# Teaching > General Teaching >  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

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## Danik 2016

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_k%C...er_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

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## Pompey Bum

> Also _Pyramus and Thisbe_ from classical times.


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




> 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.

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## BFrank

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

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## 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.

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