Thinking outside the book: comparing life and lit.

Abstract

This essay outlines a unit on the novel that requires students to read a fairly formulaic text and keep two reading journals and write one position paper. One of these journals bids the students to reflect on the reading process that accompanies their efforts to negotiate the novel; the other involves applying the same interpretive strategies to an actual issue or event unfolding in real time beyond the book. The students then produce a position paper that addresses the surprising similarities and/or differences between life and literature.

Introduction

Oftentimes at the outset of a unit on a particular novel many of us have read a page or two aloud, paused, and then enlisted our students' help in predicting what will occur in the narrative. Commonly, we are surprised by their ability to forecast the manner in which the plot will play out, and we are impressed by how well they identify heroes and villains, anticipate turning points, and draw parallels between the text in question and others they have read previously. But should we be surprised by these demonstrated skills and abilities? Perhaps not. Here's why--

When we consider that today's students are born into a culture dominated by the genre of the novel and educated in classrooms where a reader-response approach to interpretation commonly crowds out other hermeneutic methodologies, such scenarios that frequently come to pass in these situations should not be all that shocking. Nearly every work of written art our students encounter is somewhat novelistic; and, furthermore, when offered the chance to choose, our students often select novels over other genre. They do not, for the most part, read poetry or study drama, nor do they commonly take in a documentary or attend a play. Thus, as a consequence of this immersion into the world of the novel, they quickly become sophisticated readers of this type of text long before they, and even we as teachers, realize it. In fact, I would contend that our students are so deeply immersed in a culture informed and infected by the nuances of the novel that alerting them to this fact is not unlike informing fish that they live in water. I would also argue that a failure to apprise them of their situation and correlative mindset is potentially problematic. Their immersion into the not-so-novel works they consume prevents them from learning to untangle and truly interpret texts and even, at some level, from distinguishing between life and literature. What's more, because they begin to project novel-like and frequently fixed narratives onto reality and thus conclude peremptorily that "things will just work out," their misunderstandings can lead to a sense of apathy and even powerlessness.

To wake the students up and, hopefully, to put them on the path to becoming better readers and more empowered individuals, I recommend employing a compare-and-contrast approach to teaching a novel. This entails reading a popular novel as a class and requiring the students to keep two reading journals and write one position paper. Based on the conclusions they come to while putting together these pieces, the students then produce a thesis-based position paper that addresses the similarities and/or differences between life and literature.

Putting Theory before Practice

In order to understand how and why novelistic fiction affects student perceptions about both life and literature, it is imperative to be aware of the context in which they so often read novels. According to literary scholar Ian Watt, the genre began to take shape in the eighteenth century with the publication of such works as Daniel DeFoe's Moll Flanders (1722), Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740-1741), and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749). Once it came into its own, argues critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, the genre evolved and expanded rapidly and almost rapaciously, affecting all other genre and even other artistic constructions into which it came in contact. This rise to prominence and potency, states Leslie Fiedler in his essay "The Death and Re-Birth of the Novel," was "intricately connected to the development of modern technology and the modern means of mass distribution" (190). More to the point for the purposes of this paper, the fact that, in Fiedler's words, "our national existence began at precisely the same moment as the novel itself" has profound consequences for our students, whose conception of reality is, I believe, colored by this genre (195).

Contributing to the impact of these historical and cultural factors on our students' understanding of literature in general and the novel in particular is the above-mentioned emphasis in many classrooms on a reader-response approach to instruction. To a fault in some instances, a large percentage of primary-level reading instructors and secondary-level English teachers present reader-response strategies as the single, best means of interpreting texts. Some teachers consciously and others inadvertently have rejected other potentially complimentary theories by privileging this school of criticism. Deborah Appleman, author of Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, proposes that the prominence of this theory in classrooms across the country is part of a larger trend wherein one interpretive approach overshadows nearly all others. She points out that in recent years student-centered methods have replaced the long-established text-centered ones associated with the New Critical perspective (4).

At the heart of this methodology is the idea that proficient readers, those cognizant of the thought processes that accompany their reading, create a schema that facilitates connecting with the works they read. In accordance with this philosophy, Ellen Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman, whose Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop typifies the scholarship common to this school of thought, declare that the student-centered instruction involves asking questions along the lines of, "Can you use what you know [about an author's work] to predict what the rest of her book is likely to be about?" (59), and, similarly, Can you use what you know from your life experiences to predict what will happen in the book? (57).

Once ensconced in the text, the student makes interpretive predictions (Burke 207). These are theoretically based on the student's understanding of herself, her environment, and the inter-textual realm of literature, or what Keene and Zimmerman refer to as text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text associations (57-59). In practice, however, many such predictions stem from the student's encounters not with life but with the literary representation of it, representations in which, as noted, events often unfold in a familiar manner. Concomitant with this school of thought is the tendency to allow students to select their own reading materials (Burke 169). Again, though sound in theory, in practice this often means that students opt for familiar, formulaic works as opposed to choosing, at least occasionally, what Keene and Zimmerman label "inconsiderate texts" (87). Unlike the more challenging, "inconsiderate" works, the relatively straightforward novels the students select affirm what beginning readers believe they already know about both reality and realistic literature. Speaking to this issue, Richard Beach argues in A Teacher's Introduction to Reader-Response Theories that, "Readers acquire a tacit, knowing-how knowledge of conventions from years of reading certain types of texts. Having read hundreds of mystery stories, they intuitively know, along with the detective hero, how to sort clues and sport red herrings." However, I would complicate Beach's claim by suggesting that students, despite these demonstrated abilities, tend to forget that these works they effortlessly navigate are representation of the real rather than the real itself--which is where the comparison-and-contrast assignment comes into play. In keeping with a reader-response approach to instruction, the assignment helps students become aware of thinking processes that accompany reading literature, and it helps them respond to that reading in personal, profound ways. Going against the grain of this methodology--but not with the intent to impugn it--the assignment also provides a kind of scaffolding for moving beyond this limited critical apparatus and for introducing competing, complimentary critical lenses such as structuralism, deconstruction, and New Historicism.

The Lesson Plan

As I have done in this essay, I begin the unit by establishing the context of the genre of novel. My aim when doing so is twofold. First, I want students to understand the genre as both an interpretive event and as a type of construction; secondly, I want to help them begin to identify differences and similarities between life and literature.

With these aims in mind, I present the students with several meta-fictional excerpts from such works as Tom Jones, Clarrissa, and Tristram Shandy. When concluding Chapter 11 of Book One, the narrator in Tom Jones, for instance, addresses the reader in this manner: "Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion ..." (Fielding 33).We address the ways in which these incipient novels prompted eighteenth-century readers to remember that what they were experiencing was not authentic but instead self-consciously constructed, and we talk about the fact that their contemporary successors, on the other hand, rarely offer what Deborah Appleman describes as a glimpse behind the curtain, that telling glance at the text's creator and a look at its moving parts and pieces. To underscore these differences here at the outset of the unit, we then turn our attention to contemporary film, fiction, and nonfiction. We watch the opening scenes of a romantic comedy and we discuss the ways in which the viewer is drawn immediately into the plot and into the action.

After we discuss how the film ends and how it is that so many students are able to make informed and often accurate predictions about its plot, I pass out passages from a recent article or story in a publication such as Time or Newsweek. Again, following the established pattern, we read aloud the opening paragraphs and then stop to talk about what we have read and what we believe will likely take place. We then talk about their ability (and, in this case, probable inability) to surmise what will unfold. To conclude the activities for this opening day, I direct their attention to something pertinent happening in their world, something related, for instance, to that which might be taking place in the school. We wrestle with the kinds of questions germane to the reading process, and we analyze their answers as well as their efforts to reply. Having hopefully piqued their curiosity and whetted their appetite for a truly novel kind of literary criticism, I then introduce the four overlapping activities outlined below.

The Reading Log

This assignment requires the students to reflect on their experience of the assigned text by responding to a set of questions while they read. Depending on the novel and the way that it divides up into parts or chapters, students respond to the questions repeatedly through the reading process. These queries are fairly standard and represent a blend of reader-response criticism and formalism. At the risk of being tedious, I list a number of them here in order that I might explain better the reasons that they often prompt surprisingly insightful responses in subsequent discussions about both the book and issues outside the text.

Taken predominantly from a chapter in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing on understanding literary analysis, the questions include the following: "What is worth noting about your assigned story's setting? What is the setting? How does it change?" (282) "What is the single most important moment or event [in the section read for today or] in the assigned story? Why do you see this moment as important crucial?" (281) "Who is the most important character in the story? How does this character change or grow as the story progresses? How do other characters promote or inhibit change in the main character?" (283) "What is the narrator's role in the unfolding events? How do the narrator's perceptions filter your understanding of the story? Do you consider the narrator's perceptions reliable, or does the text suggest alternative understandings? Is the narrator's way of seeing part of what the story is about?" (284) And, lastly, what general idea, theme, or concept is the story about?

Life as Literature Log

The students simultaneously keep a second journal. In this case, rather than write about literature, they select a slice of life to scrutinize. They can choose to write about almost anything they like. They might elect to focus on a public issue such as a highly publicized court case, or they might concentrate on something more personal and particular, something along the lines of a divorce happening at home or the activities leading up to and concluding with the homecoming dance. Most importantly, when it comes to topic selection, the students need to be persuaded to choose issues or topics that are timely and, when possible, somewhat self-contained. If, as a case in point, the two- or three-week reading schedule/unit for the novel overlaps with the final weeks of the playoffs for a certain sport (including one in which a student might be participating), the student's journal on this slice of society/slice of life will more than likely have some cohesiveness that will make comparing and contrasting literature with life that much more manageable.

When keeping these journals, the students "read" and respond to their selected issue or ongoing event in much the same way that they read and respond to the shared novel. Keeping in step with their reading log, they write on a consistent basis. Thus, at the outset of the unit, they describe the setting where the action will most likely take place, and they make predictions about what they suspect will occur--in other words, they anticipate how the plot in this, their chosen story, may unfold. Subsequently, they revisit, reconsider, and revise their previous predictions based on what has occurred. Playing the part of the reader as well as the writer, they make decisions about characters and character development, assigning roles to individuals and interpreting their actions and decisions in the same way they would those of literary characters. Directed by the questions, the students also think about the importance point of view plays in their interpretation of events; the point of view might be that of given media outlet covering a story, it might be the student's perspective, or it might be some combination of these vantage points and biases. Finally, when nearing the end of the novel, the students generalize about the theme that might apply to what they have been witnessing as a reader/writer.

Discussions and Diagrams

To model how they might proceed when writing their slice-of-life reading logs, I have the class consider a common topic. Were I to teach this unit on a novel during a semester that coincided with an election cycle, I would arrange the calendar so that the reading schedule overlapped with the final weeks of the election. I would bring in articles, essays, and video clips, and we would discuss how the main characters--the candidates--have changed or not, how the plot has unfolded, and what it all means in terms of larger issues and themes. To generate and organize a list of similarities and differences, we create a Venn diagram that illustrates the extent to which reality intersects with realistic literature. The process of doing so often engenders debate about the extent to which the two do in fact overlap. Building on what they have learned from this shared example, the students then create their own lists that they subsequently illustrate with a Venn diagram. A generative activity and invention strategy, the diagram helps them begin to formulate questions and assemble information for their position paper.

Position Paper

This final assignment instructs the students to draw on their experiences associated with keeping their journals and participating in class discussions in order to compare and contrast reality with realistic literature. While more advanced students may elect to concentrate in their essays on the manner in which a specific issue or idea such as time, fate, or free will manifests itself in one realm versus the other, those students just beginning to understand texts as constructions may instead choose to enumerate and explain a list of similarities and/or differences between the two subjects.

Conclusions

This series of assignments pushes students to perceive of the world as similar to but decidedly different from that of most texts, and it offers them a new perspective, one that helps them comprehend ways in which society regularly projects on complex issues simple, familiar narratives common to the novel in order to organize and explain reality. It is, moreover, a perspective that hopefully enables the students to recognize that things do not just work themselves out, that life must be lived deliberately, and that the future--unlike the conclusion of a work of film or fiction--is always not yet determined and therefore susceptible to our influence.

Works Cited

Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. New York: Teachers College, 2000.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press Slavic Series, No. 1. 1981. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

Beach, Richard. A Teacher's Introduction to Reader-Response Theories. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

Burke, Jim. Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2000.

Fiedler, Leslie. "The Death and Rebirth of the Novel." The Theory of the Novel: New Essays. Ed. John Halperin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. 189-209.

Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones. 1749. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Keene, Ellen Oliver, and Susan Zimmerman. Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960.

Colin Irvine, Augsburg College 

An assistant professor, Dr. Colin Irvine is a former high school English and history teacher who teaches courses in composition, literature, and secondary-education methods.