The Crying of Lot 49 #1

The main reason for a teacher to choose this book as a required reading for this course would have to be its ability to make you think. This books unconventional style and jagged story line leave the reader required to do some of their own personal interpreting on what exactly is going on. How the reader is actually supposed to interpret this story, is up for question. Knowing this however, by definition, the study of rhetoric is the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively. This novel definately opens up the mind to a different style of communicating and works the mind in a way that many other books do not. By requiring this novel for students to read, the teacher is also requiring the reader to expand their mind into a dimension of thinking and analyzing that the reader may not have ever experienced before. Knowing all the different ways of communicating will help a student to be able to make a more informed decision on what they think is the most effective way of communicating. Not to mention, give the student practice in connecting the dots through things that may not be so straight forward and being able to connect them together into some sort of organization that makes sense. This critical thinking is what I believe we are striving for in this rhetoric course.



Another obvious reason for this novel to be a required reading would have to be its timeline relationship to the Vietnam War. Being that this novel was written in the 1960's, the same time as America's involvement in the Vietnam War, the reader can be assured that their was some kind of influence from the war on this book. For students to be able to fully understand what was going on in this part of history, students have to understand what was going on back in the homeland of our nation. This was a decade of great change towards the acceptance and leniency by many people toward drugs and rebellion. Changes that are still seen and felt in our nation today. By reading this novel, students have developed a feel for the craziness and chaos of this decade that will help them to understand events and decisions that took place during this time.