Texts About Walls

[BFrank]

Hello Everyone,
I am currently putting together a one-semester course, and I need a little help. The goal fo the course is to teach students to write meaningfully about literature with a focus on the rhetorical moves and research skills essential to the critical analysis. The topic/focus of the course is "walls" and how they affect relationships. So far, I have the following texts:

“Mending Wall” Frost
The Wall Pink Floyd
“The Wall” Sartre
“Bartleby: A Tale of Wall Street” Melville
“The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman
“The Great Wall of China” Kafka
The Secret Garden Burnett
“The Cask of Amontillado” Poe
“In the Cage” Henry James
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Haddon
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Bauby
The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism
Higshida

I also have a cache of theory and criticism to accompany the literature.

Do you have any suggestions? The ideal addition would be a longer canonical text that lends itself to contemporary criticism. Also, any poetry suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Barry

[Danik 2016]

Two novels about the Wall of Berlin:
https://www.amazon.com/They-Divided-Sky-Literary-Translation/dp/0776607871 or "The divided Wall" (the classic novel by Christa Wolff)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_k%C3%BCrzeren_Ende_der_Sonnenallee
Exile on the Shorter End of Sun Avenue: An Analysis of Thomas Brussig’s novel Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee" (2015) Unfortunately I didn´t find the novel in English

[Pompey Bum]

I've never read it, but there is The Wall, a novel by John Hersey about the Warsaw ghetto. There is also the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid's Metamorphosis, and of course Shakespeare's hilarious adaptation of it in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[TheFifthElement]

The Wall (Die Wand) by Marlen Haushofer would be perfect for your course. A book which is a lot less well known than it should be.

[mona amon]

I suggest two 19th century books - Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. While all his other books have some reference to the Marshalsea prison in which his father was jailed for debt, this is THE prison book with almost all the major characters suffering imprisonment in some way or other. It opens with the two 'caged birds' John Baptist and Blandois. The whole Dorrit family is actually in the Marshalsea, and Arthur Clenham ends up there for a while. Mrs Clenham is in a prison of her own making, confined to her room, and gets Arthur clenham's real mother imprisoned for madness. Tattycoram escapes from, and then returns to her prison with the Meagles, and so on.

The other is Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Viewed from a certain perspective it is all about women enclosed by walls - the sick room, the girls' school, the convent, the forbidden walled garden which is an enclosure within the enclosure of the school, and so on.

[prendrelemick]

There is a wall in Game of thrones I believe. A supposed dividing line between civilisation and barbarism.

Also Pyramus and Thisbe from classical times.

[Pompey Bum]

Also Pyramus and Thisbe from classical times.

Good thinking, Prend. Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism. :)


There is also the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid's Metamorphosis, and of course Shakespeare's hilarious adaptation of it in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[BFrank]

Wow! Thank you everyone for the smart and helpful responses. This is very helpful!

[kev67]

The book I am reading currently, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, has a wall in it: the Green Wall, which the inhabitants of the One State never cross.