LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question A1

Jonathan Nguyen

The Journey to the Center of the Brain

            When a person pays for and attends a college level course, the goal of that person is to get not only a learning experience, but a life experience that transcends the classrooms and provides a useful skill or skills that can be valuable in the student’s life. To acquire these things from a course, the student and the professor must show a large level of passion for the subject and when this occurs, the student can safely say their tuition money was well spent. In this course, The American Renaissance, I’ve learned to really understand and dissect not only literature, but stories of all kinds told in all different forms of media. This course also had a strong connect with historic elements which is great in any course because a person must understand history and the past of their culture to truly understand where they’re going and how their culture will progress. Another thing this course did was help improve my reading and writing to a more sophisticated level. I’ll take with me and use many skills utilized in Literature 4232, The American Renaissance.

            Reading is more than just saying words on a page. It is a lot deeper and to truly get the most out of whatever piece of literature you’re reading, you have to understand the intent and metaphors of the person who wrote it while also expanding on it with your own thoughts and ideas. The one complaint I have about literature analysis is that as time goes on and more and more people have analyzed a piece of literature, it gets to the point where it’s very difficult or near impossible to formulate new ideas about that piece of literature. For example, Emily Dickinson poems have been analyzed for many years now and if you look hard enough, you’ll find papers written by scholars detailing every aspect of her poems from every angle. There will not be a single interpretation that hasn’t been thought of by this point simply because so many other people have formulated ideas before us. In the animated comedy show South Park, there is an episode titled “Simpsons Already Did It” in which a character keeps coming up with ideas just to find out that the TV show “The Simpsons” have already come up with those same ideas. This is kind of how I felt when I had to analyze the older pieces of literature because I would have an idea in my head and when I go online to look it up, I would find that some university professor or previous student had already thought of the same idea and even worded and formulated it better. This is not an attack or gripe on the literature analysis process, as I enjoy that process. As much as analyzing historical texts frustrates me because it’s taking the beaten path, I do acknowledge that doing this truly helped to dissect and really learn more about the more contemporary texts and stories we have now. This year the movie “Inception” was released and people have been formulating theories and ideas about that movie since its release and while watching that movie, I used skills from this course to help evaluate what the movie really meant and what it wanted to convey. Just like in that movie, this course helps me “go deeper” and see more than just the surface.

            The literature discussed in this course spoke to me in a way I haven’t experienced in other literature courses probably because the readings in this course had a big emphasis on different themes such as the gothic, the sublime, the romantic, and the transcendental. This gave a new aspect to some of the stories I already knew. For example, prior to this course the word “romantic” in my eyes was only used to describe romantic relationships between two people. After this course, I now know that many things can be romantic such as a journey, a quest, or even an idea.. Sublime elements in literature (poetry in particular) are also something new and interesting I’ve come to discover over this course. Although many people may be familiar with the idea of the sublime, not as many people know of the term the sublime and now that I am, I see evidence of the sublime in most forms of media. All of these terms combined with my prior literary knowledge has made me a more proficient writer in all of my other classes. In all of my other classes I find it easier to put my thoughts and ideas on paper in a way that clearly and effectively expresses what I want to express. My psychology professor was very impressed with my last paper partially due to the fact I added romantic and sublime elements to spice up a topic I was passionate about (race relations). When writing an academic paper, one of the things to really remember is that the professor reading the paper needs to be alert and focus on your words which can be hard to do when the professor has to grade about 100 other papers. This means keeping the reader’s attention is important so that the reader gets the full affect of your words. I’m thinking right now how ironic it would be for my professor reading this to be dozing off reading a paper about how important it is to keep your paper interesting.

            The American Renaissance did more for me than just provide some information about our historic pasts through writings, it helped me develop a sense of deeper understanding for words and the power they have. A good tool is one that can be used for more than one job and using this course as a tool in other aspects of life has already paid off. I really enjoyed all I’ve learned and I appreciate the insights provided from everyone in this class. It has been a wonderful journey.