Gave back papers in the fairy tales class. One student was upset-- “I don’t understand this”-- because he’d gotten a C for a paper that didn’t comment on any original tale. He said “I was writing my own, that was the assignment.”
No, this was the assignment:
Write a new version of an old tale. For instance, you might retell "Cinderella" from the perspective of one of her stepsisters, or "Hansel and Gretel" in the style of Carter. Your revision should provide insight into the values, themes, or significance of the original.
I read it to him from the syllabus. “Well, it could be a loose interpretation of Hansel and Gretel. . . . I’m really irritated. I put a lot of work into this.”
But it didn’t respond to the assignment.
No doubt he will burn me on the student evaluation form, as not making assignments clear or not grading fairly.
*sigh*
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Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm . . . . irresistibly propels her into the future to which her back is turned, while the pile of debris before her grows skyward. (Walter Benjamin, revised)
