter

3. A house of spirits

Oral Commentary(recorded)

1. Songs of innocence: Song of experience

2. Measure for measure

Exam paper 2:

1. Mother courage

2. Death of a salesman

3. The burdens

IOP:

1. Miguel street

2. Song of Lawino

3. The scarlet letter

*these are my books for IB does anyone have the same or almost?

[idIB]

World Literatures:

Ariel Dorfman Death and the Maiden

Laura Esquivel Like Water for Chocolate

Aristophanes Lysistrata

Oral Commentary

George Orwell Selected Essays

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Shakespeare King Lear

W.B. Yeats Selected Poems

Lord A. Tennyson Selected Poems

Paper 2

Franz Kafka Metamorphosis

George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

IOP

Pablo Neruda Selected Poems

Rainer Maira Rilke Selected Poems

Arthur Rimbaud Selected Poems

Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman

Shakespeare Hamlet

Timothy Findley The Wars

[KLSmash]

World Literatures:

Homer - Odyssey

Esquivel - Like Water For Chocolate

Kafka - Metamorphosis

Oral Commentary

Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Ondaatje - In The Skin of a Lion

Allende - The House of the Spirits

Paper 2

G.G. Marquez - 100 Years of Solitude

Greene - Quiet American

Davies - Fifth Business

Shields - The Stone Diaries

IOP

Sylvia Plath - Selected Poems

W.B. Yeats - Selected Poems

T.S. Eliot - Selected Poems

Shakespeare - Hamlet

Shakespeare - King Lear

Bronte - Jane Eyre

[Sandwich]

World Literature:

Antigone Sophocles

The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

Oral Commentary:

Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

Goodbye To All That Robert Graves

The Taming of the Shrew William Shakespeare

Selected Poems John Keats

Selected Poems Ted Hughes

Selected Poems Seamus Heaney

Paper 2:

Long Day's Journey Into Night Eugene O'Neill

Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett

The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams

The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde

IOP:

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Attwood

Therese Desqueyroux Francois Mauriac

Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy

Men and Women Robert Browning

I loved Hardy, di Lampedusa, Hughes and Keats. Oh and Oscar Wilde was funny as always (: The others... eh... if anybody can avoid it, never ever do Men and Women by Robert Browning. The man writes ridiculously long and boring poems in truly prolific quantities. You'll be sick of it before you start. Oh and Waiting for Godot is also an epic waste of time, I absolutely fail to understand where the entertainment is in that play. Anybody who did GCSE English will probably commiserate with me that I somehow managed to do Heaney and Browning for IB a second time! That AQA poetry anthology was a bad omen.

[Bishup]

Littérature mondiale :

La métamorphose - Franz Kafka

Une journée d'Ivan Dennissovitch - Alexandre Solzhenitsyn

1984 - George Orwell

Commentaire oral :

Les fleurs du mal - Charles Baudelaire

Huis Clos - Jean-Paul Sartre

Epreuve 2(Examen):

Le Parfum - Patrick Süskind

L'étranger - Albert Camus

And the rest I haven't decided yet. I'm currently swapping my poetry which I had chosen for my paper 2 which I also wrote about in my mock.

[Abrahamk]

World Literature

Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest

Federico Garcia Lorca: The House of Bernarda Alba

Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate

IOP

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Duong Thu Huong: Paradise of the Blind

Oral Commentary

William Shakespeare: Hamlet

Joseph Conrad: The Heart of Darkness

Paper 2

Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman

Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie

Eugene O'Neill: Long Days Journey Into Night

[Chitra K.]

I'm not sure which categories they belong to, but this is what we did:

IOP:

A Streetcar Named Desire

The Bloody Chamber and other stories - Angela Carter

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

World Lit:

Oedipus Rex

The Outsider - Albert Camus

Perfume

IOC:

Othello

Bluest Eye - Toni Morrisson

Paper 2 - Poetry:

Carol Ann Duffy

Emily ****inson

Pablo Neruda

Sylvia Plath

[Tilia]

Part 1

Dostojevskij - Crime and Punishment

Esquivel - Like Water for Chocolate

Euripides - Medea

Part 2

Almqvist - Det går an

Lagerkvist - The dwarf

Lagerlöf - Jerusalem

Schlink - The reader

Part 3

Fröding - random poems

Strindberg - Miss Julie

Söderberg - Historietter

Tunström - Juloratoriet

Part 4

Ekman - Händelser vid vatten

Nesser - Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö

Söderberg - Doctor Glas

Zola - Thérèse Raquin

Writing this, I realize many of these books that haven't been translated into English, at least as far as I know. The good ones are Doctor Glas, Like Water for Chocolate, Historietter, Crime and Punishment, Fröding, The Reader, The Dwarf and especially Juloratoriet, one of the best books I've ever read.

The worst ones were Miss Julie, Thérèse Raquin and Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö. But overall, we had fairly decent books.

[McCaffeine]

I'm still incredibly confused by what "part" each of these fall into. So, by assessments!

IOP:

Narrative of a Life of Frederick Douglass, a Slave by Frederick Douglass

Selected essays by Martin Luther King

Selected short stories by Flannery O'Connor

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

World Lit:

Tartuffe by Moliere

The Visit by Durrenmatt

Ghosts by Ibsen

IOC:

Selected poems by Robert Frost

Selected poems by Sylvia Plath (most of these ended up being self-taught, because my teacher is bad with time management)

Selected short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hamlet by Shakespeare

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Paper 2:

Perfume by Patrick Suskind (again, because teacher is bad with time management, I ended up not studying this at all, though I read it)

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

[hanniexx]

Haha now that English is over, I've kinda forgotten half the novels/plays I've read. Kinda pointless XP

IOP:

Othello - Shakespeare

Seamus Heaney poems

Robert Frost poems

(I won't list all the poems)

IOC:

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

The Outsider - Camus

World Lit:

Oedipus the king - Sophocles

Antigone - Anouilh

A Doll's House - Ibsen

Paper 2:

Cherry Orchard - Chekhov

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams <333

Death of a Salesman - Miller

[~vola]

For some reason I still have most of my books. I found them today, a matter of hours before finding this topic.

IOP

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I think that's it

FOC

Shakespeare's Hamlet

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Poems by Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens

World Lit*

Sawako Ariyoshi, The Doctor's Wife

Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves

Paper 2

Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck

Ama Ata Aidoo's Anowa

To save time we started referring to these plays collectively as "The Wild Death of a Streetcar Named Anowa."

*The way my school operated, just due to the sheer size of the program, the other IB1 English teacher taught different WL novels. The options were "Russian" or Japanese; I, obviously, got Japanese. I can't remember all of the "Russian" novels; one of them was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. "Russian" is in quotes because I believe The Stranger was also on the list, and that one's French. But they were referred to as "the Russian novels" for the sake of convenience.

[Tsubaki]

I had a very love-hate relationship with the works we studied; some of them were amazing, but I really did not enjoy others. There weren't very many works that were just "meh."

Also, I'm kinda making up which parts these all fall into; I may or may not be mistaken.

Part One - World Literature

Albert Camus - The Outsider

Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment

Primo Levi - Survival in Auschwitz

Part Two - Detailed Study

Romantic Poetry (Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth)

William Shakespeare - Hamlet

William Shakespeare - The Tempest

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Part Three - Groups of Works: Drama

George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion

William Shakespeare - Macbeth

Sophocles - Antigone (Also World Lit., apparently)

Arthur Miller - The Crucible

Part Four - School's Free Choice

Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar

William Golding - Lord of the Flies

I get the feeling I've forgotten one from Part Four, but I can't seem to think of it right now.

In any case, the only works I particularly enjoyed were The Outsider, Pygmalion, and The Importance of Being Earnest. I strongly suggest reading any of those.

[ZBP92]

I'm only finishing my first year in IB English, but this is what we've done so far:

-IOP-

****ens' A Tale of Two Cities (Very good.)

Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Very well written, shame that writing went towards such an incredible racist work.)

Dante's Inferno (Very entertaining.)

Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (The intercalary chapters significantly worsen the book, which drags on quite a bit at times. Good ending, though.)

A.S. Byatt's Possession (So bad it was actually offensive to me.)

-World Literature-

Voltaire's Candide (A very humorous and enjoyable read.)

Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (Both touching and hilarious, a book everyone should read at some point.)

Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Not particularly exciting but probably very important for any person to read due to its' importance.)

I hope nobody minds my blunt summaries of what I thought. I'm not sure what all we'll be reading next year. I pushed for Lolita, but I think my teacher is scared to try to teach it. I know we'll be reading The Life of Pi and The Canterbury Tales, both of which I'm not too excited for. And we'll also read Beowulf, which I'm dreading.

Outside of the Possession, which was pretty pointless, and The Inferno my IOP books were fairly depressing. 100 years grows more depressing as you get further into it, but is still a fun read. The Metamorphosis... yeah, pretty depressing as well.

Edited May 30, 2010 by ZBP92

[may]

hmm we do not do really depressing texts i think. The House of Bernarda Alba was a rather strong one, especially through its sense of confinement. i'm still in year 1, though.