Small Group Discussion

How I Prepared and How it was Different

I read the story several times.  Normally, I will only read something once before coming to class.  Poems are exceptions as they tend to be shorter and more confusing.  As I read, I mark up my book.  This I normally do, but I did make more annotations with this story than I do most of the time.

Even after I read the story a few times I felt really overwhelmed by the story.  It was not as extreme as an “I just read The Waste Land for the first time”, but I was still pretty overwhelmed by my lack of understanding.   

So I did what any “halfway decent student” would do when facing mild confusion.  I drank too much coffee, warmed up my brain and did some research.  I normally do not do research before class on a piece of text.  At that point I added more annotations to my book.

I marked my annotations with tabs to help me find places in the text better.  Unfortunately, I still could not find things on discussion day.

This is one of the paintings I was talking
about having violets with the Virgin Mary
Madonna benois by Leonardo da Vinci

Three Things I Learned

1. A writer can cram a hell of a lot of symbolism into a text without it sounding forced.  There was a lot, and I really mean a lot of symbolism in A Good Man is Hard to Find, but I did not feel like anything was stretched. 

 It all just flowed into the story.  Furthermore, one can write a piece that is heavily religious in nature but feels earthy (maybe that is not the word I am looking for) --- natural and worldly (as in of the world).

Side note – I have a new found interest in symbolism.

2. Unless forced, I will not prepare as much as I am supposed to prepare.  I kind of already knew this, but this discussion reinforces how understanding about my personality.  

3. Every class is dramatically different.  I had to do a discussion like this one last semester, and I assumed this one would be similar.  Yes, I was just as nervous.  Yes, I consumed just as much coffee.  Yes, I still felt unprepared but turned out to be prepared. 

However, this discussion felt completely different.  Different minds and a different text changed the whole thing for me. I had kind of expected it to be the same or similar, but for me it was not.

For my personal knowledge of the text I think it was a little more useful.  This is because it forced me to take time to think about the text.  This time allowed me to come to new understandings about the text.