Outsider Related Texts

Suggested related texts

The Outsider Year 10 2014

WHY the outsider? The outsider – be he an immigrant from another country or a social outcast like Huckleberry Finn – is an endlessly fascinating creature: he can be a benign commentator on his adoptive society, or a harsh critic; he can be the underdog or the agitator; his fish-out-of-water status can lend itself equally to comedy and tragedy. The entire spectrum of human experience can be captured within his detached or awed gaze. For both reader and writer, the outsider is an instrument that allows us to see the world in an unfamiliar way, and that for me is one of the prime aspirations of literature. To be an outsider is to feel disconnected from life, from other people, from oneself, the sight lines of communication always just slightly skewed. Outsiders can be perceptive readers of inmost thoughts, but they slip off surfaces and are awkward on firm ground. It is their unfortunate role to stand against life. No outsider really wants to be one” The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger- Novel Surly, self-pitying and caustic, Holden Caulfield's is the voice of youth at its most alienated. The teenager is, after all, the perpetual and universal outsider, both suspicious and envious of the adult world with all its arbitrary constraints and heady opportunities, as expressed in Caulfield's hatred of his buttoned-down schoolmates and his budding lust for jazz. Into the Wild- Feature Film A young man leaves his middle class existence in pursuit of freedom from relationships and obligation. Giving up his home, family, all possessions but the few he carried on his back and donating all his savings to charity Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) embarks on a journey throughout America. His eventual aim is to travel into Alaska, into the wild, to spend time with nature, with 'real' existence, away from the trappings of the modern world. In the 20 months leading up to his Great Alaskan Adventure his travels lead him on a path of self-discovery, to examine and appreciate the world around him and to reflect on and heal from his troubled childhood and parents' sordid and abusive relationship. When he reaches Alaska he finds he has been insufficiently prepared for the hardships to come.

Suggested related texts for ‘The Outsider” Film/TV Search IMDB An angel at my table (1990) As it is in Heaven (2004) Boys don’t cry (1999) Tim Burton’s Vincent- You tube Donnie Darko (2001) Edward Scissor Hands (1990) Elephant (2003) Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) Ghandi (1982) Hotel Rwanda (2004) Life is Beautiful (1997) Little Miss Sunshine (2006) The Piano (1993) Schindler’s List (1993) Somersault (2004) Milk Somewhere Big Fish Shawshank Redemption An Education (2009) Submarine (2010) American Beauty (1999) Billy Eliot

Picture Book The Lost thing- Sean Tan Wolves in the Sitee- Margaret Wild Requiem for a beast- Matt Ottley Home and Away- Marsden and Ottley

Plays The death of a Salesman- Arthur Miller Othello- Shakespeare Radiance- Louis Nowra Hedda Gabler -Henrik Ibsen

Graphic novel Tyranny I keep you thin – Lesley Fairfield

Short Animation- Vincent (Tim Burton) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

NOVELRomulus my father- Raimond Gaita Jasper Jones- Craig Silvey Breath- Tim Winton We need to talk about Kevin-Lionel Shriver Never Let me Go- Kazuo Ishiguro Oranges are not the only fruit- Janette Winterson The Life of Pi- Yann Martel Disgrace- J.M, Coetzee The secret life of Bees- Sue Monk Kidd Frankenstein-Mary Shelley Huckleberry FinnPigeon English –Stephen Kelman With Synopsis link to The Outsider

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Huck Finn is the epitome of social outcast as free spirit; an object of suspicion and persecution to most, but of fascination to Tom, who sees in his self-preserving refusal to conform a route to freedom from the oppressive manners of a God-fearing small town. To be a successful outsider requires the kind of dogged individualism that Huck has in spades, as beautifully illustrated in a scene towards the end of the book when he laments all the habits and customs he might have to discard – recreational cursing chief among them – if he is to join society under the protection of Widow Douglas. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell The classic political outcast, Winston Smith's plight is a thoroughly modern one. His political beliefs are inextricably entwined with his sense of self, and his resistance to Oceania's regime is emblematic of the individual's quest for personal freedom. That freedom might come through the love of another person is perhaps a sentimental notion; that things don't work out for the illicit lovers is telling of the dehumanising nature of the society Orwell envisions. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Howard W Campbell Jr, the spy, Nazi propagandist and war criminal/patriot in Vonnegut's coal-black comedy, is an uber-outsider, a gleefully amoral creation who represents every perceived threat to civilised postwar society in one ramshackle package. That he can observe his crazy world with a poet's compassion, and cling to high ideals of romantic love, only makes his detachment from the horrors of war all the more shocking.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole The outsider as sagacious misfit, ridiculous pundit on the society he rejects and which rejects him, inflated monster of misdirected fury. Ignatius J Reilly still lives with his mother. He has questionable dress sense and a lackadaisical approach to personal hygiene. And the outsider's unwavering certainty that he is right and it's the rest of the world that needs to catch up to him. Hilarious and wretched, Ignatius is a skewed eye on a society that produces people like him with alarming frequency. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks In this modern Gothic horror, Frank Cauldhame is the teenager warped by his own history and isolation into a creature of casual malevolence. His ritualised acts of violence articulate the alienation felt when one is cast adrift geographically (his is a remote, solitary existence, away from other people and the community they provide) and spiritually (a childhood trauma having separated him from his own soul). Chilling. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Balram Halwai, the narrator of this spry jaunt through modern India, is an economic migrant lured to the big city in search of the wealth his country's embrace of capitalism has promised him. He finds that the material world is a corrupting place. A look at how aspirations, even at their most prosaic, can untether us from our moral selves, and how the globalised world has made us all outsiders in one form or another. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones The outsider as agent of change, the benevolent Mr Watts brings hope to an adopted community besieged by civil war. With modest dignity he ignites the minds of the children in his care, providing through education and the pleasure of reading a sorely needed respite from the horrors that are threatening to engulf them. It is only with an outsider's knowledge of a wider world that he is able to instil in his charges a sense of possibility beyond the confines of their beleaguered home. Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane The Stark family, protagonists of this novel of bleak, frustrated lives in redneck British Columbia, are doomed to outsider status by their poverty and the harshness of their environment. With limited opportunity for transcending their place in the world, only the temporary compensations of alcohol and violence or the febrile dreams of escape distinguish them from the landscape in which they are trapped. The tension between the outsider's inner life and the unyielding certainty of his reality has rarely been so incisively documented.

Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor The characters in McGregor's brilliant, excoriating novel inhabit the underbelly of modern urban Britain; they're the alcoholics and addicts, the homeless and the dispossessed, those who have discarded or been discarded by a society that has failed them. That he manages to instil their lives with flashes of spiteful dignity and tentative hope speaks volumes for his humanity, and and makes this a devastating and exhilarating portrayal of life outside the mainstream. Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky The first modern novel features the first modern outsider. A monologue of sarcastic rage from a man who has chosen isolation because he knows he doesn't fit in. Irascible, clever, proud, the Underground Man harangues the ordinary world for its naivety, optimism, self-regard; he knows - feels - that man's freedom is in the choice to decide against himself, to spurn benefit and reward, to turn himself inside out and display the fear, misery, meanness of his desperate self. The Underground Man is the outsider as dark mirror. The final pages are some of Dostoyevsky's best, and they are some of his grimmest. Grim Dostoyevsky: it doesn't get better than that. Beethoven by Maynard Solomon Always wanted the "van" to be "von", as though that would have made any difference. Even before he went deaf, Beethoven was a difficult, irritable, haughty personality, comporting himself with tramp-like negligence. Too brilliant for his own class, too eccentric for high society, Beethoven is the prime example of artist as outsider. But more profoundly, one could almost regard the deaf Beethoven as a metaphor for the outsider generally: his last music, composed when he was completely deaf, transcends the personal to become a universal statement for man's inmost dignity - a musical ethics. Yet as a man, as a musician, it was experienced as silence - as if he was standing behind glass looking in at an absurd performance of thrashing of arms, puffed-out cheeks, fluttering fingers. This is the world to the outsider and Beethoven is our tragic example. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Two outsiders for the price of one. Early on Jane doesn't fit. Although plain, she somehow brings attention to herself (a classic aspect of the outsider) and is capriciously bullied and punished. Later she finds comfort in the isolation of Thornfield, her teaching duties. It is here she meets Rochester, a precursor to the modern outsider: a man of dark moods, irritable and discontented, a world roamer. As we all know, it ends happily, making Jane Eyre the story of outsiders redeemed by love. So maybe there is hope, after all.

HOW TO MAKE A LINK TO CATCHER IN THE RYE The Outsiders Yes, this is another book about teenagers. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, has long been a high school favorite, but the book has also been compared to The Catcher in the Rye. The Outsiders is about a closeknit group of teenagers. But, the novel is also about the individual-versus-society. How must they interact? Holden tells the story in The Catcher in the Rye, and Ponyboy tells the narrative of The Outsiders. How does the process of telling the story allow these boys to make a connection? Read this novel, and see how it compares to The Catcher in the Rye. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest The Catcher in the Rye is a coming-of-age story--told by Holden Caulfield, with a sense of bitterness and cynicism. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, is a protest novel--told from Chief Bromden's point of view. Holden tells his story from behind the walls of an institution, while Bromden tells his story after he has escaped from the hospital. What can we learn about the individual versus society from studying these two books? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Catcher in the Rye is often compared to Mark Twain's classic, >The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both books involve the coming-of-age process of the main protagonist; both novels follow the journey of the boys; and both works have caused violent reactions in their readers. You must read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Compare the novels, and see what all the hubbub is all about.

Visual Art Edward Hopper http://automathopper.blogspot.com.au

Poems The Poems of William Blake Blake enjoyed sitting naked with his wife in their back garden imagining they were in Eden, quite a radical attitude at the height of the Enlightenment and the birth of the industrial revolution. Blake rejected rationalism, the mechanistic, the scientific and instead advocated experiences unfashionable in his era, the mystic, mythological, spiritual, non-rational. Isolated and ridiculed because he foresaw and forswore the future of the new world, Blake is the outsider as visionary. Howl- Allen Ginsberg. The Million Mile March-MAYA ANGELOU The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock- T.S.Eliot Paralytic- Sylvia Plath

Acquainted with the Night BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right I have been one acquainted with the night.

Desert Places BY ROBERT FROST

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it—it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less— A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.

Immigrants- Margaret Atwood They are allowed to inherit the sidewalks involved as palmlines, bricks exhausted and soft, the deep lawnsmells, orchards whorled to the land’s contours, the inflected weather only to be told they are too poor to keep it up, or someone has noticed and wants to kill them; or the towns pass laws which declare them obsolete. I see them coming up from the hold smelling of vomit, infested, emaciated, their skins grey with travel; as they step on shore the old countries recede, become perfect, thumbnail castles preserved like gallstones in a glass bottle, the towns dwindle upon the hillsides in a light paperweight-clear. They carry their carpetbags and trunks with clothes, dishes, the family pictures; they think they will make an order like the old one, sow miniature orchards, carve children and flocks out of wood but always they are too poor, the sky is flat, the green fruit shrivels in the prairie sun, wood is for burning; and if they go back, the towns in time have crumbled, their tongues stumble among awkward teeth, their ears are filled with the sound of breaking glass. I wish I could forget them and so forget myself: my mind is a wide pink map across which move year after year arrows and dotted lines, further and further, people in railway cars their heads stuck out of the windows at stations, drinking milk or singing, their features hidden with beards or shawls day and night riding across an ocean of unknown land to an unknown land.

THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE By Henry Kendall He crouches, and buries his face on his knees, And hides in the dark of his hair; For he cannot look up to the storm-smitten trees, Or think of the loneliness there -Of the loss and the loneliness there. The wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass, And turn to their coverts for fear; But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear -With the nullah, the sling and the spear. Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks On the tops of the rocks with the rain, And the wind which drives up with the salt of the lakes, Have made him a hunter again -A hunter and fisher again. For his eyes have been full with a smouldering thought; But he dreams of the hunts of yore, And of foes that he sought, and of fights that he fought With those who will battle no more -Who will go to the battle no more. It is well that the water which tumbles and fills, Goes moaning and moaning along; For an echo rolls out from the sides of the hills, And he starts at a wonderful song -At the sound of a wonderful song. And he sees, through the rents of the scattering fogs, The corroboree warlike and grim, And the lubra who sat by the fire on the logs, To watch, like a mourner, for him -Like a mother and mourner for him. Will he go in his sleep from these desolate lands, Like a chief, to the rest of his race, With the honey-voiced woman who beckons and stands, And gleams like a dream in his face -Like a marvellous dream in his face?

Outcast BY Claude McKay For the dim regions whence my fathers came My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs. Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame; My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs. I would go back to darkness and to peace, But the great western world holds me in fee, And I may never hope for full release While to its alien gods I bend my knee. Something in me is lost, forever lost, Some vital thing has gone out of my heart, And I must walk the way of life a ghost Among the sons of earth, a thing apart; For I was born, far from my native clime, Under the white man's menace, out of time.

The White House Claude McKay Your door is shut against my tightened face, And I am sharp as steel with discontent; But I possess the courage and the grace To bear my anger proudly and unbent. The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet, A chafing savage, down the decent street; And passion rends my vitals as I pass, Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass. Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour, Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw, And find in it the superhuman power To hold me to the letter of your law! Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate Against the potent poison of your hate.

Emily Dickinson I had been hungry all the yearsMy noon had come, to dineI, trembling, drew the table near And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread, 'T was so unlike the crumb The birds and I had often shared In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new,-Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found That hunger was a way Of persons outside windows, The entering takes away.