For Thursday: True Believer, Part Four

Last set of questions for True Believer! Answer two as normal, and we'll see what we think of the book when we return on Thursday. Also, the two options for Paper #2 are posted below this post in case you lose them.

Q1: In Chapter 69, LaVaughn has the existential crisis which is inevitable for all teenagers: “Everything is tragic./Why didn’t anybody ever tell me that before?” (211). Though she is surrounded by death and tragedy her entire life, what makes her finally see it as a real presence in her life?

Q2: Myrtle and Annie never see the extreme views of their church for what they are, and indeed, inform LaVaughn that "you get all good chances/with your new classes, but you don't know/it might be Satan getting you" (240). Since LaVaughn's perspective is limited to what she knows and feels, how does Wolff let us know that LaVaughn's experience at school and with Dr. Rose isn't merely a secular 'cult' that offers her the same identity and answers as her friends? What makes her journey seem 'right' to us, even though to her friends (and probably to many in her school) it's wrong and even deluded? 

Q3: In Chapter 80, LaVaughn writes that “I’m a true believer./And that’s a fact” (243). Since it’s also the title of the book, what do you think she means by this? Since she doesn’t really believe in God and sees the world as very unfair and tragic, what does she believe in?

Q4: Note how much in this book is said "with the eyes" and not with words. At the end of the novel alone, "Annie looks over at me and says with her eyes and her head/in code, as we have always spoken" (262), and when Jody looks at her at the end of the book, "The look is quick as a blink" (264). Why are eyes/seeing so important to LaVaughn in this novel? Does it have anything to do with who she is, and when she is (a teenage girl)? 

Paper #2, Option 2 (due October 10th)

Paper #2, Option 2: Teaching Literature Statement of Purpose

 

In Chapter 54 of True Believer, Dr. Rose tells her students,

“Remember, our goal is lucidity.

Gleaming lucidity.

Only when we are lucid can we be constructive.

Only when we are constructive

can we live with good conscience in the world.

Only when we live with good conscience in the world

will the rage of the people calm” (171).

 

In essence, this is Dr. Rose’s teaching philosophy, and she explains that pushing students to be “lucid” in their expression, thoughts, and intentions, will allow them to “construct” their own place in the world, rather than be acted upon by others. She sees this as the basis for a rational, democratic society which is based not on hatred or bias but on mutual tolerance and understanding. It’s a pretty noble goal for an educator, and one that the NCTE Standards for ELA would undoubtedly agree with.

 

For your Paper #2, I want you to write your own Statement of Purpose as a future teacher of literature. This statement should explain why you think teaching literature is a crucial part of the ELA curriculum, and how it aligns with your own beliefs about education, literacy, self-empowerment. Think about this statement as introducing you as a teacher to future employers, so they will understand why you will make a valuable addition to their school district. Here are some of the ideas you should consider as you write your statement of purpose:

 

1.     How do you define learning? What does learning in the context of reading and literature look like?

2.     What values, beliefs, and aspirations do you hold as a literature teacher? If you could create an ideal situation for teaching literature, what would it look like?

3.     What goals do you hold for your students? What skills/ knowledge would you like them to learn/develop?

4.     What teaching methods do you plan on using to achieve these goals? How does theory influence the methods you value? 

5.     Why do you want to teach literature to secondary students? Why could you consider this your ‘calling’?

6.     How do you plan on growing as a teacher throughout your career? Do you have specific goals for yourself? 

 

In answering these questions, you should use examples from (a) True Believer, since this is a text about education that also explores different genres and students of diverse backgrounds, and (b) Culler’s Literary Theory, to give theoretical examples that back up your beliefs and values in teaching literature. Many of the questions above will help you address the current NCTE Standards in Learning and Learners in ELA, ELA Content Knowledge, Instructional Practice: Planning and Implementing Instruction in ELA. I will post a link to the NCTE requirements on the blog so you can get a sense of some of the requirements you’ll be asked to meet as a future teacher of ELA: https://ncte.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021_NCTE_Standards.pdf  

 

REQUIREMENTS: Should be around 4-5 pages double spaced; should use at least 2 sources (as listed above) but can use others; cite sources according to MLA or APA format with a  Works Cited Page. DUE Tuesday, October 10 by 5pm

Paper #2, Option 1 (due October 10th)

Paper #2, Option #1: Uppity Words

In Chapter 57 of True Believer, LaVaughn is reeling from being told she is proud, over-smart, disdainful, and rude. Yet her friend Ronell consoles her:

“You want my honest opinion?” she says.

I’ve already heard too many, but she goes ahead:

“LaVaughn, I like you for being uppity. That’s partly

why we’re here. Right?...

Here in this room we’re obligated to be uppity.

That’s our purpose here” (181).

In essence, Ronell is saying that so survive high school in the inner city, where not much is expected of them (and it is very likely they could die in a school shooting or a house fire), being “uppity” is what gives you purpose and steers you to college. Being “uppity” is having self-respect and refusing to accept someone else’s definition of your worth. It’s also the very word that LaVaughn always uses to describe her mother, who is also a strong, determined, self-made woman.

For this option, I want you to trace a word, phrase, or specific idea that seems to repeat throughout the work, changing depending on the context and/or LaVaughn’s understanding of it.  Some examples could be “uppity,” eyes/looks, food, “appreciate,” “hassling,” kissing, hearts, food, lucidity, clean/mess, listening, etc. Try to see how this word or phrase is like a melody that repeats with different instrumentation, sometimes in a trio, sometimes playing a solo, but each time changing how we see or understand the term. Why might Wolff use this specific word to help us explore the emotional reality of LaVaughn’s world? What’s so unique about its denotations and connotations? How does it lend itself to metaphors? And how might it allow the author to speak ‘through’ LaVaughn’s words (since LaVaughn is probably unaware of this thematic repetition).

In exploring this word/phrase/idea, be sure to quote and analyze the text (don’t just tell us how it’s used—show us), and also use Culler to help you contextualize how words and narration work in literature. Remember, you’re guiding us through the material, so the more you can show us, the more we’ll ultimately understand.

REQUIREMENTS: Should be around 3-4 pages double spaced (but can be longer), should use at least 2 sources, and should cite these sources according to MLA or APA with a Works Cited page.

Due Tuesday, October 10^th by 5pm

For Tuesday: True Believer, Part 3

Read all or at least most of Part 3 of True Believer for Tuesday's class, but don't worry about any questions this time. Just read for enjoyment, because I think you'll agree this is a pretty enjoyable book (even if you're too embarrassed to admit that you like it!). When you get to class next week, we'll do an in-class response in place of your questions, which might address one or more of the following ideas:

* What do you make of Dr. Rose's vocabulary lesson, where she insists, "We rely on cliches, we become cliches./We must not be ensnared/by our imagined limitations" (141)? Why might this be one of LaVaughn's most important lessons in the book?

* Why might the story of the pink jellyfish in Chapter 50 be a great metaphor for LaVaughn herself, as a college-bound kid in the inner-city? 

* At the end of Part Three, when LaVaughn gets the rude awakening that makes her "lifetime [jump] upside down." Does this epiphany come out of the blue? Or has the author subtly hinted at it throughout the book? Can we look back and see any signs or hints that LaVaughn, herself, might have noticed?

* One of the echoing words in this book is "uppity," which LaVaughn calls her mother, and her friends call her. We generally see this as a negative word, but how might the book suggest another definition/connotation for uppity? What makes both LaVaughn and her mother uppity? Why could it for both of them a redeeming quality?

* Related to the above, why do words matter in this book: not just what words are used, but how they are used? How does a relationship fall apart by a single word? Also, how can you see into someone's heart and mind by their use of a single word?

For Thursday: True Believer, Chapters 17-42 (pp.57-135)

For Thursday's class, read the rest of Part One and all of Part Two (it seems like a lot, but this books reads very quickly--too quickly, unless you force yourself to slow down and smell the metaphors). 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: Since LaVaughn doesn't have the vocabulary or the experience to see things that the author (and some of the audience) can see, Wolff uses metaphors to bridge the gap between her perspective and the world outside. One example of this is when she notices Jody's green swimming trunks, which "are bigger than Adam's fig leaf/but my insides feel like a window opening" (76). How is the author speaking through LaVaughn here, telling us more than LaVaughn herself is aware of? Is there another passage like this you noticed?

Q2: Why are some chapters, such as Chapter 25 and 31, extremely short, just two stanzas or so of poetry? Why not make every chapter roughly the same size? Also, who do you think is organizing these chapters? The author? Or LaVaughn?

Q3: Writing of Patrick in Chapter 61 (skipping ahead a little--sorry), LaVaughn remarks that “Patrick and I were like two pencils in a box,/parallel but not alive to each other” (190). What makes it so hard for her to connect with Patrick, despite all their common interests, rather than Jody, with whom she has much less in common? 

Q4: Though like many teenagers, LaVaughn is a little annoyed by her mother and her over-watchfulness, how does she come to see her mother as a person, and not just a mother in these chapters? Why might this be an important part of any bildungsroman (German for the novel of growth/education)? 

For Tuesday: Wolff, True Believer, Chapters 1-16 (pp.3-56)

Answer TWO questions total, one from each category below: 

POETICS QUESTIONS (Answer 1):

Q1: True Believer is written in free verse, which lacks any unified rhyme of rhythmic structure. As Helen Vendler, a famous professor of literature explains, “The unit of free verse seems to be breath: there is a breath limit to a long line of free verse. The theoretical appeal of free verse is that it admits an element of chance; it offers a model not of a providential universe but of an aleatory one, where the casual, rather than the fated, holds sway.” (NOTE: “aleatory means random). Why might the idea of “breath” be important to the story or narration of this novel? Also, where might we see an element of chance or spontaneity in the book itself?

Q2: Though this is a novel, it’s also fun to read it as a work of poetry, composed of several hundred small metaphors that quilt the work like a mosaic. Discuss one or two metaphors that dance out at you and make this work more as a poem. Here’s one for free: ““She looks at me with her face full of rules” (8).

Q3: Discuss LaVaughn’s voice as a narrator in the novel. Though obviously 1^st person, what else can we say or characterize about it? Is she a reliable narrator? Do we trust her judgment and perception of the world around her? Does the author sometimes let us see a world that she sees, but doesn’t quite see? And how might her ‘discourse’ (to use Culler’s term) shape the events of this story—a girl’s coming-of-age in the inner city—into a distinct plot?

HERMENEUTICS QUESTIONS (Answer 1):  

Q1: Why do you think Wolff never mentions LaVaughn’s race in the novel, or anyone else’s, for that matter? Though True Believer is a story of inner-city kids in a dangerous environment, is it strange that race never plays a factor in the students’ lives?

Q2: How does this book relate to some of the themes and characters in another poem we read this semester, “Requiem for Fifth Period”? What might both works (and their authors) agree on about the nature of education and the role of educators in that process?

Q3: When the guidance counselor meets with her early on in the novel, he explains what classes she’ll need if she wants to prepare for college. He explains, “your records had us confused at first…we didn’t know that. Not at first./But we know now. We know now” (55). Why do you think they almost missed LaVaughn and didn’t advise her properly? What might have “confused” them?

Q4: Why do you think LaVaughn doesn’t succumb to peer pressure and join the Joyful Universal Church of Jesus with her best friends, Annie and Myrtle? Is she simply jealous of what they share together, or does some other reason keep her aloof from the church and its activities?

For Thursday: Culler, Chapter 6: "Narrative"

NOTE: I'm changing the reading for Culler, and instead of reading Chapter 5 we're going to Chapter 6, since I think it has more bearing on our next book, which is both a work of poetry and a novel. So this chapter concerns how we read books with stories, and what role narrative plays in the process of meaning, especially since language and story don't always go hand-in-hand. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: If a narrative plot can be translated into a different form (a comic, a TV series, a movie, a play, etc.), how does each one change how we experience the plot? In other words, why does telling the same story from a different character's perspective, or in a different medium, change the story, even if the plot is exactly the same (same beginning, middle, and end)?

Q2: As Culler explains, "Feminist criticism has been especially interested in the way that European and American narratives frequently posit a male reader: the reader is implicitly addressed as one who shares a masculine view" (87). What does this mean? How can a book, or a film, which will be read by potentially millions of men and women be focused on a "male" reader? What makes it so? Can you think of an example of a text/film/show that does this?

Q3: Mikhail Bakhtin, a famous Russian theorist of the novel, claims that novels are "fundamentally polyphonic (multi-voiced) or dialogic rather than monological (single-voiced)"(87). Why do you think the novel is geared to expressing multiple voices/perspectives in a way that poetry is not? Related to this, why might novels have become the bona fide form of writing, considering that narrative takes other forms and a story doesn't have to be a novel? 

Q4: Traditionally, third-person omniscient storytelling was the norm, though since the 19th century first-person has become more and more popular, until today it is usually the most dominant perspective. Why do you think this is? Why do readers generally prefer a first-person approach, particularly in more popular forms of literature (YA, romance, horror, etc.)?

For Thursday: Culler, Chapter 4 & Handout on Poetry

 Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: If ‘poetics’ is about the meaning of texts and how these meanings are achieved, then what is ‘hermenutics’? Why might this be equally important in reading or discussing a text? When might hermeneutics also get in the way?

Q2: What is the "Intentional Fallacy," and why is it a "fallacy"? Why do you think intention used to matter for so much, and now, we tend to question it rather than accept it at face value? Similarly, how does this free us up to discuss Sappho in a way we normally couldn’t?

Q3: On page 63, Culler writes that “a work is interpreted as answering questions posed by [the] horizon of expectations, and a reader of the 1990s approaches Hamlet with expectations different from those of a contemporary of Shakespeare’s.” So if Shakespeare was writing to his audience and their expectations, how does it make reading his works especially difficult? How can a modern reader be aware of a previous age’s—and even their own—horizon of expectations?

Q4: What does it mean that a word's form and meaning have an arbitrary relationship? How can a dog not be a dog? Or a moon not be a moon? Does this relate to the idea that “meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless” (67)?

HANDOUT FOR TUESDAY (which didn't print!) 

From M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston: Thompson Wadsworth, 2005. 

Elegy: In Greek and Roman times, “elegy” denoted any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexamter and pentameter lines). The term was also used, however, to refer to the subject matter of change and loss frequently expressed in the elegiac verse form, especially in complaints about love…the Dirge is also a versified expression of grief on the occasion of a particular person’s death, but differs from elegy in that it is short, less formal, and is usually represented as a text to be sung.

Ode: A long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure. Norman McLean said that the term now calls to mind a lyric which is “massive, public in its proclamations, and Pindaric in its classical prototype.” The prototype was established by the Greek poet Pindar, whose odes were modeled on the songs by the chorus in Greek drama…Romantic poets perfected the personal ode of description and passionate meditation, which is stimulated by an aspect of the outer scene and turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional problem or a generally human one.

Epic Poetry: In its strict sense, the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or (in the case of Milton's Paradise Lost) the human race...The narrator begins by stating his argument, or epic theme, invokes a muse or guiding spirit to inspire him in hsi great undertaking, then addresses to the muse the epic question, the answer to which inaugurates the narrative proper."  

For Tuesday: American Journal Part 5: "One Singing Thing"

NOTE: The Paper #1 assignment is in the post below this one

For Tuesday, you can skip the long poem that solely comprises Part Four, even though it's a very interesting poem. For now, though, let's just read through some of the poems in Part Five, which will be our last official day on American Journal before the paper is due--so hopefully it will give you some ideas. 

We'll do an in-class writing when you arrive over some idea(s) from the poems. Instead of focusing on a single poem this time, here are some ideas you might consider:

* Poems that employ intertextuality, which means they evoke or invoke a work outside of the text--either a different type of writing or poem, or something that the poem is somehow communicating with.

* Poems that invoke a different voice than the person speaking the poem, often in italics, that suggests the poem is a composite of different times and conversations.

* Different genres of poetry: elegies, odes, ekphrastic poetry, etc. 

See you in class! Enjoy the three-day weekend!