I usually start this class with a 10 minute prezi that talks about the difference between a scene and exposition. This comes from the Roorbach book and from books on fiction I've read. I try to simplify it as much as possible on the prezi so that it fits their assignment.
Scenes "show" and make readers feel like they're there, experiencing--or at least witnessing--everything that happens. Exposition gives backstory, facts and information that the reader needs to understand the present or ongoing action of the story (narrative). Exposition "tells" more than it "shows." Although it's somewhat different, I explain summary as part of exposition; beginning students tend to automatically write summaries and struggle with scene. But I honestly think part of that boils down to lack of effort and time spent working on the essay, trying to find the precise details, not lack of understanding.
Creating a believable scene, built from well-chosen details, can be extremely difficult. Writing a summary is much easier. Students tend to take the easy path. This is hard for me to understand because when I was a student I was a perfectionist. I at least TRIED to communicate everything--including shades of emotional meaning--as precisely as I could.
Before going over the prezi today, I started class by presenting TS Eliot's definition of "objective correlative," from his essay on Hamlet, on the board:
If writers or poets or playwrights want to create an emotional reaction in the audience, they must find a combination of images, objects, or description evoking the appropriate emotion. The source of the emotional reaction isn't in one particular object, one particular image, or one particular word. Instead, the emotion originates in the combination of these phenomena when they appear together.
After sharing this definition, I asked students how this idea of objective correlative connects back to
"showing," not "telling"--what we've been talking about with the personal essays. I waited but didn't really get answers, so I tried to explain. I suggested that in their own essays, they should strive to create SCENES (not just that evoke emotions in the reader. I also suggested that these scenes would be composed of not just one or two, but multiple SENSORY DETAILS that work together to create or evoke the emotion in the reader.
Of course, this explanation was rather abstract--me "telling," not showing--so I offered this overwrought example.
Imagine a film: the sky is gray, clouds heavy; it's pouring rain. A few people dressed in black are gathered around a freshly dug grave. Some are crying, most have their heads down. A woman with tears streaming down her face steps from the group and places a ring on the tombstone...a few seconds later, the clouds briefly open and a ray of sun shines down, hitting the ring and a green patch of grass near the grave.
After pointing out that the example was a bit cheesy, I asked them what emotions the scene evoked. A couple of people said "sadness," so I asked about the sunlight at the end...no one really spoke, so I said maybe that could evoke hope or at least some glimpse of optimism. I'm not sure how smoothly I said any of this--I don't like the idea of recording myself--but short of that, I have no idea how I sound. Perhaps ridiculous. Honestly, the students seemed to find it all ridiculous. Most didn't seem to be listening or paying attention. But at any rate, I tried to get the idea across.
Next, I asked them to consider how John Updike's poem "Dog's Death" illustrates this idea of "objective correlative." Here is the poem:
“Dog’s Death” by John Updike
She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution had endured the shame
Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution had endured the shame
Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
I'd never really used this poem in class before (to teach this idea, anyway), but a former professor posted it on Facebook a couple days ago, and it stuck in my head. The discussion of the poem in today's class wasn't great--on first reading, the students didn't seem to like it, or "get" it. My expectation was that it would be a great example to show how extremely powerful emotions are best conveyed by OBJECTIVE images. But they certainly didn't seem to think it packs the emotional wallop that I do. So, it pretty much fell flat.
I tried to salvage it by going through line by line and explaining that he's presenting an "objective" scene--not "telling" us what to feel--but in doing so creates powerful emotions. The scene of the puppy trying to bite the man's hand as it dies is a heart-wrenching juxtaposition, as is the final image of the dog--in the middle of its suffering--pulling itself across the floor to use the bathroom on a newspaper, in order to be a "good dog." The overall emotional weight of the poem is greater than its individual details. But I don't really know that the students saw any of this in class--my feeling was that they found the poem pretty easy to dismiss.
If I were to use this in the future, perhaps I'd put them into small groups and have them read the poem aloud, then answer questions about the emotions it evokes (a problem with this is that many aren't strong readers, and they read it in broken chunks that make no grammatical sense--if it makes no sense at all, then, of course, the emotional weight is lost).
In any case, after this I went over the quick prezi that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. After going over the prezi, I asked them to look at their own rough drafts and mark which sentences / paragraphs are "scene" and which are summary/ exposition. I suggested they try to "crack open" the summaries by focusing on particular lines they could develop into full scenes. I also suggested they consider any un-answered questions a reader might have while reading, to try to develop scenes that could help answer those questions.
Post class reflection: Of course I'm writing all of this post-class, but my immediate feeling today was that what I was trying to do just didn't work. I may have tried to fit in too many examples--just throwing things out there hoping something would stick. But none of the examples really seemed to engage the students. During the part of class where they were supposed to analyze their own use of scene and exposition, most just started talking to one another or looking at their phones (even though I have a no phone policy in the syllabus). I would have had them exchange essays, but their rough drafts at this point are too "rough". That's something I could change in the future, but I'm not sure why it would work any better. The novelty of someone else's essay?
The part of teaching I struggle most with is organizing thoughts/ ideas/ material in a way that is relevant or engaging to students. I have no doubt that my classes have "content", but I do sometimes (perhaps often) leave class with the feeling that the students didn't really get it, that I'm not presenting it in a way that reaches them. The ideas that I went over in Core today aren't particularly difficult to understand, but it is difficult to put them into practice. I'm not sure what sort of "fun" activity I could do to trick them into putting in that work.
No comments:
Post a Comment