Overall, I was not a fan of Nervous Conditions. I found it to be redundant, boring, monotonous, uninspiring, and, most detrimentally, unfulfilling. The novel never rounded out to a complete and satisfying end, and we as readers are left hanging by a thread, searching for a foothold of closure to put meaning into the hours of reading and analyzing and reading some more that we have put into the story. Closure that the final sentences do not bring. There is no mention of the seemingly foreshadowed success, no way to decipher the ultimate outcome.
All this being said, one thing Nervous Conditions did demonstrate well was the answer to our overarching question. It is clear from the changes in main character and narrator Tambu's personality that your surrounding certainly change who you are. Culture is one of, if not the, major theme of the novel. To scrape up a positive, if answering the question was our ultimate goal, then we achieved it in this book.
For the afore stated reason (i.e. the ability to answer the question due to reading Nervous Conditions), the novel should be kept in the curriculum, if no better option could be found. Personally, I would like to see more books like Lord of the Flies in the schedule. Racial inequality seems to have become a common theme in many of our readings, throughout middle school and now into high school, and I would like to get away from that. I am not saying that these novels do not offer great insight, but the theme has become overworked.
As you can probably tell, I did not enjoy reading Nervous Conditions. In my opinion, doing the layer project was the best part of the whole experience. The ability to chose what best suited your skills was nice to the point of being liberating. If we must keep novels like this one in our readings, then a layered project is the way to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment