Strip Cuts, Book

In his novel Strip Cuts, the author David Drayer chronicles, ordinary, and surprising events in the lives of the townspeople in a small town named Cherry Run. In the beginning of the book, Drayer centers on the main character of Seth Hardy, who is a 13-year-old high school freshman, newly known by a horrible nickname “Jack off” and painfully attracted to his pretty English teacher Candy Bracknell. Seth’s father, Earl Hardy, is a sympathetic and loving man who encourages his son to ignore the bullying people and to “Prove them wrong”. However, Seth tries to please his father by keeping his secret, his suffering, and his problem with his friends to himself. In fact, Seth uses his brain power to take revenge against his enemies. However, Claude Coarsen, a co-worker still is the most unlikeable person and the Seth’s worst enemy. Another focus in the book, Strip Cuts, Drayer cites some short stories about Earl who has personal problems, but he always finds a good way to solve them. Earl loses his job at the mine, but starts a TV repair business. He is a sensitive person who cares about his small family, and about the sensitivity of characters such as Billy and Hercules. Indeed, when Earl knows that Hercules’s wife has breast cancer, Earl virtually gives the couple a bigger, better TV.

 Cherry Run’s other characters include a married hotel cleaning woman, Judy, who has an intense, dramatic love affair with married co-worker, Lloyd. Also, Cherry Run has different characters such as Charlie and Rose whom Drayer uses to show the reader a sad story about the loss their son Edward, a hero, who had served his country. The ending of this story was very sad to understand and that the only thing that kept them going was the memory of their son.

 Seth eventually comes into his own, focused on his determination to become a writer. He visits the University of Pittsburgh, and he initiates his sexuality with Elisabeth, and his desire to becoming writer. The book ends with the attractive hero promising to get out of Cherry Run!  

 The short stories of seventeen chapters are a positive experience to read. In fact, David Drayer writes a series of related episodic events that shows the Cherry Run’s mentalities. Certainly, however, Drayer concentrates more on Seth’s stress, Seth’s anxiety and Seth’s ambitions that influenced so much Seth Hardy’s personality to be a writer. Effectively, a famous writer cannot be made as Steven King says, “The equipment comes with the original package.” (Steven King, 18). Drayer’s equipment is Cherry Run and Drayer’s package is his ambition, his reason, and his talent to interpret how life goes on in a small town like Cherry Run. He says, “I didn’t come from a family of writers. …. They wanted to help, but they didn’t know how. No one did. Even college was something I did a little later.”(Rege Behe, Tribune-Review). This is an extraordinary presentation of a small town life, perhaps most remarkable is the Drayer’s image of townspeople just to understand how is “small town mentality” distinct after reading all chapters of the book, Strip Cuts. Also, reading the book is a good experience to know for someone who tries to move form a big city to a small town. After all, there are too many differences between “big city mentality” and “small town mentality”. How can a person’s mentality be transformed from non-living in a big city to living in a small town? How interactions can be transformed from developed city people’s mentality to mediocre townspeople’s mentality?

 The first and the sixteen chapters of the novel can be considered as the best parts that introduce the reader to begin with “The King Game”… and to start to begin, again, to read “The Smell of Snow”. After finishing the first chapter, the reader gets ready to read too many similar events in the context as funny short stories with too much repetitious dialogue that contain strong language! In the beginning of the first chapter, Seth says, “When your nickname is Jack-Off and you are stuck in Cherry Run, life really bites”(Drayer, 13). Drayer begins the first chapter of Strip Cuts, and leaves the reader thinking what will be happen about the mysterious story of an odd personality who has a famous name “Jack-Off” in a small town. Everybody knows everybody’s business in a small town. Everything will related with Seth’s sexuality, with Seth’s fantasy, and with Seth’s fictional, but it is important to note that the legal definition of Drayer’s fictional varies from Seth’s character to townspeople’s characters as, Drayer says “Everything is fictional. I never wrote an exact thing that happened,” he said “But those events are sort of metaphors for things and feelings I experienced.”(Rege Behe, Tribune-Review).  Drayer’s metaphor reflects on his best chapter “The Smell of Snow”, mainly when he writes “But God was not” (Drayer, 272) and “Jesus smiled at Rose” (Drayer, 273). At the first chapter “The King Game”, Seth says, “No one is going to invite a guy named Jack-Off to their party except to make him the butt of all jokes” (Drayer, 15) and “When people call you Jack-0ff, that’s all you are to them” (Drayer, 16).The reader finds out Seth’s anxiety, Seth’s stress, and Seth’s sufferance with bad mentalities of Sherry Run. All of Drayer’s talents are presented in the chapter “ The Smell of Snow” as Drayer  shows  Charlie and Rose’s unhappiness of Cherry Run as, Drayer says, “ So she prayed for all of the people in the world, especially for the ones who didn’t have prayer”( Drayer,272). It is so easy for the reader to give an interpretation or just a simple clarification of Rose’s prayers that has a relation with her  problem of snow, but it is so difficult for the reader to understand that Drayer prayers for townspeople’s Cherry Run in his book, Strip Cuts!  As he presents his novel as a new hope of townspeople in Cherry Run, that is “the land and the people have been stripped bare for all to see” (Drayer, interface).

Furthermore, as soon as a smart reader starts examining just what conclusions of critical pedagogy  are in this novel, Strip Cuts, it becomes readily apparent that at the beginning of the last chapter “The Fourth Option”, Seth says, “When trying to pee a word in the snow, or in Seth’s case, an entire phrase, there is very little time to ponder” (Drayer, 277).The relation between snowing and writing reflects on Seth’s psychology, especially, the pact of urinating a word in the snow shows  Seth’s  sufferance  to find new words, new tricks, and new writing style for his new section “ The Fourth Option”. Now, the critical thinking shows to this approach simply two different ways of writing, perhaps both valuable for Seth, after his fantasy with his pretty English teacher and his hot sex with Elisabeth. Seth begins a colder felling to finishing his fictional story. It asks first about Drayer’s schemes, Drayer’s structures, and Drayer’s organizations of fiction and action, which   logic, or clarity, or coherence behind Drayer who propose certain visions of imagination to urinate a word in the snow and claims his enthusiasm literary on Cherry Run as a fourth option! How the reader can believe that “pee a word” is a rationalistic literature to ending a novel? For this reason, both of Drayer’s metaphor and Drayer’s hegemonic strong language should be challenged to good perspectives that can useful help the reader to finish this novel by nice wishes for townspeople of Cherry Run. Certainly, however, Drayer can use strong language for writing too many dialogues in his novel, but he never can use a good literature as the great Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald! However, anyone can use some dirty words as Drayer’s strong language and be a great writer if he knows that too many people like to read just dirty literature!

The overall response of critical thinking, in turn, after finishing reading this book, Strip Cuts, begins from a very different starting point as reader needs to understand and discuss the symbols of strong language that Drayer uses throughout the novel as, Seth says, “If they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to breed.” (Drayer, 76) and his friend, Kurt answer, “I heard your motto was ‘If she is old enough to pee, she is old enough for me.’ ” (Drayer, 77). There are some logic of arguments from the chapter “Initiation” to discuss as “The art of explicating, analyzing, and assessing these ‘arguments’ and ‘logic’ is essential to leading an examined life” (Dr. Richard Paul 1990, 66). The essential recommendation of Strip Cuts is analyzing the context of too many dialogues that contain too much similar strong language with irrational, illogical, and ridiculous art of writing. Drayer believes that people need to read how to express strong languages as a good literature in his belief, but he does not believe that most American people do not sufficiently like to read vulgar languages by which they use them in their daily life!

 After understanding the meaning of the strong language that Drayer use in his novel, and studying each character’s townspeople in this novel, the reader sincerely requires that Drayer should know that some of thinkers and intellectuals judge everything by how close it comes to “Fourth Option”, which they analyze technically. The reader asks, finally, if it is a good pedagogy to teach the students how they can trash bad books. In fact, some good teachers teach a bad book, an awful, poorly written, sometimes sexist written without telling their students what they think of it, and wait to see if they will notice the book as a fourth option of a bad literature! 

Mustapha Bakouri

Ohio, USA

 

The Great Gatsby, Book

In his novel, The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald has the main character Nick Caraway tell the story of his neighbor Jay Gatsby, who is in love with Nick’s cousin, Daisy, but when Gatsby finally comes back to America after the first war, Daisy married Tom. Gatsby then decides to pursue his lost love Daisy and make his fortune, all with goal of winning Daisy back. Tom gets angry after Gatsby and Daisy begin to act more affectionate. Tom’s mistress is Myrtle, Wilson’s wife. She was hit and killed by Daisy who was driving Gatsby’s car. Tom tells Wilson that Gatsby, who was having an affair with Wilson’s wife, Myrtle, and ran her down. When Wilson finally finds Gatsby’s home, he shoots Gatsby in his pool and kills himself as well.       

 The story is a positive experience to read. After Gatsby has spent his whole life longing for money and success by any means necessary, he wants to repeat, again, the old story of his first love with Daisy, but the story of an unattainable dream finishes with a tragedy that Gatsby loses his life. Also, these people of this high society do not worry about paying for their actions, so they do what they please. Tom is not worried about hurting his wife, Daisy, so he flaunts his relationship with Myrtle, his mistress. Daisy, in turn, goes off with Gatsby without a thought to her marriage. Consequently, the American dream seems more about materialism, more about pleasure, and more about corruption. 

  The first and the ninth sections of the novel can be considered as the best parts that help the reader to understand Gatsby’s dream. In the end of the first chapter, Nick says, “Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” (20). Nick ends the first chapter of The Great Gatsby and leaves the reader thinking about the meaning of the mysterious green light. Mainly, Nick says in the end of the ninth chapter, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning­­—” (180). The reader finds out that this green light is a symbol of Gatsby’s love and the hope for the future.  Nick’s idea is  a good experience if the hope is not  lost for someone  who  still keeps trying and who knows one day maybe he can accomplish his dreams. Also the sixth chapter is a good part to read when Nick says to Gatsby, “You can’t repeat the past.” .But, Gatsby replies: “Why of course you can!”(110). Because the Daisy he met and fell in love with years ago is not the same person anymore, and as much as Gatsby thinks that he can repeat the past, in the real world it is proven to be impossible. No one can repeat his past, life goes on and it is impossible to return to the past!

 In the chapter five, Nick says, “He was a son of God – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that – and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”(89). It is not easy  for the reader to give an interpretation or just a simple clarification of this metaphor, as Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he envisioned for himself. Maybe, Gatsby, by changing his name from Gatz, in a way creates himself a new one. Also, it is an extremely complex Fitzgerald’s philosophy.  However, Marx writes in his Thesis XI on the famous German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Marx 1845/1977, 158).

 Another example need to change is at the end of the chapter three, Nick says, “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”(59). Nick has a large self-confidence about honesty, but Gatsby is a dishonest man. The question remains, though, “How the reader can believe that the honest people can frequent and interact with dishonest people?” “Why is Nick so attracted to Gatsby?” However, the meaning of honesty and morality seem to be dependent on class and gender in this novel!

 At the beginning of the first chapter, Nick says, “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”(1). The student will have the opportunity to make the deference between “critical thinking” and “critical pedagogy” in terms of their conception of what it means to be “critical”.  The critical thinking in education is teaching students the rules of logic or how to assess evidence. The critical pedagogy refers primarily to teaching students how to analyze and develop reading and writing assignments from the perspective of the book, The Great Gatsby. In this sense, both critical thinking and critical pedagogy author, F. Scott Fitzgerald are helping to make student more critical in thought and action, progressively also, can help to critique the world as it was in twenties.             

The student is free to act his thinking about how he can exercise his critical thinking as a liberated person…free from the inexcusable and undesirable control of unjustified restrictions from some teachers. At some point, freedom of thinking or freedom of expression might come into the discussion, i.e., critical education can increase freedom and enlarge the scope of human possibilities. Also, the teacher should believe that student needs to learn how to express and criticize The Great Gatsby book by formal logic of argument. In fact, the primary preoccupation of critical pedagogy is with social injustice and how to begin, from a different section of the book, The Great Gatsby, to critique inequitable, undemocratic, or oppressive institutions and social relations, e.g., the author says, “Nick realizes that Tom and Daisy were “careless people,” people who made messes and then left others to clean them up.”(179)

 The overall response, in turn, after reading this book, the Great Gatsby, begins from a very different starting point as the student needs to understand and discuss the symbols that Fitzgerald uses throughout the novel. They are three of the most important symbols from The Great Gatsby to discuss: “The east and west egg”, “the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg”, and “the green light”. Also the student should detail and analysis each character’s person of Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan in this novel.

  After understanding the meaning of symbols, and studying each character’s person in this novel. It is sincerely requires that the student be moved to write something or to do something, whether that something be seeking reasons or seeking social justice. To do this, the process of reactions is a kind of “reading” — a “reading” the book, the Great Gatsby, and the reader should stop when, Nick says, “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”(13),”The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” (13), and “‘Civilization’s going to pieces’, broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires* by this man Goddard?”‘ (12). These lines of the pages 12 and 13 of the book, The Great Gatsby, in turn, lead the student to suggest some different ways to think about “racism in twenties.” In this sense, the student needs to be better critical thinkers, and the book, The Great Gatsby, is often an implicit hope to make students more critical in thought and action to be against the racist people and the racist institutions. In this sense, again, the honest educators can help to free learners to compare the world as it was in twenties and as it is now.

 This book is a good choice for the student, sufficiently, analyzes the reasons by which the author examines the high society in twenties. However, it is a matter of mastering certain skills of Fitzgerald’s thought to diagnose some rich and dishonest people as Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. It asks first about this choice of this book, who benefits? The critical and creative student who has the capacity to seek reasons, truth, and evidence against racism, prejudice, discrimination, and social injustice…? Or the student that try to be well formed by the only one way of his teacher? Therefore, teacher’s priority should only be the benefit of the student’s feelings, but it asks, finally, to have good answers about the questions above by my smart readers!

*The Rise of the Colored Empires is the book of Theodore Lothrop Stoddard a racist political theorist.

Mustapha Bakouri

Ohio, USA

 

How to Choose a Good Book

Today, good academic English needs learners with qualities of critical thinking to meet up the growing challenges. The learners may become proficient in English language if they are motivated and taught how to display critical thinking in the English language usage, which signifies that the learners must be reflective in their production of ideas, and they may critically support them with logical details and examples. The teachers may facilitate the process by reflecting language learning practices through writing skill. Certainly, the responsibility of teachers is to develop critical thinking in the students then pushing them from one educational level to the next. In this context, writing may provide opportunity for students to think through arguments and use higher-order thinking skills to respond to complex problems. The teachers offer the learners the opportunities to be critical. They may facilitate the process of critical thinking by reflecting language learning practices through writing skill. For this, they blend critical thinking in the transmission of knowledge and contents. Eventually, the research measures critical thinking in English essay  writing  over five areas as: clarity of writing, analysis of author’s argument, use of supporting information, organization of ideas (coherence and cohesion), and grammar and syntax accuracy. For this, the research assumes that critical thinking in essay writing expands the learners experience and makes the language more meaningful for them – a vehicle through which they can gradually discover themselves in the process of language learning.

The objectives of a curriculum in an ideal academic English program should develop the art of critical thinking. This curriculum should replace the old cycle of transmission pedagogy to critical thinking pedagogy in the broad sense of teaching students the rules of logic or how to assess evidence, especially at higher levels of schooling. Good education in English requires the idea of distinction between a language of critique and language of possibility. Certainly, however, the good strategy is also developing a language of possibility as part of what makes a student critical. There are two essential dimensions of thinking that students need to master in order to learn how to upgrade their thinking and how to be able to assess their elements of thought. The first dimension of thought is that all elements of thought are an attempt to figure something out, to settle some question, to solve some problem. The second dimension of thought is that all elements of thought contain inferences or interpretations by which the students draw conclusions and give meaning to their purposes. Consequently, all elements of thought lead somewhere or have implications and consequences.

Good critical thinking requires having a command of clarity, accuracy, precision, and logic. The perspective of showing clarity as a practice helps the student to see that clarity is a way of illustrating what he means. He should give examples. The perspective of showing accuracy as a practice helps the student to see that accuracy is a way of finding out if something is true. He should verify or test his ideas. The perspective of showing precision as a practice helps the student to see that precision is a way of giving more details. He should be more exact. Finally, the perspective of showing logic as a practice helps student to see that logic is a way of how connecting all paragraphs to make sense together. The ideas in the essay should follow from the evidence.

 A significant difference is measured between Steven king’s on Writing, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Drayer’s Strip Cuts. The choice of these three books encourages critical thinking that promotes learner expertise among the three different subjects. King describes practical advice on writing as a guide for how a learner can become a good writer. Fitzgerald’s novel, works on many different levels as a piece of great literature that lets the learner experiences the underlying meaning and symbolism behind The Great Gatsby. Drayer offers learners a series of related episodic events that show small town’s mentalities by using many similar events in the context of humorous short stories with much repetitious dialogue that contains strong language. The good academic English suggests replacing the current selection of Strip Cuts with other book such as Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, or In Search of Lost Time by the French writer Marcel Proust. In order to understand how a good selection of a good book can be used to develop students’ critical thinking skills for the benefit of modern pedagogy. It is strongly preferable to avoid teaching bad literature such as Strip Cuts, if that is possible at any university in the U.S! 

 Mustapha Bakouri

 Ohio, U.S