Comp and Lit

The Boston Globe writes about the new, sanitized versions of the fairy tales where there is no darkness. The witch is sweet, not wicked, and the prince comes to help her, not rescue her.

Yet something important is lost when a child’s introduction to fairy tales comes in such whitewashed form. It’s not just Rapunzel: In toys, movies, and books, the old fairy tales are being systematically stripped of their darker complexities. Rapunzel has become a lobotomized girl in a pleasant tower playroom; Cinderella is another pretty lady in a ball gown, like some model on “Project Runway.”

“Fairy tale” may be our shorthand for castles and happy endings, but these classic stories have villains, too – nefarious witches, bloodthirsty wolves, stepmothers up to no good. And scholars have come to see the stories’ dark elements as the source of their power, not to mention their persistence over the centuries. Rich in allegory, endlessly adaptable, fairy tales emerged as a framework for talking about social issues. When we remove the difficult parts – and effectively do away with the stories themselves – we’re losing a surprisingly useful common language.

The sanitized fairy tale is not useful to introduce literature, but the dirty, messy, scary one is.

Often my students want to tell me what is wrong with the side they are presenting for their research paper, when I make them write the side they disagree with. I let them. I just tell them they have to keep this “on the other hand” discussion out of the paper itself. But I will allow a one-page refutation, in which they take issue with the side they have presented. This refutation may be the only argument paper for their side if the class is only doing one controversial issues paper. Or, as I prefer to use it, this can be extra credit.

I assume you have had my experience with extra credit, which is that the students who do it aren’t the students that need it. The refutation, however, sometimes gets written by the students who aren’t as concerned with their grades, but are committed to the issue they wrote about. I like that. It’s their way of telling me that they discovered something out of kilter with the arguments they have presented, even if they are the strongest arguments for that side.

I will say that the refutation more generally gets written when one of two things happen, either I have a day between due dates of the research paper and the refutation or there is only one research paper. It seems that students want me to know their side, even if it means more work. So I give them a chance to tell me.

Other people approach this issue by having the students include in their research paper a counterargument and its rebuttal. Either approach works, but I personally find it easier to separate these out.

This is from my TYCA-SW talk on controversial issues in the classroom.

After the defining of controversial, we go to Opposing Viewpoints, one of my favorite databases, and look through the lists for interesting topics. Some students didn’t know there was another viewpoint aside from theirs. They have an opinion on a topic they did not know was controversial. “Doesn’t everyone support the development of nuclear energy?” Or “Of course animal testing is wrong.” The database lets them see that these clear delineations of truth are murkier than they thought.

Other students say that they don’t know what they think or what they believe on any controversial issue. And some of them honestly don’t. They’ve never thought through a single substantive issue. I tell them they don’t have to know which side they support in that case. They only have to pick a side, perhaps the one with the seeming preponderance of information.

Once the introduction of the argument paper has been presented, how do we get our students to look at both sides of the controversial issue that they have chosen to address, an issue of which they most likely have a strong opinion? When students deal with controversial topics, they like to write on the side they agree with and, unfortunately, they will often make sweeping logical errors because of that. I tell my students that they don’t see the holes the people on the other side could drive a Mack truck through, but another particularly relevant metaphor is that they will describe the living room and not see the elephant. There’s a sneaky way to get around that though. It is to require them to write on the side they disagree with.

Students don’t want to do this. It’s an issue that is important to them, so we can’t just say, “Okay. Now we’re going to write on the side you disagree with. Bill, are you for or against capital punishment?” Many of them will tell us that they support what they oppose if we start from that question.

Instead, what I do, is ask them to brainstorm on their topic. We may already have done multiple brainstorming on the possibilities of topic at this point. They should now have a clear idea of which topic they want to write on. So I ask them to write down what they believe and why, specifically detailing what they think are the best three reasons for that. I am clear that these may not be the arguments that the write their paper on, but I want to know what they know about the topic now. Then I take the papers up. Don’t skip this step. Only after I have all the papers in hand do I let them know that they will be writing on what they disagree with.

Usually I will get groans at this point. I don’t want to break my streak, but so far when I have explained why I am doing it, while not thrilled, they are more comfortable.

What rationale do I give them? Well, I start with the Mack truck metaphor. Then I explain that it is easier to see the tiniest flaws in the opposition than it is to see the glaring errors in your arguments. It also helps them realize the other side does have legitimate and cogent arguments. If they didn’t, I remind the class, it wouldn’t be a controversial issue.

The papers themselves, I tell the students, will be stronger if they don’t agree with what they are telling me because they will know what the best arguments are for the other side because those are the ones that they are most willing to at least listen to. Also, I tell them, it increases their thinking to have to come up with reasonable arguments for the other side and thinking is a skill that the college educated person ought to have. Finally, of course, I tell them that they have to and as I’m the grader, they’re kind of stuck. Usually they will grin about that.

This is the point at which we begin our research. If we are only writing one paper, then they only research the side they disagree with. These papers come out okay, but they are not the strongest.

The best way I have discovered to get great first papers is to have a second one coming. If I am going to do two research papers on the same topic, then I have to know what the best arguments are for my side and for the other side. That makes the arguments for the other side better because there is a balance. So if we are going to be able to do two research papers, I have them do the research for both at the same time. It helps them to see the whole picture of the issue. I have them find their articles for both sides and take notes on both sides. In my classes, it’s been the best way to get solid research papers.

At this point, I make sure and acknowledge that I know that they are writing on the side opposite of their beliefs. I tell them that it may be hard for them to find arguments that they think are convincing. Or it may not be. I remind them that there have to be some good arguments for both sides for the issue to be a controversial one. This is a good time to discuss the philosophical underpinnings that prioritize arguments. If, for example, the topic is abortion, is the bedrock belief behind the presentation an issue of life, life at all costs, liberty, personal liberty, or pursuit of happiness, often an economic issue? (Yes, I sneak in a little history here.)

There are reasons for the weight given various arguments and people’s belief system determines the best arguments. It helps the students begin to articulate their own worldview. And it gives the students a way of appreciating and accepting the other side’s arguments, even when they do not find them convincing. It also lets them examine their own conscience when they find themselves being persuaded to a different viewpoint, which is always an interesting experience to watch.

This is from my TYCA-SW talk on controversial issues in the classroom.

When I am introducing the controversial arguments research paper, I start with that discussion of what it means to be controversial. This is an aspect of the paper that I once thought did not have to be explained, but I have learned it does.

Since this is a controversial issue paper, I tell my students, there must be a controversy. If one side is clearly right, there is no point in making an argument. Very few people write papers about how the Americans were interventionalists in the 30s and that is why World War II got started. There are some, but not many. There’s a reason for that.

If one side is patently obvious, what’s the point of arguing? It is only when thoughtful people disagree that there is a topic suitable for a controversial issues paper. This discussion helps me avoid the students going after the least controversial things just to prove me wrong about people arguing the topic.

This is from my TYCA-SW talk on controversial issues in the classroom.

Emily Dickinson was engaged at college. She had a lover later on, perhaps a judge? But no one wants to talk about it, argues Christopher Benfey, because we like our story better.

We tend to reserve special roles for our favorite writers—sepulchral Poe; sardonic Mark Twain; sexy, world-embracing Walt Whitman—and resist evidence that contradicts our cherished images. Emily Dickinson in this constellation is forever the lovelorn spinster, pining away in her father’s mansion on Main Street in Amherst, Mass. We assume that the grand passion behind her poems (“Wild nights—Wild nights! Were I with thee”) must have had a commensurate inspiration, whether imaginary, superhuman, or divine. Evidence that Dickinson’s love life was fairly ordinary, with ordinary temptations and disappointments, doesn’t quite fit the bill. Her exile on Main Street has seemed a necessary part of the Dickinson myth, so necessary, indeed, that contrary information—which happens to have been piling up lately—has often been discounted or ignored.
…
If there’s a surprise in all this, it’s an ordinary one. It turns out that Emily Dickinson had the kind of early romantic entanglement and disappointment that so many young people have. They find someone congenial; they exchange gifts and promises; their parents intervene for various acknowledged and unacknowledged reasons. If such ordinariness seems somehow beneath the dignity of one of our supreme poets, that’s probably why even this latest challenge to the image of isolated Emily has gotten so little attention. Alas, there’s nothing mysterious or mystical here except what Emily Dickinson made, in her extraordinary poems, of her all-too-human disappointment.

Read all the scintillating details at Slate.

from View from Room 125

A strong character analysis will:

1. identify the type of character it is dealing with.
2. describe the character.
3. discuss the conflict in the story, particularly in regards to the character’s place in it.

A different approach to writing a character analysis

If you are having a panic attack, or its milder equivalent, of writing a character analysis, consider treating it as a personnel review. Pretend you are the manager and these three characters (or five or six) are working for you. What would you say about them?

Remember a personnel review will typically cover these items:

quality of work
job knowledge
relationships with others
customer service
work habits
dependability
adaptability/flexibility
promotability

Which of these can best be used (in character analysis of the play Oedipus Rex) to describe Oedipus? Creon? Jocaste?
A problem to avoid:

Many evaluations contain too few facts and too many opinions. What the evaluator believes to be true (opinion) is frequently accepted as truth without question, challenge or reservation. Corroboration backed by facts is often missing.

from How to write better employee evaluations

And how to do a good job from the same source:

Seek input from other observers when appropriate.Base written evaluations on multiple, first-hand observations.Know what you’re looking for. Evaluate the right things. Concentrate exclusively on factors directly related to job performance….Focus on improvement. Use the evaluation to set goals for better performance.

…Be as specific as possible. Use examples. Glittering generalities don’t help much in targeting action or improvement plans.

…Choose words carefully. The goal is clarity.

Just some thoughts for your character analysis on Oedipus.
An example of stock questions asked on an employee evaluation that you might use can be found here. It is from New York.

Another presentation on personnel reviews is this one from New Mexico.

Obviously not all of them will be relevant for the play, but they are still interesting to think about.

If this post was helpful to you, please leave a note in the comments to let me know. You could point out what was most helpful, so that I will know what I might want to expand later.

A strong character analysis will:

1. identify the type of character it is dealing with. 
2. describe the character, using various measures as detailed below.
3. discuss the conflict in the story, particularly in regards to the character’s place in it.

To describe the character:

Consider the character’s name and appearance.

• Is the author taking advantage of stereotypes? The hot-tempered redhead, the boring brunette, the playboy fraternity guy.
• Is the author going against stereotypes? The brilliant blonde, the socially adept professor, the rich but lazy immigrant.
• Is the author repeating a description of the character? If so, then it is important. For example, Kathy in East of Eden is described as rodent-like and snake-like, “sharp little teeth” and a “flickering tongue.”
• Is their name significant? Is it a word that means something, like Honor or Hero? Does it come from a particular place or time and make reference to that? Scarlett, Beowulf.
• Appearance and visual attributes are usually far less important than other factors, unless their appearance is the point– such as in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Clothing also rarely matters, except to make him/her easier to visualize.

Consider if he/she a static (unchanging) or dynamic (changing) character. If the character has changed during the course of the story:

• Was the change gradual or rapid?
• Was it subtle or obvious?
• Are the changes significant to the story or are they a minor counterpoint?
• Are the changes believable or fantastic?
• What was his/her motivation to change?
• What situations or characters encouraged the change?
• How does the character learn from or deal with the change?

Consider how the author discloses the character:

• By what the character says or thinks.
• By what the character does.
• By what other characters say about him/her.
• By what the author says about him/her.
• The short form for this is STAR (says, thinks, acts, reacts).

Look for these things within the creation of the character:

psychological/personality traits

• Do these characteristics aid in the character being consistent (in character), believable, adequately motivated, and interesting?
• Do the characteristics of the character emphasize and focus on the character’s role in the story’s plot?

motivation

• Is the character ethical? Is he/she trying to do the right thing, but going about it in the wrong way?
•  Is the motivation because of emotion (love, hate) or a decision (revenge, promotion)?

behavior /actions

• Does the character act in a certain way consistently?
• Or is the character erratic?
• Could one pluck the character from the story, put them in another story, and know how they would react?

relationships

• With other characters in the story
• How others see/react to him/her

weaknesses/faults

• Typical tragic weakness is pride.  Oedipus is proud.
• Weakness could be anything.  In “Little Red Riding Hood,” the girl talks to a stranger.  That’s a weakness.

strengths/virtues

• There are many different strengths and virtues.
• One strength/virtue is being good in trying times, like Cinderella.
• Another strength/virtue is caring for family, like Little Red Riding Hood.
• Another strength/virtue is being smart, like Oedipus.
• Most protagonists have more than one strength/virtue.

moral constitution

• Often a character will agonize over right and wrong.
• If a character doesn’t agonize and chooses one or the other easily, that is also significant.

protagonist/antagonist

• Does the story revolve around this character’s actions?
• If so, is the character the hero (protagonist) or villain (antagonist)?

complex/simple personality

• Personalities are more likely to be simple in children’s stories, fairy tales, and short stories.
• Personalities are more likely to be complex in longer works.
• Even in short works, such as “The Story of an Hour,” the character’s personality can be complex.  Then it depends on what the author was focusing on.

history and background

• Sometimes a character analysis looks at the history of the individual character.  Was that person mistreated? abused? well-loved? liked?
• Sometimes the history of the work matters more.  Is the story set in World War II?  In ancient Greece?  That makes a difference because culture changes stories.  If you don’t know the culture, though, you may not be able to comment on this.

similarities and differences between the characters

• This could be the foil aspect again.  (See How to write a character analysis for a longer discussion.)
• It could be looking at how characters complement each other.
• It could be looking at why characters would be antagonistic.

character’s function in story

• Is the character an integral character?  (Cinderella)
• Is the character a minor character? (The wicked stepmother in “Cinderella”)
• Is the character someone who could have been left out or is gratuitous? (The second wicked stepsister in “Cinderella.”)

If this post was helpful to you, please leave a note in the comments to let me know. You could point out what was most helpful, so that I will know what I might want to expand later.

Besides the links in the first paragraph, other sources on the website on this topic include:
How to Write a Character Analysis: Introduction
How to Write a Character Analysis: Body Paragraphs
How to Write a Character Analysis: Titles
How to Write a Character Analysis: Conclusion
Questions for Literary Analysis: Theme
Questions for Literary Analysis: Setting
Questions for Literary Analysis: Point of View

I recommend that the students do a search of weblinks on their research topic in Composition and Literature. It helps them know what is out there. It gets them integrating the computer into their lives.

Gulliver’s Travels’ Home Page includes a timeline of important events during Swift’s life. It also has a dictionary of related information (more like an encyclopaedia), bibliographic print sources, link sources, and a list of Swift’s inventions in language.

The Victorian Web’s page on Swift has several sets of essays on various subjects including Swift’s biography, his religious views, and a complete set of “leading questions” on various topics. These leading questions include a short intro on a topic, such as Swift’s satire, and then lists questions which could be used for discussions or for writing prompts.

Lesson plans and teacher’s guides, including sample chapters. The “puzzle pack” is actually a few quizzes. Most of these are things you have to buy. But if you were teaching a unit and didn’t have time to prepare, some of them are quite useful. Also, not all of them have to be purchased. Vocabulary.com has words that are more difficult from GT listed on their site in order of appearance.

The Teacher’s Guide to the Core Classics has an introduction to the time and a biography of Swift, a discussion of how to teach the novel, and an essay on stylistic techniques within the novel. The stylistic techniques include satire, sarcasm, irony, and the narrator. Then there are basic questions from and for each chapter that students may use to show reading comprehension. There are also teacher notes on each chapter (with short paragraph-long discussions of certain elements) and suggested activities, all of which are aimed at much younger students than the college freshman.

A short summary of each book in GT, ten study questions, and seven general questions. It is a good short intro to the book. Perhaps it could be used as a reading guide. If you were going to read without questions, this would be a good way to examine the work.

Swift’s Moral Satire in GT discusses the work as a whole and the metaphors of each of the books. The essay uses bibliographic sources, citing, quoting, and paraphrasing them, instead of just listing them at the end. It is an interesting essay and discusses the mode of travelogue.

Measurement, Irony, and the Grotesque in GT begins with an argument that postmodern scholars are nostalgic for the 18th century. It uses Foucault to identify the type of knowledge in the novel. It is definitely written to an academic audience, perhaps graduate students? It offers some interesting ideas but is not easy to read.

Debunking the Bunk, despite its popular name, is actually an academic paper on Book 4 of GT. It argues that the horses are bad and too good for their own good, that Gulliver is, in fact, gullible (as his name implies), and that the utopia is dystopian. It uses several interesting quotes from other works that it cites. Since Bk 4 is a favorite to write on, there might be many like this, but it is a good essay.

Imaginary Voyages is an essay about travelogues of the era just preceding Swift’s writing. It offers the possibility that Mundus was a source for Swift, since a friend of Swift’s translated the work. It would be good to add this to my lecture on the travelogue aspect of the work (which idea I borrowed from Knowles).

Leading Questions about 18th C authors is a list of questions, mostly about Swift’s work, created by students in a literature course at Brown University. It is clear that some of the questions are useful discussion questions while others are actual questions students had and posted here.

Gulliver’s Travels Assignment Guide gives a useful short introduction to the work and the times. It also says to search Project MUSE for articles, instead of JSTOR or Academic Search Complete.

A site which is easily found, has good stuff, but which type may only count once is Sparknotes on Gulliver. They have a plot overview, a list of characters, chapter by chapter analysis, and a discussion of themes, motifs, and symbols. The themes they mention include might versus right and the individual versus society. Motifs include excrement and foreign languages. It is an introductory work, but is very detailed for all of that.