Reservation Blues Harkness Discussion
Two days ago (August 23) I had my very first Harkness discussion. Coming out of it, I noticed that a lot of my and my friends’ flaws during the discussion were exposed—mainly the fact that we have issues with building off of other people’s ideas and focusing on a single topic for a prolonged period of time.
I went to the discussion with a wide amount of topics, theories, and details that I wanted to talk about and elaborate with my peers. Having finished the book so close to the discussion date, the ideas were fresh in my mind and I was ready to lay them all out during the discussion. This hampered my ability to focus on the points my friends were making as I had to juggle remembering the topics I was interested in and had already analyzed, so I feel like I missed out on developing some very interesting concepts. In future discussions, I will be more mindful of what has already been mentioned and is currently being explored so I can flesh out the ideas at hand and give solid conclusions to them.
During the discussion, a wide variety of subjects were touched upon, from the writing style and humor of the author to the character development of Junior and Big Mom. Of particular interest to me was when the discussion group began dissecting Big Mom’s phrases, expressions, and actions during different parts of the story to pin down just how far her “supernaturalness” reached as well as how Sherman Alexie weaved into her personality a good amount of satire. The discussion was civilized, with everyone being mindful of not being pedantic or sparking debates that could detract from the experience. Overall, I’d say we did a fine job of exploring Sherman Alexie’s novel Reservation Blues through our discussion.
No comments:
Post a Comment