Proposal for Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor" to the Boulder Valley School District

Dear Mr. Wright,

I am writing to you today to propose a new literature class to be taught at Fairview High School. This class will focus on postmodern literature and will use Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk as the primary text.

In reviewing the list of approved ELA texts for the Boulder Valley School district, I noticed there is a lack of recently published postmodern texts from acclaimed authors in the genre. One text that is present on the list is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This is one of the novels that defined the postmodern genre and Vonnegut is often cited as one of the most influential postmodern authors.

Slaughterhouse-Five helped to define the parameters by which we define postmodern literature. The novel also deals with the cultural upheaval caused by World War II and it attempts to make sense of the violence and inhumane acts committed during the war. This novel has overarching themes of freedom and confinement, warfare and suffering, and the clear questioning of morality and ethics that make this novel a classic. Slaughterhouse-Five, which was originally published in 1969, has endured the test of time and continues to hold the status of a classic and genre-defining novel.

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk follows in the genre-defining footsteps of Slaughterhouse-Five and Palahniuk himself has proved to be an incredibly insightful and popular author with his novel Fight Club. Similar to Slaughterhouse-Five, Survivor is written with a non-linear timeline, an unreliable narrator, and an undeniable current of social satire that critiques modern culture. The postmodern fiction genre is the literary movement of the late 20^th century and continues to be one of the most prominent genres today.

As a postmodern text, Survivor cultural critique and writing style make it an ideal text for classroom discussion. In BVSD, we value critical thinking and the ability to read closely in order to draw logical inferences from the text. Survivor is a novel with many layers and is able to be interpreted in a variety of diverse and provocative ways.

Survivor specifically critiques the cultural obsession with mass media and the concept of ethics and freedom within a culture that is so integrally tied to technology. Chuck Palahniuk’s writing is self-described as “transgressional fiction” and it makes use of repetition and everyday language in order to portray his characters as ordinary people. Survivor pushes the boundaries of the accepted portrayals of religion and media figures and delves into the consequences these unrealistic portrayals have on our cultural psyche. The central question in this class is perhaps the whispered tenet of postmodern literature: How do we maintain, or even find, our genuine sense of self in a world that is obsessed with larger than life characters and unrealistic expectations?

Best,

Madeline Halseth

Literary Complexity Analysis Worksheet as obtained from the BVSD website in November 2016

Informational Complexity Analysis Worksheet as obtained from the BVSD website in November 2016