The "You know what?" thread

[D'Snowth]

I remember with TOM SAWYER, Wishbone changed Injun Joe's name to Crazy Joe . . . I suppose Injun is kind of like the N-word to Native Americans.

 

[fuzzygobo]

For the longest time, Indian was not even an offensive word.
In Columbus’s diaries, when he landed on the island of Hispaniola (which encompasses the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic),
he described the people as “una gente en dios.” A people in God. en dios got anglicized to Indians. So a people in God doesn’t sound so offensive, does it?

Maybe things have changed over the decades, or varying over states. In the 80s, I was in Advanced English, so we had Shakespeare up the wazoo.
The lower levels had Mockingbird, but the other mandatory book was Lord of the Flies.

 

[minor muppetz]

During my high school years, of course we had the required reading materials that every high schooler has to read: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, and the like . . . but one supposed required reading book that we never read was THE GREAT GATSBY. Don't know why, and I never even knew it was a required read in high school until that movie adaptation came out years ago . . . and now I see that since the book has entered public domain, apparently the whole world wants a Muppet movie version of it.

So . . . can somebody please basically sum up what this whole story is all about?

I read all of those in school (though I think I only read To Kill a Mocking Bird in middle school). I've heard that The Great Gatsby became required reading in the 1970s, depending on your age.

Let's see how well I can describe the story (I do like it, but I've only read the story once and only seen two film adaptations, both once each).... It's told from the perspective of a friend of the title character, who is rich and throws extravagant parties, he ends up involved with a woman who has already been taken (and I don't remember if she's married) so her man comes to hate Gatsby. And pretty much every adaptation takes place during the time the book was published, according to TV Tropes, it was such a product of when it was made that all adaptations have to be period pieces (it might make a good challenge to make a modernized version).

 

[D'Snowth]

I've heard that The Great Gatsby became required reading in the 1970s, depending on your age.

My high school years were from 2003 to 2007.

 

[minor muppetz]

My high school years were from 2003 to 2007.

Huh. I graduated a year before you entered high school. I wonder how your school got out of it.

 

[fuzzygobo]

My high school years were 1982-86, and never read Gatsby. Like I said, I OD’d on Shakespeare, but I also remember A Separate Peace, Death of a Salesman, Tartuffe, Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales.

with Shakespeare, I hated MacBeth. But Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and The Merchant of Venice were decent.

 

[D'Snowth]

Huh. I graduated a year before you entered high school. I wonder how your school got out of it.

I was homeschooled during my high school years, but I mean, these books were still required reading by the education system . . . not sure why THE GREAT GATSBY wasn't included, but I mean, all of those other books, yep.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Wait, you were homeschooled in high school?

 

[D'Snowth]

After four weeks of public high school, yes.

But, I still had to attend actual classes, so not every subject was something I did at home . . . subjects like math, science, and certain electives (Flash animation, for example), I had to attend classes for.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Well........ that does explain a lot. Sorry to say. But I get where you’re coming from.

If anything that probably would have happened to me if I didn’t go to a learning disabled school.