An Aversion to Reading in Disliking Books by Gerald Graff Essay

In "Disliking Books" Gerald Graff informs the reader of his troubled childhood with literature. Like many students, Graff disliked reading books, and when he did read books, it would mainly be comic books and sports novels. He informs the reader that it was not until college where he fully began to appreciate literature. He pursued a major in English in order to push himself beyond wanting to read books of his personal leisure. And like many students, Graff struggled to read the dull, boring books, often giving up on reading them because they were too difficult. Graff became fascinated with reading when he had to write his term paper on the ending of "Huckleberry Finn", where he found fascination with reading the book and others like it. The main purpose of this narrative would be that anyone can learn to love literature. It just takes a topic like debating the ending of "Huckleberry Finn" to spark and interest in reading, like it did for

In the essay, Disliking Books at an Early Age, Gerald Graff talks about his transition from being displeased and uninterested in literature, to having intellectual discussions about it and even teaching it. He did not begin to enjoy reading until he had discussions about the books that he read, which showed him a different perspective. Overall, his essay explains how readers can only enjoy literature if they turn it into a social activity by freely interpreting and discussing the pieces they have read.

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a piece of fiction that is so strongly written it can be conceived as the truth. Mark Twain’s ability to paint a clear and realistic picture of the Southern way of life in 1885 is unparalleled in any author. The story of Huckleberry Finn is one that gives ample opportunity for interesting sights into the South at that time. The story consists of Huck and a runaway slave, along with two men and Huck’s faithful friend Tom Sawyer and some points of the novel, floating down the Mississippi’s shores and encountering different feats of Southern culture, tragedy, and adventure. A nice example of Twain’s ability to turn an event on a river into an analysis of Southern culture is a fun bit of the story where Huck

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, perhaps, the most famous novel in American literature. Chances are that you made a poster about it in middle school, read it in high school, and wrote several reports on it in college. However, as famous as the novel is, it is also notoriously controversial for its language and portrayal of African Americans (which I will term “narrative realism”). After eventually capturing a coveted spot in the American literary canon, concerned calls from the American public for its ban only grew. Today, the great controversy over whether the novel belongs in the American literary canon in the first place continues. However, there is a clear answer: the novel deserves its coveted spot in the American literary canon

Disliking Books is about the author Gerald Graff, and how he grows up really hating the idea of reading in general. He uses his fear of being bullied as his preliminary excuse for not reading when he was younger. When he gets older and goes to college, he uses his fear of failing as a way to force himself into reading the required material and homework for his English major. Even then he can’t quite relate to the texts and can’t fully engage in reading. Then, when he takes a class in his junior year he starts to learn about the interesting controversy involving The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The controversy states that the book really ends when the boys steal Jim, not when everyone realizes that Jim has already been freed.

Gerald Graff’s article, “Disliking Books” and Richard Rodriguez’s “Scholarship Boy” are similar and yet different in many ways. The two articles describe the journey of two boys from different backgrounds through various stages in their education.

Smiley has missed the point of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and has depressed the book to a fractions of its ideas. She sees the book as a failed social commentary on racism and enabling the reader to avoid responsibility. A Short sighted sentiment from Mrs. Smiley, but Mark Twain has a light directed elsewhere. He lights out the territory of social improvements by vexing the reader to view from different vantage points.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is said to be one of the greatest American novels to ever be written and is what all other pieces of American literature are based off of. The novel has been debated for over an entire century and will continue to be debated for much longer. Never the less, Huckleberry Finn teaches young students and adults the important life lessons. ”The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain should remain required reading in American Literature classes because it enlightens students about the horrors of racism and slavery, familiarizes students with the South during time period, and properly portrays the powers of conformity.

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huckleberry’s changed morals are revealed when he decides to save Jim and free him from slavery. Huck’s revelation relates to the structure and meaning of the work through the growth of his personal views on society.

Disliking Books, an excerpt from his book, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1993), is about how Graff grows up with a father who always encouraged him to read and how he just absolutely hated it whether it was for school or just for fun. When he was younger he used his fear of being bullied as his preliminary excuse

The highly lauded novel by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, entertains the reader with one adventure after another by a young boy (and his runaway slave friend Jim) in the mid-1800s who is on strange but interesting path to adolescence and finally adulthood. What changes did he go through on the way to the end of the novel? And what was his worldview at the end of the novel? These two questions are approached and answered in this paper.

The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has stirred up much controversy over such topics as racism, prejudice and gender indifference, but the brunt of the criticism has surrounded itself around the ending, most notably with the re-entry of Tom Sawyer. Some people viewed the ending as a bitter disappointment, as shared by people such as Leo Marx. The ending can also be viewed with success, as argued by such people as Lionel Trilling, T.S. Eliot, V. S. Pritchett and James M. Cox in their essays and reviews. I argue that the ending of the novel proves successful in justifying the innocence of childhood through such themes as satire and frivolous behaviour.

In the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain juxtaposes two environments that tackle many different aspects of life. From Christian reforms, domestic abuse, and slavery to reflective solitude and liberation, Twain brings together a plethora of obstacles for the main character Huckleberry Finn and his companion Jim to encounter and assimilate. The two contrasting settings depict intermingling themes of the repressive civilization on land, the unrestricted freedom on the raft, and the transcendentalism that Huck and Jim experience during their escape from captivity towards liberation.

.” (Twain, ix) He openly and firstly acknowledges the irregularities in this story and explains that it is not on a whim that he uses this specific type of language but with the purpose to expose the world to a new and original form of literary design. The main character in this story is Huckleberry Finn, the complete opposite of a traditional European hero; he is not the typical king or nobleman that traditional stories tell of. He is an everyday boy uneducated and seemingly unworthy, Huckleberry Finn is the epitome of a real American every day hero. Mr. Twain writes this book as a way to show that just by simply maturing and growing up so that Huckleberry Finn can make the right decisions in all aspects of his life; it makes him a noble character. “We are asked to trust this not as a sport, but rather as a well-considered and well-honed document. . . We are invited to experience and to appreciate this narrative in terms of its thought, its thoughtfulness, and its craft.” (Fertel, 159 –Free and Easy”)

The following paper will briefly show arguments, and conclusions within the writings of Mark Twain’s story Huckleberry Finn. I will discuss the various themes that Mark Twain is bringing to light within his story. This paper will show how Mark Twain uses those themes within the story, and how they are specifically used. I will also briefly discuss the life of Samuel Clemons, the author known as Mark Twain, and give the reasoning behind choosing the name of Mark Twain when writing his novels. Themes of escapism will be discussed.