Right now we are in the brainstorming phase and so here is a few of my ideas of applications that can be made in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird:
- Readers can follow authors blogs, and even be invited into discussions with the author, but is the consumers voice too loud? Authors could potentially be losing creativity by only writing what readers want to hear. Are prejudices of popular demand overcoming new text? This could be drawn into racism and the unfair court trial in the novel. Is there a reason to fight against what everyone wants?
- What to truly believe… the reviews on Goodreads and especially Amazon can be misleading and it can be frustrating filtering through it all. This could be a connection to Mayella getting beat by her father but Tom getting the blame, although completely innocent. What you see isn’t always what you get type of standpoint. This could also be linked to the recommendations we receive on Amazon and Goodread. This could also be related to Boo Radley in a more positive way and we could get more out of these reviews and recommendations than what we thought.
- Also Harper Lee is coming out with a SEQUEL (Go Set a Watchman) to To Kill a Mockingbird after 55 years. The time that passed could be due to the skepticism that occurred after her success from her last novel. Will the digital age only worsen the problem and scare writers and their creativity away?
- One main theme of the novel is the loss of ignorance or innocence which could be related to spoilers we could run into accidentally while on Goodreads or Amazon.
I think you could dig a little deeper into the character of Boo Radley. Your point of the loss of innocence, for example. Boo begins the book as an innocent and ends the book with a very different maturity. Perhaps, you could discuss how we, as readers, now have access to thousands of books and each book leaves us a little bit different. Then you could lead that into how we can find those thousands of books on Goodreads and Amazon.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Boo doesn't care what people think of her. She's been raised to basically say whatever, right? (It's been a long time since I've read this.) Maybe you could research if there is censorship on Goodreads or Amazon? Or even just the idea of the internet being an excuse for people to say whatever they want? Hopefully, those ideas made sense.
Yeah you are right! Thanks so much for your help! I really liked your idea to develop the character of Scout or Jem? Boo Radley is the neighbor who they think is helping them and leaving gifts for them. Sorry I should have summarized it in my post!
DeleteHaha yeah I meant Scout! See? It's been too long since I've read it!
DeleteI like where you're going with connecting with the author! I think that could be a really interesting concept especially with like older authors (like Harper Lee) that sort of jumped off the publicity ship, as well as dead authors, or authors that are just all for publicity! So it's something that's a weird thing for some people, and an interesting way to connect with these works and get different insight through the author.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many good ideas here! When I was reading your post I was thinking about how you could draw a neat connection between the idea of the fear of the unknown and how it is largely unneccessary most of the time. People in this novel fear Boo Radlely becasue they do not know about him. You could talk about the fears that people have in the digital age due to lack of knowledge and how these fears aren't warrented.
ReplyDelete