Anthology of Primary Sources
Modern Literature
Professor Dr. John Pruitt
Devin Decker
Modern Literature
Professor Dr. John Pruitt
Devin Decker
the purpose
College is a lot different for each person, we all have different reasons for going and different things they wish to accomplish with their education, I remember in high school most of my classes felt the same, school was just school. Deciding to come back to school was a hard decision and I was rather nervous, but now, at the end of my second semester I am relieved. College is completely different than high school. Here at UW Rock County school doesn't feel the same. I am no longer regurgitating information learned from a textbook for a good grade on a multiple choice test. College learning is conditioning of the mind, learning to see deeper into topics and question their origin is a necessary skill that is hard to learn. Out of all the classes here the English classes required me to do this the most. I have read many books in the past, but I haven't dove into the underlying problems brought forth by the books or considered why they were written, Modern Literature with Dr. John Pruitt has made me ponder deeply about my interpretations of the books we read and through class discussion I realized how different these can be for every person. It's no secret that reading isn't for everybody, some people find it rather difficult to sit down and read for hours on end to finish a book. In John Pruitt's Modern literature class I found this to be a difficult part of the class. Reading can be done for different reasons, this classes main focus was obviously academic, and although reading about London in the early in the late 1800’s and early 1900's wouldn’t be my first choice I will admit that after sitting down and really getting into the books most of them turned out to be rather enjoyable. However this class wasn't all about just reading words on a page. On top of reading we were given assignments that included researching different things in the book that we didn't understand, the majority of the research I compiled included things ranging from simple words that I didn't recognize to the vast amount of references to things that I didn't get, probably because I was born almost 100 years after the books were written. These research assignments were fairly easy but we were also faced with a more difficult and oddly more enjoyable assignment of finding primary sources that related to the book. These primary sources could be anything from around the time the books were written. Some people used paintings, photographs, letters, news stories, maps or anything along those lines that related the book back to real world things. Understanding a map of London made it easier to understand the difficulty of finding a man such as the Lodger in the shadowy concrete maze that is London at night. Reading a letter from Aldous Huxley to friends and acquaintances makes it easier to understand his worries of the world at the time of writing "Brave New World", and reading real life guides to newlyweds written at the time of Jack the Ripper makes it easier to understand the issues that Ms. Bunting was facing while dealing with a tenant such as the Lodger. The books put us into the mindset of the characters of the books, but the research and primary source assignments opened us up to the world when each book was written and made understanding what the inspiration behind the books were and why they were written a major part of each book we read.