Article response - Book Report/Review Example

Teaching on Literature Response Teaching on Literature is an essay taken from the book “Mystery and Manners” ed by Flannery O’Connor. She completed her degree in social sciences but as she puts it she was “rather glad that things didn’t work out that way.” Instead of sticking to her career she decided to divert when she entered Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she studied writing. With many opinions concerning teaching, O’Connor admits that “I was in a state of pristine innocence” when it came to her new profession.

In the start of the essay “The Teaching of Literature” she writes how fiction contains no paucity in critics since everyone considers themselves the authority when it comes to the fiction’s main subject (O’Connor 122-126). As she addresses English teachers, she criticizes the utilitarian approach used while taking English doctorates which assumes that novels ought to do something instead of being something. In other words the fiction side of the author should be brought to light (O’Connor 124-129).

From her experience, she says that teachers do not help students in understanding that “business of fiction is to embody mystery through manners, and mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.”She tells the way her teachers invented ways to “ignore the nature of literature” through discussing history or examining how authors reasoned when writing their books. In addition, she tells how if any teacher was crafty would integrate English literature with another subject like home economics in order to adjourn the novel’s examination day (O’Connor 124-130).

About fiction, she asked why people always get novels about freaks and the poor, violent engagement and actions that are destructive while they live in a rich democratic and strong country with generous people on the streets. From the question she denies the possibility of attempts to “separate mystery from manners in fiction thus making it more acceptable in current state.” She writes that a novelist is not required to start with examining statistics but rather with conscience. She closes by saying that the teacher might use eyes whereby judgment is steadfast through seeing (O’Connor 129-134).

This means that what one can see cannot be detached from her moral sense. Notably, any novelist as well as the teacher will be charged with deliberate messing of literature disguised in dignity. Therefore, teachers of English should teach the right content rather than create confusion in the mind of their students.Works CitedO’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Retrieved from: . [Retrieved on March 17 2015]