I Know Why the Cage Bird Cannot Read

Last year I read the book To Kill a Mockingbird in Language Arts and I could agree with a lot of things that Prose said about the book in her essay, I Know Why the Cage Bird Cannot Read. My personal experience reading this book is very similar to how Prose describes the book and what kids learn while reading it. I really did not enjoy reading this book and in class discussions about this book, we focused more on the issues this book talks about, rather than the actual quality of the literature.           

                Most of the students in my class would agree that To Kill a Mockingbird was not the best book. Kids didn’t really enjoy reading it and after a few chapters a lot of students were either skimming the text or looking the book up on Sparknotes. Prose gives a short, one paragraph summary of the book in her essay and after words states, “Such summary reduces the book, but not by all that much.” I agree with her summary and what she said about the book. Even though most kids didn’t take time to carefully read the text, most of them still did well on the quizzes and discussions over the book, because the plot was so simple and the book wasn’t very challenging. To Kill a Mockingbird was not a very good book for students to read and because of that most students didn’t read it very closely.

                When discussing this book in class we spent a lot of time talking about the issues of prejudice that the book talks about. Throughout the essay Prose mentions the type of things students are taught when reading this book and the things she says are very close to what I was being taught when reading the book. She says, “… I obtained from the Internet, outlines the ‘overall goal’ of teaching the book (‘To understand problems relating to discrimination and prejudice that exist in our present day society. To understand and apply these principles to our own lives’).” I do believe that the goal Prose mentions in reading this book is similar to the goal of reading this book in my Language Arts class last year. We did spend a lot of time discussing the issues of prejudice mentioned in the book.

                Throughout Prose’s essay, I Know Why the Cage Bird Cannot Read, she talks about how students aren’t getting much out of books like To Kill a Mockingbird and I agree with her. After reading this book, I really didn’t learn much and didn’t enjoy reading it. I think she makes a valid argument when criticizing To Kill a Mocking Bird.

Words-445