Discussion Question: What's new with school?
Sorry folks, no review today :( I've a paper due tomorrow about postmodern fairy tales, and I'm plugging through my final draft. (It's so sad; writing the actual paper doesn't take me all that long, but getting myself to BUCKLE DOWN AND STUDY/RESEARCH/WRITE adds about three hours to every hour spent at work. I am the queen of procrastination and self-distraction.)
What did I write about? Political allegory and the Wizard of Oz. Doesn't that sound fantastic? It certainly makes a good sound bite when I tell people when I'm working on; I've had so many people act interested when I talk about this paper. I ended up focusing on the role of the Wizard as the allegorical President of the United States, and how the depiction of him in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire reflected the changing attitudes of the American people toward their government leaders. (Contrasting Maguire's Wizard with Richard Nixon, according to the woman at the Writing Center who had to provide feedback on my second draft, was an interesting parallel indeed.) An excerpt from the paper, so ya'll can see the sort of rigmarole I produce for literature classes:
Presidents like Andrew Jackson and James Monroe promoted the ideals of Manifest Destiny, a call for territorial expansion by encouraging the American people to conquer and settle the West. Baum took this desire to control the whole of America and parlayed it into the Wizard. The Wizard is the head of the state; the four countries of Oz were united under his rule and his capital, the Emerald City, is set on neutral ground between them, reminiscent of Washington DC. From his palace in the Emerald City, the Wizard sends Dorothy and her companions to kill the Wicked Witch of the West and bring back her broomstick, and only then will he grant their wishes. While the Wizard rules over all of Oz, he cannot control areas of his empire; likewise, when America first began moving into the western states they encountered Native Americans and wilderness that had to be conquered and controlled. It was the American people who went forth to settle the land, conquer the natives, and make the whole enterprise prosperous, while the President remained safe in the White House in Washington DC. If Dorothy is the American people, and the Wicked Witch and her territories the untamed wildness of the American West, then what is the broomstick? The broomstick represents the vast resources that the territories held, the riches and the potential that could only be fully tapped into once the West was brought under the control of the United States.
Ah well. So for those readers who are also students, what have you been up to in your classes? And if you are past your student days, what is your favorite project from your high school/college years?