Deserts, Gardens, and Dreamers

This book is a collection of analytical essays written by high school students on Michael Ondaatje's poetic and award winning novel, 'The English Patient'. In addition to their own thoughts and extensive research of World War II, the students applied literary theory to their analyses and followed the rules of The Modern Language Association in their compositions. The essays in this collection are wonderful examples of real high school students engaged in the act of thinking and writing in a meaningful and profound way. Their final product is literary criticism that is truly relevant and useful to the high school student. The collection also includes a section that provides a simplified discussion of the various literary theories that can easily be used in a high school classroom.Ondaatje's novel was a perfect choice for this project since the class was studying the Modernism, and WWI and II. It is also a novel that addressed issues of gender, race, culture, and identity, all issues relevant to the high school classroom. Further, Ondaatje's language is so amazingly poetic and sublime that I felt by studying this novel together, I could share a work of profound beauty with my students. I am often saddened by how rarely in today's fast paced world of sound bytes and immediate gratification that young people are given the opportunity to stop and appreciate slow, intricate, and profound beauty in a literary work. The students' essays found in this collection show their abilities, passion, and perseverance. I will always cherish that amazing spring these essays were written when we took our books and went outside to a little garden behind our library and read this novel, sometimes together, sometimes silently. That spring, together we languished in the beauty of words, in the power of ideas.