Final Reflection
After a semester of reading a few different literary works from authors all over the world I found that keeping a Commonplace book was very beneficial in many ways. I learned many different things about each individual work we read over the semester. Diving deeper into the novels by utilizing quotes helped me to understand the authors mindsets. I was able to read a sentence understand what the author wanted the reader to feel and think. I learned to see things from different viewpoints from some of the quotes that I read and to analyze what each word meant and why the language used was so important. I also learned to have fun with the reading, rather than treating it as something that was just for an assignment. Trying to find popular culture references, pictures, art, clips from movies, activities, etc... to use in my Commonplace book was very fun for me. For example, learning more about Helen Oyeyemi and the fact that one of her favorite authors is Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was very exciting to me because it showed me where she got inspiration from, when writing her own works of literature. It allowed me to become much more engaged in the reading that I had to do yet at the same time allowed me to be more creative than I normally am comfortable being. After going back once over my Commonplace book, I realized that as my page grew, so did I. These 2 authors were extremely different. The eras in which they wrote and the subject matter that they covered while similar were told through very different voices. If I had not kept a Commonplace book, I definitely would have just taken what the author had written at face value and not really have taken the time to understand the true meaning behind anything. I learned, by keeping a Commonplace book, that these authors have a deep love and understanding of the English language, and that their writing should never be taken at face value, because it means so much more than just what is written on the page. For example, “As she spoke, the sky to the left turned angry orange. Colour throbbed and mounted behind a pattern of trees, grew in intensity, was yet brighter, incredibly brighter, strained from without against the globe of the air. They awaited the miracle.” (149). Yes, Forster is depicting and illustrating in our minds a beautiful sunset on a beautiful landscape that seems so rich and deep in color and continues to become brighter and brighter as the sun sets, but there is more meaning in that quote. The sunset is a metaphor for what is on the horizon. The sun is setting on that day, but a new day will come bringing a miracle on the horizon that is just as bright and beautiful. Overall, I actually thoroughly enjoyed doing and completing the Commonplace book assignment. It gave me more of a creative way and free range to express my thoughts and analysis of the works that we read this semester.