Blog 17: Further Ideas for Research
If I was to have to write a research paper for this class, there would be many different areas that I would be able to touch on. Would include topics ranging from the role of women in the books that we have read, to the different styles in which the books are written to capture the reader. Other topics such as the different ways in which the books are classified, and what aspects of the book allows you as a reader to group them into that category is also interesting. I decided that one of the most interesting aspects of all the books we read this semester was the precisely the difference of each book in how it portrays the story to the reader.
The first groups of books were classified as high fantasy, and included books such as The Hobbit and Redwall. These two books told a story about animals and their journey. They were classified as high fantasy and it takes place in another world. This other world can be classified as being parallel to our universe. The second group of books we read were classified as Real vs. Secondary World. These books included The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Goblet of Fire. Each one of these books included both the real world, the world in which we live in now, and the secondary world, a world in which the characters of the story are able to travel to. These two genres of books are similar to each other in that they include that secondary, or parallel world, but the second group does now have the aspect of high fantasy.
The next set of books we delved into in class were dystopia. These books included Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Giver, Among the Hidden, The City of Ember. What makes these books a dystopia is the aspect of an alternate reality in a controlled society, where everything must be perfect. Finally, the last groups of books that we are just finishing up now are the grotesque/dark fantasy books. These included James and the Giant Peach, The bad Beginning, and Coraline. All of these books have the idea of horror and death riding on the dark fantasy aspect, and things being out of place, or odd and disturbing in the grotesque aspect.
All in all, I thought the different ways in which each story was written, and how it could be classified into a larger gene because of the characters, or world in which they inhabited would be a great idea for further research.
