Haroun and the Sea of Stories Reflection

Introduction

In my GHEnglish class, to conclude our exploration of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, we completed a creative project focusing on our group lenses.

Process of Creation

My group consisted of four hardworking and intelligent members, Andrew, Erin, Brandon, and I, all bringing diverse talents and ideas to the group. Between the four of us, there were a lot of suggestions bouncing around and potential for our project. At first, none of us could produce or agree on a single idea, mostly because we so rarely do creative projects and had to generate ideas on our own. Also, since creative projects normally require a lot of behind the scenes planning and thinking, the fact that we were all practically strangers didn’t help much. However, we soon got over those boundaries and bonded over similar interests and relatable topics of a teenage student’s life. We proceeded to throw random ideas around, without any thought or relation to our lense, which didn’t produce any agreeable ideas. In other words, we were getting nowhere and had to take on a different approach. From there, we discussed our personal strengths and soon realized we all had a good eye for art. Erin and Brandon were very talented artists with Erin specializing in characters and Brandon in spray paint art. Andrew and I were not nearly as skilled in this field as Erin and Brandon, but could still contribute in other ways. From then on, we focused our project on art and utilizing everyone's strengths. Eventually, we came across the idea of pop up books and how we could all contribute using our individual talents. Although, none of us had a clear idea of the outcome of the project, but we just ran with it and ended up flying.

Product and Process

Our first course of action once we established the pop up books idea, was devise what stories we wanted to bring to life. We pulled out different points in the book and passages that referenced different stories, which helped narrow down which tales were more prominent and which ones we should cut. In the end, we solidified the stories of Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Star Wars, and Peter Pan. From then we assigned roles, Brandon was in charge of making the spray paint backgrounds, Erin designed the characters, Andrew outlined our speaking parts and helped with the visual, and I conducted planning and assembly. By splitting up the work, we were able to produce a product efficiently and reveal our individual takes on the allusions in HATSOS. Brandon and I ended up having similar views of the backgrounds and main features, which showed in the final product. Erin’s take on the characters were much different from what I originally thought, and her view ended up being my favorite way of interpreting them. Andrew was in charge of outlining our speaking parts and worked really hard towards adding meat to our skeleton project. He added numerous ideas not discussed between the group, many of which we all found incredibly compelling and added to the whole project. In the end, our project was a great success and displayed our lense and ideas in a way that was pleasing to the eye and different from anything we’ve ever seen before, hopefully leaving a long lasting impression on our audience.

Satire Allegory and Monomyth Oh My!

However, pop up books weren’t the only creative project to focus on. Our class was divided into four groups, each one presenting their project in an original way catered to their lense. The second group to share their ideas was monomyth, or Hero’s Journey, which presented through the form of a live action play. The Hero’s Journey is a series of events that a typical story line follows, including events such as the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, revelation, and the return home. Many if not all of these events are present throughout HATSOS and show the importance of a simple and familiar, but compelling plot line. Following monomyth, the next group focused on Satire, and presented their project through a series of political ads. Satire is the use of irony, jokes, or exaggeration to criticize someone or something. The use of political ads was really clever, as many satirical methods are used to criticizes politicians. This lense also reveals the way many books were influenced by the outside environment and addressed societal problems in the real world. The last group to present used a shadow puppet show to visually display allegory. An allegory is the use of symbols, stories, or pictures to suggest hidden meaning, which is a constantly see throughout HATSOS. The use of allegories reveal hidden and deeper meanings, which normally target a more mature crowd, adding to the already relevant and compelling story.

What’s the point in telling stories that aren’t even true?

While creating the project around our lense, the underlying question to it all was, “What’s the point in telling stories that aren’t even true?”. Allusions in HATSOS are mostly to children's stories or old time tales native to Rushdie’s middle eastern background. Most of these stories we are already familiar with, which adds a sense of familiarity and a quick walk down memory lane. At the surface, those stories are simple, but as you mature the underlying allegories and satire are hard to miss. In the end the point of telling stories that aren’t true from the lense of allusions is, it brings depth to the tales, weaving in different conflicts, themes, and real life applications, something we all can walk away from a story with.

Links

https://adonnblogs.wordpress.com/ - Andrew's blog

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72889904/posts/1649361193 - Erin's blog

https://sometimesiwritestuffblog.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/haroun-project-reflection/ - Brandon's blog