Communists? What Communists? I Don't See Any Communists...
I've had a lot of free time over the last couple of months and while a couple of very temporary jobs have distracted me from my cleaning crusade (an ongoing process through which I've tried to purge all of the unnecessary crap that has accumulated thus far in my life), I took some time out today to attack a drawer in my dad's desk which I found yesterday to be full of school work from 8th grade... all chronologically organized and filed by subject, year, and assignment type. Yes, I realize I am totally OCD, but hey, it makes me happy to put things in order. My desk may be an utter mess and I may throw my clothes over the nearest chair and on my bed, but when it comes to paperwork and school assignments, I'm as neat-freak as they come. I remember last year Ali challenged me to find my MCB 110 second midterm cheat sheet in less than 30 seconds and suffice it to say that I did so with time to spare. But I digress.The real reason for this post is that I found a gem of a book report. I had apparently read George Orwell's Animal Farm for this particular report. It's dated December 5, 1994, placing me at the tender young age of 13. Seeing this book report brought back oh so many memories. I remembered reading the book. I remembered how sad and tragic the story was. I remembered a friend telling me that the Cliff's Notes she had read said the book was about Communism. I remembered thinking that this friend of mine must have been crazy because Animal Farm was most certainly NOT about Communism. It was about animals. Duh.
It's interesting to see how different a book can seem upon a later rereading, especially when that re-reading takes place 12 years afterwards. From looking at my report, I realized that I had understood every important plot point and their importance in the context of the story itself; however, I just could not see anything that was below the surface of the nice little fairytale about animals trying their best to live on their own. My 13-year-old mind could not grasp the allgorical nature of the story, something which was so glaringly obvious when I picked up the book again just a few months ago (for those of you who haven't read it, for one thing, the animals all refer to each other as "comrade." If that's not Communist, then I don't know what is). It makes me kinda want to go back and re-read some of the books I tried to tackle back then and see how different they'll seem after a second reading.
Unfortunately, for all the books that offer something new and exciting with each subsequent reading, there are those books which fail to rise to the occasion when revisited. There are many books that I remembered enjoying when I was younger that left the older me feeling somewhat disappointed because the stories now seem so dated, trite, or juvenile. This is kind of how I feel about the recent resurgence of 80's cartoons. While part of me wants to feed my nostalgic side, I'm worried that I'll just end up marring all of those fantastic memories I have of sitting in front of the TV Saturday mornings with my favorite bowl of overly sugared cereal. I loved loved LOVED She-Ra, but I stopped myself from buying the first season DVDs because I realized, like those well-loved childhood books, a re-watching of my favorite cartoon will probably only work against me. Maybe it's best then, to leave those childhood memories untouched and pristine?
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