Three

Divergent                

Divergent is a Young Adult dystopian novel where society is divided into five different factions according to their personalities. There is Abnegation for the selfless, Erudite for the intelligent, Amity for peace-loving, Candor for the honest and Dauntless for the brave. Every year, when a youth reaches sixteen, he or she will take a test that tells them the faction they are most suited for. They can decide whether or not to remain in their family’s faction or to transfer to a new faction after learning the results. Both the transfers and the original faction members will have to pass the faction’s respective initiation in order to stay in the faction.

The story unfolds with protagonist Beatrice Prior struggling with her desire to transfer to Dauntless as she feels afraid of going against all that her Abnegation parents had taught her. Eventually, she decides to go with what she wants and the rest of the book shows her journey in the Dauntless initiation process.

True to the YA genre, this will be a fun book to do in class considering that students can resonate very easily with many of the struggles and issues that Beatrice (Or ‘Tris’ as she later names herself) faces. Themes of trying to love your parents by respecting their beliefs in the face of new found independence, navigating difficult and emotionally confusing friendships and being brave to stand up in what you believe – All these things play out in the much grander site of the Divergent universe. However, while it might be thematically engaging and exciting to read plot-wise, I do not think that Divergent is a rich enough text to offer meaningful close reading. While there are recurring motifs and possibilities for interesting discussions, the writing might be too simplistic for good analysis.

Flowers for Algernon

This is a must-read for everyone. I remember feeling emotionally overwhelmed the first time I read the last few chapters (I can’t remember if I cried but I probably did). Flowers for Algernon is interesting in that the writing style gets progressively sophisticated as the plot develops, a reflection of how the protagonist Charlie is improving his mental faculties. We learn about how he struggles to become intelligent and then later on what other problems and distresses this intelligence brings to him.

It was one of my texts for my Honors Thesis in NUS. I compared it with the Robinson Crusoe narrative, exploring the differences between Charlie’s mental dislocation and Crusoe’s physical dislocation. It was fun.

The academic process revealed to me that this text is packed with portions for close analysis and unpacking of ideas. It also has many interesting themes that are of ethical value to explore – How language defines identity, the tension between emotion and the intellect, what the meaning of true happiness is etc. It is definitely a text I will choose to teach in the literature classroom.

Kun Pao Kun’s No Parking on Odd Days  

No Parking on Odd Days reveals the notion that the Singapore system stifles one’s resolve to stand up for what he is truly convicted in. This is told through the narrative of how a dispute with the authorities on how one was unjustly ‘fined’ for parking is always meaningless. By further framing the unfolding of this narrative within a father-son relationship, Kun adds to the story a personal dimension. When the son exchanges Singlish banter with the father such as:

“Alamak! Father, kena again?”

“Damn it! What to do? Pay lah”

“Kena. Pay up. It’s part of our lifestyle. Ha ha ha ha.”

We feel a father-son affection that is uniquely Singaporean. It will be interesting to unpack moments like this with a literature class. In addition, the text gives teachers a lot of opportunities to show the relevance of literary criticism with something that is much closer to the Singaporean heart and psyche. By getting students to make meaning of ideas such as parking spaces, getting fined, facing a bureaucratic authority system etc. there is the possibility to ‘teach literature’ by connecting students to accessible ideas.