How to Argue about Literature 25
Hismissteps following the public’s condemnation of his weight and behavior are
due in large part to the bad advice of others rather than to obvious character flaws.
Readers might note, for example, that his newly credentialed attorney friend is the
one who persuades him to file the absurd lawsuit. Usl also recognizes immedi–
ately that he should have gotten in touch with his mother, who has granted inter–
views with the press in a misguided attempt to set the record straight.
Usl’s mother is a particularly interesting character, given that no such figure
seems to exist for the real- life Rector. She offers some context for Usl’s home life
and somewhat limited ambitions, her character coming across as comparatively
“old world,” if not overprotective. Her faith in her son far exceeds his faith in
himself. As a gold buyer, dubbed the “sultan” by his boss, Usl works behind the
scenes of the jewelry shop and is unaccustomed to notoriety of any kind. He is,
as we learn at the end of the story, “waiting” for his real life to begin. But readers
learn in time that he has become an expert in his work, creating flyers and
impressing sellers with his “good hands.” Galchen’s decision to link Usl’s char-
acter with gold, including the text messages of gem facts he receives throughout
the story, offer hope that Usl will weather this crisis, that perhaps his public
shaming has actually revealed something worthwhile about him. We are led to
believe that there might be something solid, unbreakable, at his core. Perhaps
his mother is right after all.
Ronson’s sympathy for the real- life Justine Sacco is even more marked. By
beginning his excerpted section with a description of Sacco’s flights, readers
experience her tweets more or less from her perspective. Indeed, in this context,
many of us might pick up on the wry critique characterizing what many have
seen as her most offensive tweet. By emphasizing the public’s glee at Sacco’s
impending firing, Ronson makes Sacco less an object of scorn and more some-
one whose punishment may not necessarily fit the crime. He downplays possible
critiques of how someone in her line of work, public relations, might have
known better, and instead frames her as an average, albeit impulsive, tweeter
castigated by a bloodthirsty public.
Justine Jacquet offers the lone dissenting voice in this trio, as her work thinks
through possible benefits of public shaming. An important qualification for her,
though, is that for shaming to work, there must be no official punishment or
sanction possible. Shaming is for violations that operate outside our judicial
structures, for example. One might argue, then, that Sacco and Usl could have
fit that criterion. Neither of them acted illegally, so public shaming would be the
only way to effect behavioral change. But implied in Jacquet’s work is an ethical
component. Readers might note that her examples include corporate entities,
not individuals, with problematic financial or environmental transgressions that
have widespread public effects. Shaming in that sense equals negative publicity
that can have financial or political consequences.
As each of these authors implicitly demonstrates, singling out individuals for
potentially offensive behavior may well result in a condemnation that far outstrips
the perceived violation of propriety. Social media can be particularly egregious in
this regard, and some have argued that Twitter should censor potentially offensive
tweets. But where should one draw the line? Who decides what statements or
behaviors are unacceptable? In public spheres, it seems that everyone can
26 How to Argue about Literature
Chapter4
The Reading Process (p.88)
In this chapter we begin by presenting eight strategies for close, critical reading,
along with some examples of student writing that use those strategies. It should
be noted that although the strategies are applied to literary works — poems — they
will help generate ideas and insights for other types of texts as well. In particular,
the strategies of rereading the text (#2), testing the text’s claims and assumptions
against personal experience (#3), noting ambiguities (#5), considering the
author’s choices (#6), and asking questions and jotting down possible answers to
them (#7, #8) are useful in evaluating any argument, as is the practice of anno-
tating (p.97). Later in the chapter, we analyze Lynda Hull’s “Night Waitress”
(p.104) using topics of literary criticism, which may strike some readers as not
applicable to the rhetorical analysis of arguments. However, even these topics
are of pressing concern to critical readers of nonliterary and argumentative texts.
We rank race, class, gender, politics and ideology, and religious values very high
on the list of concerns that any critical reader should bring to an argumentative
text, particularly in the public sphere.
EDWARD hIRsCh
Execution (p.100)
In Edward Hirsch’s “Excecution,” the narrator describes his high school football
coach’s battle with cancer, weaving descriptions of the coach’s approach to foot-
ball together with observations about cancer’s devastating effects. Readers will
see little grief or pain in the narrator’s lines, although it’s clear the football coach
is a significant figure in the narrator’s and other players’ lives. The coach’s
almost- mythical obsession with football and winning leaves comparatively little
room for grief. And the coach’s battle with cancer is forced to fit in somehow. In
some ways, it’s as if the coach is the game itself, as the speaker compares the lines
cancer makes on the coach’s face to “small x’s and o’s” used to mark plays on the
chalkboard. The coach’s unquestioning belief in football “Without suffering and
death” (line 14) suggests also a belief in his ability to survive cancer.
Plays, blocks, tackles, and teammates — the “fundamentals” (line 12) of the
game — mark the coach’s faith in “football like a new religion” (line 11). It’s his
players’ bodies, their skills, not his own, that sometimes threatened the game.
The coach “despised losing” (line 25), and the narrator recounts how he many
times “saved [them] from defeat” (line 24). In mentioning the act of “saving” his
players, the narrator reveals his understanding of how fundamental the act of
winning was for the coach. In saving them, the coach converts them. By claim-
ing that the coach loved winning more than he loved “his own body” (line 26),
the narrator implies that the coach might have loved winning more than he
28 The Reading Process
loved and respected his players’ bodies, too. Working toward an imagined “ideal
game,” the coach is framed as impossible to please; readers might notice the
“punishing drills” and “doubled” practice time as evidence of this work ethic
T. s. ELIOT
The Love Song ofJ.Alfred Prufrock (p.109)
Here are some of the topics of literary criticism you might notice in “Prufrock”:
Sexual orientation. Most read Eliot’s “Prufrock as a heterosexual figure,
with women to being an insect “pinned and wriggling on the wall” (line 58).
From where does this discomfort arise?
114–115). An altogether unremarkable character, he is “Almost, at times, the
Fool” (line 119). Prufrock seems to view his lot in life as part of some grander
play, and these thoughts seem to bring him little pleasure.
Social class. Even readers unfamiliar with Prufrock’s lifestyle will no doubt
night cheap hotels” (line 6).
alsup Old Houses 29
ALLIsON ALsUP
Old Houses (p.113)
Here are some of the topics of literary criticism you might notice in “Old Houses”:
Social class. In Alsup’s “Old Houses,” the homes are described almost
immediately as “Houses that know who they are.” The idea that the houses them-
selves enjoy their privilege offers a tidy class distinction between neighborhoods,
in that home individuality is frequently a luxury enjoyed by the upper classes.
Such a remark by one of the short story’s characters also provides insight into
the extent to which the homes’ residents pretend not to notice their own privi-
lege. It is the homes, the neighborhood, that enjoys history and distinction,
not the homeowners themselves. They are simply the caretakers of that history,
“safeguard[ing] [the houses] for the next generation” (para. 6). During their block
party, residents appreciate the efforts of several residents who are classical musi-
cians, another mark of social class.
Boundaries. Despite the neighborhood’s distinctiveness and relative safety,
chaos and violence always threaten its boundaries, as suggested by the reference
to “hooded youths with guns” (para. 8) and, of course, the unsolved murders. We
learn, however, that residents do not tell their children the truth about those
murders. They would rather pin the crime on outsiders who crossed the com-
munity’s boundaries than acknowledge the likelihood of the guilty party being
one of their own. (Indeed, they are relieved when the doctor, whose family was
killed, chooses not to join their party.) We find out, for example, that the front
door of the victims’ house was not forced open and that the primary suspect was
a “hollow eyed” teenager from next door. The residents seem obsessed with
maintaining the sanctity of their community through events like block parties,
but the real threat was once from within.
Memory. Memory plays a curious role in “Old Houses,” in that both the
Chapter5
The Writing Process (p.117)
This chapter presents an overview of the writing process, from exploring to
arguments based on textual evidence. (Also please note that throughout the book
we assume that there is a process to both reading and writing; it’s not as if all treat–
ment of process is cordoned off in this chapter.)
Peer Review. Quite possibly you will also want to integrate writing into your
class periods by devoting class time to the peer review of students’ writing in
progress. Such review can effectively take place in pairs, but many instructors
prefer to set up entire peer-review groups. These groups can remain the same in
membership throughout the term; then again, many instructors like to put stu-
dents in different groups from time to time. A number of students will be com-
fortable reading drafts aloud to an audience, while others prefer to distribute
their drafts and have the audience read them silently. Neither procedure is
necessarily better, we think. You might even let each group decide which
method to adopt or have the class as a whole choose one.
Admittedly, many students need help formulating responses that will be
genuinely helpful to the writer. In fact, the typical peer reviewer is afraid to
offend. We recommend that reviewers fill out a sheet that contains questions
reflecting your criteria for the particular assignment you have given. Moreover,
these questions should make clear that the reviewer is responding to the text and
not to the writer’s personality. We tend to discourage reviewers from directly giv–
ing advice; we think they will help the writer more if they focus on rendering their
impressions of the text at hand. Occasionally, you may want peer-review groups
to look at work that is considerably less than a full- fledged draft. After all, writers
need opportunities simply to test their provisional issues, claims, and evidence,
which may take the form of sentences or paragraphs rather than entire papers.
Chapter6
Writing about Literary Genres (p.149)
We group most of the literary selections in Arguing about Literature by genre as
well as by theme. Hence, teachers who prefer to stress elements of genre can
easily do so. Even if you prefer a thematic approach, probably you will want to
familiarize your students with some of these elements. Therefore, here we offer
suggestions for teaching genres. First we discuss short fiction; then we turn to
poetry and plays. In each case, we refer to examples of the genre found in the
book or works that can readily be tracked down on the Internet.
In our experience, students are far readier to discuss the content of literature
than they are the structural properties of literature, which much genre analysis
emphasizes. We suspect the general public is similarly inclined. Whereas many
critics in academe like to ponder a work’s symbolism, its plot design, or its other
technical aspects, most readers outside the academy attend more to the text’s
personalities, events, and ideas. These readers tend to share Kenneth Burke’s
notion that literature is “equipment for living”; they are not so concerned about
its particular nuts and bolts. When you refer to elements of genre in class, your
students are likely to be more receptive if you introduce just one or two terms at
intervals rather than bringing forth several at once. Students may even lose sight
of literature if they have to focus on mastering a whole critical lexicon for it.
We believe that elements of genre are best taught as means to an end rather
than as an end in themselves. Our book envisions a course aimed above all at
helping students become more adept as arguers, whether their arguments wind
up focusing on literary form or on literary content. Indeed, throughout the book
we encourage students to think of their own arguments as a fifth genre, one just
as important as the other four. No doubt they will learn characteristics of literary
genres more easily if you point out how they can develop claims about these
elements in their writing and class discussions. For instance, they will be keener
to learn poetic meter if you show them how it can be the subject of the paper
you have just assigned on Frost’s poems.
How much should you talk in class about the term genre itself? That is up
to you. Probably most of your students will already have a rough sense of what
the term involves. They will know that literature is often divided into fiction,
poetry, and drama, although many of them will not immediately assume that it
includes essays. To get your class thinking about genres in literature, you might
first ask students to identify various film genres, since most Hollywood movies fit
into easily recognizable categories. You might even ask how films are classified
on the Netflix website, which are conspicuously arranged by genre.
You may want to point out that a genre can be described in various ways.
When we discuss genres in Part One of the book, we refer mostly to their techni-
cal or formal aspects. In addition, you might note that some writers and literary
theorists have associated particular genres with particular kinds of subject matter.
32 Writing about Literary Genres
For instance, in his book The Lonely Voice, short story writer Frank O’Connor
argues that this genre has often dealt with characters on the margins of society.
Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a famous
example. One could also look at the confined narrator of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” from this perspective: Might her plight sug-
gest that Gilman believes that most middle- class women of her era were symboli-
cally marginalized by patriarchal culture?
You might also have your class situate genres historically, attending to ways
in which they have reflected or influenced specific societies and eras. To begin
this contextualizing, try asking your students to identify genres on screen or in
print that have recently changed as a result of evolving social conditions. For
example, the massive media coverage of real- life sex scandals such as those
involving public figures such as David Petraeus, Dennis Hastert, and Anthony
Weiner affect television soap operas, which can no longer hook viewers simply
by presenting fictional hanky- panky in conventional ways. There are fewer
taboos. Meanwhile, the rise of Millennials as a consumer force (somewhat com-
plicated by the Great Recession) has spawned numerous comedic and dramatic
series, such as Girls, My Crazy Ex- Girlfriend, Stranger Things, and Mr.Robot,
aimed at that demographic. In part because so many people surf the Internet
and more moviemakers rely on computer technology, Hollywood has made
numerous films about virtual reality over the past few decades (notably the
Matrix series and Inception). For Millennials, who are less likely to go to a film
than previous cohorts, Hollywood is striving to create immersive virtual- reality
experiences derived from movies such as The Martian and The Revenant. Reality
TV shows/contests enjoyed a vogue in the aughts, but recently scripted shows
from an increasing variety of channels/sources (e.g., Amazon and Netflix) are
SHORT FICTION
Of all the literary genres featured in the book, probably students will be most
familiar and comfortable with this one. Most likely they will have read several
works of fiction beforehand, in school if not on their own. In addition, they will
have developed some sense of narrative conventions through viewing films and
TV shows as well as listening to songs with story lines. Thus, when you identify
elements of short fiction for them, often you will be helping them grow con-
scious of characteristics they intuitively know. Feel free to bring their tacit knowl-
edge to the surface by encouraging them to compare the fiction they are reading
Writing about Literary Genres 33
with stories they have already encountered in popular culture. When teaching
Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation” (Chapter3), you might ask students to compare
it to darkly humorous workplace comedies such as The Office and Office Space.
We find that of all the elements of this genre, students are most eager to
discuss plot and character. Try asking your class to analyze at least a few stories
using Alice Adams’s formula ABDCE (Action, Background, Development,
Climax, Ending), which we apply in the book to Eudora Welty’s “A Visit of
Charity” (p.150). Few of your students are apt to know this formula; in fact, we
have never come across it in any other introductory literature textbook. Yet
Adams’s scheme — devised not by a literary critic but by a veteran short story
writer — illuminates the plot structure utilized in many pieces of short fiction.
Furthermore, by using it as a benchmark, students can trace how other short
stories prove unconventional in design. Of course, your class needs to be familiar
in the first place with the plot of any story it discusses. Despite our exhortations
to the contrary, we have found that students tend to read an assigned story only
once before coming to class, so their memories of plot details must often be
refreshed. You might start off your class session on a story by having students
write and exchange brief summaries of it. Reviewing their digests, they may dis-
cover they do not agree in their identifications of the story’s key actors and inci-
dents, including the story’s turning points. Such differences in understanding
may then spark lively debate.
The veteran short story writer William Trevor defines short fiction as “the art
of the glimpse.” Some stories feature quite dramatic events; for example, Flannery
O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” climaxes with multiple murders. Yet
other stories mostly present subtle “glimpses” into their characters’ lives, and even
a dramatic story may have quietly resonant moments. Some of your students may
need help seeing the potential significance of a story’s lower- key passages. Even a
tiny domestic story such as Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (p.52) hides a little drama of
rebellion in two short italicized lines that pop up among its other sentences. And
there’s much that might be teased out of the oddly taut details of the final para–
graphs of Welty’s “A Visit of Charity,” from the hidden apple to the rocketing bus.
A good, quick way to discover what your class thinks about a particular story’s
characters is to have students write down three adjectives for each. You can then
go around the room and have each student read aloud the adjectives he or she
has chosen. Next, you can ask the class to identify and elaborate whatever com-
monalities and divergences have emerged. You can use this “round robin”
method of character analysis to initiate class discussion or revive it. You can even
conclude the period by asking whether anyone’s adjectives have changed as a
result of hearing class members’ choices. Remember, though, that character
analysis is not always the best approach to a story, even if it does come naturally
to students. You may find it more productive to have your class address other
facets of the story first.
If characters in a story seem to act unpleasantly, irrationally, and/or unpro–
ductively, a number of your students may scorn them. Actually, a great deal of
modern fiction (and drama, for that matter) centers on characters whose nature
and circumstances strike many students as worse than their own. The great liter–
ary critic Northrop Frye helps put this situation in perspective. In his 1957 book
The Anatomy of Criticism, now regarded as a classic account of genres, Frye traces
34 Writing about Literary Genres
various kinds of heroes that have figured in literature down through the centuries.
The first kind was “a divine being,” the hero of myth. The second was “superior
in degree to other men and to the environment of other men”; this was the hero
of romance. Then appeared the hero who was “superior in degree to other men
but not to his environment”; this prototype, Frye argues, was “the hero of the high
mimetic mode, of most epic and tragedy, and is primarily the kind of hero that
Aristotle had in mind.” Closer to our own time, there emerged the low mimetic
mode; this features a hero who is “superior neither to other men nor to his envi–
ronment,” so that audiences “respond to a sense of his common humanity.”
Finally, there is the hero of the ironic mode, who seems “inferior in power or
intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of
bondage, frustration, or absurdity” (pp.33–34).
Frye seems to refer exclusively to male heroes, thus leaving open the ques–
tion of how much his categories apply to females. Yet many of the short stories
we include in this volume fit into his so- called ironic mode. Reading Welty’s
story, for example, your students may believe that Marian and the adult women
she encounters in the rest home are “inferior in power or intelligence to our–
selves,” caught up in “a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity.” Even with
this perception, a class analyzing Welty’s characters may feel compassion rather
than contempt. Nevertheless, quite possibly you will encounter animosity
toward the characters, as well as toward those of the other ironic narratives in
our book.
If some of your students do rush to condemn characters, their attitude may
still provoke good discussion, especially if other members of your class are will-
ing to defend or identify with the targets. Often, however, moralistic dismissal is
hardly productive at all. At such times, you have various options. To get your
students at least provisionally identifying with a character they criticize, you can
invite them to report occasions when they have acted similarly or been tempted
to. With a little prodding, for instance, many people will recall feeling nervous
and uncertain visiting a nursing home, and they may also remember moments
during their childhood when they were as self- centered as Marian. Or you
might play devil’s advocate, openly proclaiming that you yourself hesitate to
indict the characters outright. You also have the option of shifting the discussion
from judgment of the characters to analysis of their functions in the story. For
example, rather than solicit your class’s opinions of the querulous roommates in
Welty’s story, you might ask how these women serve as obstacles and/or discover-
ies for Marian. Another conversational tactic is to sketch Frye’s history of narra-
tive modes and ask students to supply other examples of the low mimetic. You
might point out, too, that works of literature enable us as readers to study the
complexities of people, whereas we might feel pressured to make snap judg-
ments about them in real life. You can add that works of literature are often most
worth reading when they complicate an audience’s understanding rather than
just confirming its righteousness. You might even conduct a “thought experi-
ment” in which all of your students try writing nuanced claims about Marian
and her ilk. Bear in mind, by the way, that many students who offer complex
character analyses in class are tempted to be more reductive in their writing.
Composing a manageable argument on paper, they suspect, requires claims
simpler than those they have put forth in discussion. You may have to remind
them that, if anything, a written argument about a work is usually more interest-
ing and credible when it shows that the work is not easily decoded and judged.
When discussing the plot of a story in class, usually students need not be
concerned about the verb tenses they use. But when they write a paper about the
story, you may want them to recount its events with a consistent tense.
Unfortunately, many students wind up shifting tenses in their papers about short
stories. They move back and forth between past and present as if they cannot
make up their minds which to employ. We advise students to try sticking with
present tense when they write about a fictional character’s actions. Whether or
not you agree with us, tell your students what tense you want them to adopt.
Because short stories are, well, short, you may be tempted to have your stu-
dents read several for a given class period. We find, however, that less is more.
That is, we are more likely to engender substantial analysis of a story if we do not
make it compete for time with many others. A good limit is one or two per hour.
You can, in fact, deal with several if you divide the class into small groups, assign
each a different story to analyze, and then conclude the period by having each
group report its analysis to the whole class.
Plan to spend at least one class period helping your students understand the
role that point of view plays in short fiction. Let them know that a story may or
may not feature a character who expresses the author’s own thinking. In particu-
lar, indicate that a first- person narrator does not necessarily speak for the author;
indeed, such a narrator may even be unreliable. (Consider the narrator of
Orozco’s story and his hair- raising gossip.) You might acknowledge, too, that
reliable first- person narrators may still withhold some of their thoughts from the
reader.
Few of your students will be prepared to define or identify free indirect style,
although it appears in many stories. Therefore, take time to explain this device.
In our discussion of short fiction, we demonstrate free indirect style by citing a
passage from Welty’s story that exemplifies it. Another way of familiarizing stu-
dents with this style is to have them write brief passages of their own that use it.
Actually, you can have your class practice various modes of narration, including
reliable first person, unreliable first person, and direct address to the reader.
POETRY
Many students suffer from what we call “poetry anxiety.” Quite simply, they fear
the genre. In part, they do so because they find many poems elusive in meaning,
hard to figure out. To them, the average poet seems almost willfully difficult. But
another reason for their unease with poetry is their feeling that whenever they
study this genre, they will have to learn a bunch of technical terms. Of course,
your class may include students who love to read poetry as well as students who
have actually written some. You can even invite the poets in your class to bring
in samples of their work. Still, when you first turn your class to poetry, it would
be a good idea for you to begin by asking your students their general attitude
toward it. Let the anxious ones know that you understand their concerns, even
as you submit that reading poetry can be pleasurable.
We suggest, too, that you go slow as you introduce your class to the genre’s
technical features. How many of these features should your students learn?
Writing about Literary Genres 35
36 Writing about Literary Genres
Quite a few instructors believe that the study of poetry should involve extensive
practice in technical analysis so that students develop an ability to identify any
poem’s particular meter and rhyme scheme. If you are dealing with multiple
genres in your course, though, you may not have time for such work. Also worth
considering is the level of the course. When our classes consist mostly of first-
year students and sophomores pursuing majors other than English, we do not
make them regularly engage in scansion. Rather, we draw their attention to
particular issues raised by particular texts, especially so they can find topics for
their own writing. We elaborate matters of meter and rhyme when we feel they
are especially important to a given text’s meaning and impact.
We recommend that, whenever possible, you have students read aloud in
class the poems to be discussed. Oral delivery helps both reciter and audience
sense a poem’s sound patterns while also giving everyone a chance to identify
other of its aspects that they may have missed in their first reading. After a poem
is read aloud, you can go around the room and ask all of your students to note
anything about it they have newly recognized. Needless to say, your reciters will
vary in their degree of elocutionary skill, but the practice in speaking is worth-
while for them. If they mispronounce a word or substitute another for it, you can
patiently correct them.
In our experience, students need help detecting how various words in a
poem relate to one another. The task is especially difficult for them when the
related words appear in different stanzas. Encourage your students to range back
and forth over the entire text, looking for distant connections. Prod them to
consider, for example, how the end of the poem is linked to its beginning. We
have also found it useful to have students circle what they deem the poem’s most
important word; usually, interesting discussion ensues as they defend their
choices. A worthwhile exercise, too, is having students identify the major stages
or phases that the poem moves through, which may or may not coincide with its
stanza breaks.
We believe that when students are asked to interpret one of the poem’s
images, they should be encouraged to think first of all possible associations with
it. In the case of Frost’s “Mending Wall,” for example, you might put the word
stone on the blackboard and invite students to point out various things it has
signified or evoked. To be sure, eventually you can invite them to consider which
of their associations fit this specific text. Some of your students may be wary of
attaching much figurative meaning to a seemingly simple word such as stone or
good, whereas you yourself may be inclined to pack it with symbolic import. In
fact, poetry tends to be the genre that students most see as in danger of English
Teacher Over- Reading. It’s in the discussion of poems that our own students are
most likely to ask, “But could the author really have had all those meanings in
mind?” The best answer to this question, we think, came from the poet Michael
Collier when he visited one of our classes. Collier’s poetry tends to rely on seem-
ingly plain words such as water. He said, however, that invariably readers make
all sorts of associations with such a common term when it appears in a poem. He
acknowledged, too, that several of these meanings may suit the poem well, even
if the writer didn’t think of them while composing it.
Many of the poems in these chapters feature a first- person speaker, and
contemporary poets seem very much drawn to the “I.” Some of your students
may automatically identify the “I” of a poem with its author, but we suggest you
emphasize that the two may need to be distinguished. Of course, certain poems
do seem autobiographical. But, as we point out when we discuss issues of history
in Chapter2, even Milton’s poem about his blindness may be presenting just
one aspect of Milton rather than his complete, authentic self. You may find, as
we have, that unless a first- person poem clearly indicates otherwise, many stu-
dents refer to its “I” as male. This tendency is not all that disturbing when the
poet is male, as is the case with the poems by Milton, Frost, and Komunyakaa.
But we are troubled when the poet is female. When asked why they make such
a gender choice, some students revealed a continuing attachment to the generic
male as a pronoun, even interpreting nongendered details as signifying a male
poet. If this situation arises in your class, take the opportunity to discuss with your
students the various criteria they can use for determining a speaker’s gender. Our
own view is that if the text of an “I” poem leaves the speaker’s gender unclear,
the critic should write as if the gender of the “I” is the same as the author’s. But
this is only our default strategy, for we realize there may be justifiable departures
from it.
Obviously your class will not have time to read all the poems in our book.
You will have to be quite selective in the ones you assign. Just as obviously, vari-
ous principles of selection are possible. We recommend, though, that you try to
expose students to all sorts of different forms. In particular, we find that many
students are unacquainted with blank verse, even though contemporary poets are
fond of it. Actually, several of our students have more or less assumed that a
poem must rhyme. Your class can learn much when you present examples of
poetry that test narrow definitions of the genre. Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is a
particularly slippery example of the genre; although by general agreement it is
classified as a work of fiction, a “story,” one can use textual evidence to argue for
its status as a prose poem. (One could also point to qualities it shares with cre-
ative nonfiction and even drama, although those arguments would quickly grow
strained.) Of course, even poems that rhyme may do so in subtle as well as con-
spicuous ways. Our students have told us that they missed the rhymes in their
first readings of certain poems, notably Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,”
because the poem closely resembles ordinary speech. Subsequently, a class can
get quite interested in the possible relations between a poem’s “literary” qualities
and everyday discourse.
PLAYS
When you teach a play, you have to decide how much you will present it to your
students as a blueprint for production rather than simply a text to be read in class.
Our own inclination is to make our classes always aware of the play as a script to
be performed. There are numerous reasons for stressing its theatrical dimension.
For one thing, doing so gives students a better sense of how interpretations can
be consequential; after all, performers’ understanding of their parts influences
their enactment of the characters on stage. Furthermore, referring to actual and/
or hypothetical productions of the play helps students see the material conditions
that can affect literature. Many students have read Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and
praise how she ramped up the dramatic intensity when she confined the onstage
Writing about Literary Genres 37
38 Writing about Literary Genres
action of the play to the Wrights’ kitchen; but no doubt she also relied on a single
set because that is what companies such as her Provincetown Players could man-
age in the small theaters where they performed. Also, the emotional dynamics of
many plays are hard for readers to trace if they do not have the chance to see an
actual staging. For example, this is the case with Strindberg’s The Stronger, in
which one of the two characters never even speaks. If students merely read
Strindberg’s play rather than see any of it staged, they will probably have trouble
recognizing how the wordless woman still manages to express herself.
The best reason, however, for treating a play as a script is that you then have
a ready means of getting your students up on their feet and actively participating
in class. Let students read scenes aloud, or better yet, assign groups to rehearse
scenes and then stage them. You can even assign the same scene to different
groups; most likely, their different renditions of the scene will get your class talk-
ing about how interpretation shapes performance. When students work together
on scenes, another benefit is that they see how learning can be collaborative.
Do not be afraid of letting a male character be played by a woman and vice
versa. The results may be fascinating. Moreover, such reversal can be good
preparation if the class is going to discuss a play by Shakespeare, whose female
characters were originally played by men. If you teach Hamlet, for example, you
might point out that in modern times the title role has been played by several
actresses, including Sarah Bernhardt, Judith Anderson, and Diane Venora.
Perhaps you will want your class to consider, too, the current willingness of many
professional theater companies to cast a role with someone of another race than
the playwright probably had in mind. Sometimes the casting is deliberately pro–
vocative, as with the numerous modern productions of The Tempest in which
Shakespeare’s Caliban is played by a black man. On other occasions, the casting
purports to be “color blind,” as when the African American actor Paul Winfield
played Falstaff in a Washington, DC, production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.
(Interestingly, Winfield replaced actress Pat Carroll in the role.) You may know
that in 1997, “color blind” casting was debated by African American playwright
August Wilson and white theater critic Robert Brustein in NewYork City’s Town
Hall. While Brustein supported the practice, Wilson criticized it, arguing that it
diverted America from establishing more black theater companies that perform
black dramatists’ plays. Your students may be interested in pursuing this debate.
Perhaps some of your students will have acted in high school and/or college
plays. Some of them may currently be theater majors. Try beginning your discus-
sion of drama as a genre by inviting students to report their own acting experi-
ences. You might go further and ask them to report performing experiences of
any kind as a way of beginning to analyze what is involved in making presenta-
tions to a live audience. Of course, you can also invite students to recall plays
they have seen rather than acted in. Do not be surprised, though, if several stu-
dents report that they have rarely or never seen live professional theater — all the
more reason for having your class actually perform. Of course, you might also
encourage your students to see current productions of your college’s theater
department. Consider arranging a group visit to one.
You may want to augment your class’s discussion of a play by viewing a video
or listening to an audio recording of it. Clearly students can learn much from
watching or listening to an actual production. But if forced to be simply an
audience for prolonged periods, a class can grow passive. Often, a thoughtful
discussion can result when students are asked to analyze just a film clip or two. For
instance, you might have your class compare Kenneth Branagh’s “To be or not to
be” soliloquy with Laurence Olivier’s or Mel Gibson’s. Or, before showing a film
clip, you might have some of your students perform the same scene; later the class
can compare the two versions. Of course, most film adaptations of plays swerve
from the original script, and your students might evaluate changes they spot.
Much of what we have said about teaching short fiction applies to the teach-
ing of plays. In particular, as with short stories, you may find students contemptu-
ous toward a number of the characters they encounter in plays. If this situation
occurs, try following some of the strategies we suggest using with short fiction.
But with plays, you have an advantage: you can ask someone criticizing a char-
acter to perform that character, an exercise that encourages the student to inves-
tigate the character’s various human dimensions.
In our discussion of plays as a genre, we refer to changes in theatrical con-
ventions. Quite possibly your students will express discomfort with the language
and format of older, classic plays, and when you teach any of these plays, there
will be times when you have to explain conventions at length. But keep trying to
find points of contact between the play and things that your students have expe-
rienced, read about, or heard about. Certainly a nineteenth- century play such as
The Stronger can easily be imagined taking place in a contemporary Starbucks,
but a Shakespeare play or ancient Greek play may require more of an imagina-
tive stretch on your part.
Writing about Literary Genres 39
Chapter7
Writing Researched Arguments (p.207)
In this chapter we present advice about various strategies for conducting research
on a topic: using inquiry to enter the “conversation” about a literary or academic
or civic issue, finding sources in the library or on the Internet, and performing a
synthesis of them to develop a thesis- driven argument that is well and correctly
documented. We use the MLA style as befits our emphasis on literature, but we
recognize that some students may choose (or be instructed to use) other styles
such asAPA.Many of the research examples we chose, and all of the sample
research papers we include (three of them), are based on Charlotte Perkins
Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” We have found that this story pays
close attention to its literary qualities as well as to its cultural contexts and influ-
ence. (Indeed, we include the story in a cluster with cultural documents.) Of the
three student research papers, two take a more academic approach (showing
how to make arguments using critical and contextual materials), while the other
uses the story as a springboard to discuss a contemporary social issue. Our anno-
tations of these papers indicate — for students who look to them as mod-
els — strategies of both argument and documentation.
CONTEXTS FOR RESEARCH: CONFINEMENT, MENTAL ILLNESS,
AND “THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” (p.244)
ChARLOTTE PERKINs GILmAN
The Yellow Wallpaper (p.244)
The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story “The Yellow
Wallpaper” — a married woman who has a young baby she is not required to care
for — writes a series of surreptitious journal entries while undergoing treatment that
prescribes complete rest from physical, social, and mental activity. The context of
the entries, separated by spaces, suggests that there are eleven of them, written over
the course of the summer. As the narrator records her thoughts, they become
increasingly disordered, and her tone becomes gradually more manic. The change
is particularly evident when the story is read aloud by a skilled actor. Our class lis–
tens to an especially good audiotape, allowing the voice of the narrator to sweep the
audience inexorably into her delusion. Gilman’s narrator is unreliable, and readers
question her interpretations of the situation. Is the narrator in a country house with
her husband, or is she actually in an insane asylum? Is she delusional, or does her
early comment that the house may be haunted indicate that this is a ghost story in
which the figure of a woman really does come out of the wallpaper? Would she be
crazy anyway, as students sometimes contend, or does her condition become worse
because she is treated as a foolish child and forbidden intellectual activity?
gilman The Yellow Wallpaper 41
Gilman’s sensory imagery creates an impression of gradually altered percep-
tion. The wallpaper has unattractive and ominous connotations from the begin-
ning. The narrator’s first description of its color uses words such as repellant,
revolting, smouldering, unclean, lurid orange, and sickly sulphur. Her reaction to
the pattern is even more revealing. Curves “suddenly commit suicide” and
“destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.” Two weeks into the summer
stay, in the second journal entry, the narrator has begun to personify the wallpa-
per, suspecting that it has knowledge of its effect and a will of its own. She begins
to see horrible faces in it: “the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous
eyes stare at you upside down.” As her solitary confinement and forced idleness
continue, the narrator comes to believe that a woman is imprisoned in the wall-
paper, and she takes action to help the woman get out.
At a point late in the narrator’s illness, the images become synesthestic,
melding two senses into one as sometimes occurs with schizophrenia. The wall-
paper now has a “yellow smell.” By this time, the narrator claims offhandedly to
have been the woman in the wallpaper, who has finally been released, in spite
of Jane and the husband. This is the first time we have heard this name; Mary is
credited with caring for the baby, and Jennie does everything else. The logical
conclusion is that Jane is the name of the narrator, whose derangement we have
followed through most of the story. Now, the narrator implies, the woman
behind the wallpaper has escaped. Where then is Jane?
The narrator moves from a cheerful though frustrated attempt to submit to
the authority of her husband/physician and other male authority figures to a
determined, single- minded “creeping” that takes her right over the husband’s
prostrate body, which has collapsed in shock. Read strictly in a psychological
way, her story is one of a slide into madness brought on by society’s denial to her
of any real fulfillment of her intellectual and emotional needs as an adult. But
some readers feel that she achieves a victory of sorts, that she is finally freed from
oppression and has become her own person. No longer can her feelings be
waved aside and dismissed with baby talk. Students usually enjoy diagnosing her
psychological illness. Postpartum depression is certainly indicated, though bipo-
lar disorder and schizophrenia are sometimes suggested. Research on neurasthe-
nia, a faddish diagnosis for women with vague symptoms around the turn of the
twentieth century, will turn up interesting facts for students with medical and
psychological interests. Similar symptoms in recent years have resulted in
increased diagnoses of hypoglycemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia,
and other disorders. By the end of the story, the narrator has the symptoms of an
obsessive- compulsive disorder; she focuses on the need to tear down wallpaper,
chew up the furniture, and creep along the edge of the wall.
Although critics like to emphasize the cultural and historical issues of patri-
archy and women’s societal position in the 1890s and beyond — a focus consis-
tent with the author’s concerns — it is possible to read Gilman’s story as a
psychological thriller like those of Edgar Allan Poe. Readers find ample evidence
that the narrator reveals the truth of her illness to us in bits and pieces, some-
times misleading us because she herself does not realize the truth. From her
earliest musings about the house, we wonder whether it has been used as a
madhouse before or if she has been here longer than she indicates. There is a
42 Writing Researched Arguments
locked gate at the top of the stairs, bars on the windows, and “rings and things in
the walls.” Although she assumes that the room has been a nursery and a gym-
nasium, we do not have to accept this evaluation. Even at the beginning of the
story, the wallpaper “is stripped off . . . in great patches all around the head of my
bed, about as far as I can reach.” We see that the bed is damaged long before we
see her take a bite out of it. Some readers question whether she has already
begun to damage the furnishings or if the room has housed a previous resident
who rips wallpaper, perhaps a woman who is now trapped in the wallpaper. To
read the story in this way is to enter into her madness, but it provides a valid
perspective. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of the circumstances of the narra-
tor. Forbidden the order of work and adult activity, the narrator’s mind is as
confused and disordered as the lines of the paper, and she feels as sick as its
colors and as full of poison as its nasty fungi. She is trapped within the constraints
of dependency and societal rules and frantically grasps for the action that will
allow her to be free and whole. She feels suicidal — at one point thinking of
jumping out the barred window — and the wallpaper writhes with images of
choked people and women behind bars.
The joy of reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” with a new class each semester
is the opportunity to read the story from multiple perspectives. Students who
choose to write papers about Gilman’s story could experiment with playing a
believing- and- doubting game with the text, first completely trusting the narra-
tor’s words that these supernatural events are taking place and then questioning
everything. Though some readers see Jane as a freakish madwoman who is
merely displayed for our horror, many others find her persistence in the face of
patriarchy admirable. We empathize with her resistance to forced isolation and
insulting condescension and are able to imagine our own reactions to such
abuse. Students who dismiss her as simply crazy might be asked to consider if this
is proper treatment for her even if she arrives at the house mentally ill. Isn’t
Gilman correct in her contention that being forbidden to work, exercise, read,
or see friends makes a depressed person feel worse?
