Peter Stillman walking all around New York City; Marco Stanley Fogg getting lost in Central Park,…).

Reading this novel in class was an experiment, I think (and I guess my teacher would agree). So perhaps I should describe the experience I made as a pupil.

Even as a German pupil, I didn’t have much difficulty reading the book

- I’m not saying that all the words (US colloquial language, swear-words!) were easy to understand, but after all I was able to guess most of the unknown expressions from the context. But, of course, reading the book wasn’t all we did! I must admit that working on the novel was great fun (to me), and I can’t remember having read such an amusing book in class before. (I’m not saying this because my English teacher might read this comment! It’s true!) We had just dealt with the concept of the American Dream in class, and after this we were able to pick out certain scenes, or situations, or motifs and compare them with the different aspects of the Dream. As the setting of the novel is quite realistic (I’m not talking about the flying scenes and the other fantastical elements), it was easy to concentrate on the historical background that is shining through in so many places, and to find out about the allegory between the USA and Walt’s life (the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’, his physical downfall on the day when the Great Depression started).

In short, the book is worth being discussed in school. Not only did it provide some interesting lessons, but it also proved to be good material for our A-level exams (I don’t have the results yet, but I liked the theme we were given for the four-hour written test; at least I liked it better than Shakespeare, perhaps because this one is more modern).

So if a German English class can treat this novel - why shouldn’t other groups, too?

It’s not an ordinary ‘school book’ - that’s what I liked most about it.

Kathrin (19 y.)

from Germany