Kappa: Well, I don’t know what Mark Twain was trying to teach us, but I was never the same after I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Beta: I have a feeling that I’ll never be the same after this discussion.
Teacher: Me too, I think.
Alpha: What are you guys talking about? Are you going to paint fences from now on?
Gamma: Oh, very funny, Alpha. Everyone is laughing.
Alpha: Gamma, you may cry if you want to.
Gamma: Well, thank you! Now I feel like I live in a free country.
Kappa: Oh, here we go again.
Delta: But we were being all deep about these ideas, and I don’t get why Alpha has to play it down like that.
Alpha: Oh, so Delta can be serious too!
Teacher: Can we do a little summary now? It won’t look like final answers, and I cannot even say we have some answers, but certain things were definitely said.
The First Summary
Teacher: First, books, movies, music, etc. do affect us in similar ways; Gamma and Alpha came close to that. Second, arts do this in different ways; Alpha stressed this. Third, arts change us; this was Kappa’s point. Fourth, argument magnifies the influence of art; Beta, Gamma, and Kappa all touched on that.
Arts and Reality
Kappa: You know what? I realize now, I argued a lot with many different people while I was reading Tom Sawyer!
Beta: Do you mean Aunt Polly or Sid?
Kappa: No … well, yes … Well, I don’t know. It was like, say, I didn’t like what Sid did, but, at the same time, I felt like it was my brother Jimmy, you know …
Gamma: Actually, when you are deep in a book or music … you forget yourself in a way. I realize very clearly that I felt as if I were with Tom Sawyer … and on all of his adventures … I was there.
