Literature and Writing

Stewart Bellman

Black Hills State College

James Moffett, English teacher and critic of the teaching of English, observes that all too often we employ writing in the literature class as a method of testing: Students write about the literature they read to show that (1) they've read the assignment and (2) they've comprehended what they read.  Writing comes to be viewed as a means to an end, and the teacher and subsequently the students forget that writing invariably breaks new ground for both the writer and the reader.  Thus, the purpose of writing is subverted into the role of testing device.

I've discovered an approach to writing about literature in the last year that truly allows students who write in the literature class to employ their writing as a learning device, helpful not only to the writers but also to the other students and to the teacher.  The two primary sources for my thinking are Louise Rosenblatt's The Reader, The Text, The Poem and David Bleich's books Subjective Criticism and Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism.  This approach will generate open and free reading of texts, contribute to the classroom as a community of readers, and lead to original writing on the part of students.

This new approach which I've come to like so much runs counter to the New Criticism that has dominated college classrooms for so much of the twentieth century.  As I understand it, the New Critical approach to interpreting literature argues that each literary text carries with it its own meaning, that that meaning can be discovered by careful analysis of texts, and that a single "correct" or "best" interpretation can be determined.  Though I've believed in the New Critical view for most of my academic life, I have found it stifling in the classroom for it doesn't encourage hypothesizing, free expression, or independence among students.  It does encourage excessive dissection of literature and dependence on the guidance of a teacher, who is ultimately dependent on the guidance of critics.

As Louise Rosenblatt suggests, this New Critical approach leads us to respect quality imaginative literature as the province of the highly educated, but we don't read it.  Mostly, we read things that appear to require no interpretation or heavy thinking.  I don't believe this is the purpose of education; I believe our purpose is to free the graduates of our secondary schools to read everything with enjoyment and to learn at the same time, but without the onus of thinking they should be learning the same things everyone else is learning.

David Bleich points out that even the critics, who pose as objective analysts and evaluators, eventually rely on subjectively selected judgments and evidence to prove their points and that critics rarely
agree among themselves about the literature they interpret.  Bleich further conjectures that if we could begin our interpretation of literature on the subjective level, we would ultimately develop more objective reasons for our interpretations.  The following techniques are ways of approaching literature subjectively--ways that will generate open and free readings of texts, contribute to the classroom as a community of readers, and lead to original writing on the parts of students.

The idea here is that readers first write personal responses to the literature they study as a method for introducing ideas for consideration and as a way of gaining access to what the others in a group are actually experiencing when they read.

1. Read a work in common.  If it's a poem read it aloud together before you begin responding.
2. Write a paraphrase of the piece.  That is, write the piece in your own words.  You're not trying to tell its meaning so much as you're trying to retell the piece in your own language.  With a short poem or fairly short story, have the students write for approximately 8 to 10 minutes.  Then have all of the class, or at least a large representation of students, read exactly what they've written out loud.  The idea here is to enforce the view that writing should communicate with an audience.  Since no answer can be wrong, little is risked.  Also, since so little time has been spent writing, no one expects perfection.  After the readings, talk about how the paraphrases were different and then about how they were similar.  You'll be surprised that a common thread appears--the theme.
3. Another discussion starter is to have the students select one word in the poem or story as the most important word to that reader.  Then the class (including the teacher) writes for an 8 to 10 minute period about why that word is the most important one for the reader or about what in the piece causes that word to become the most important.  (What happens is that readers invariably talk about the other words in the piece or about personal reasons for the word's being so important.  Again, common themes will emerge though no two people select the same word.  A variation is to have readers select the most important line, sentence or image.)
4. A successful writing problem that reveals much about the meaning of a literary text is to have students list associations they make with a text.  They might write down real people the characters remind them; characters in other stories--including television and movies; incidents in their own lives, the life of their town or state; current or historical events, etc.  This will generate lots of interpretative possibilities for a text.  Then they might write more about the strongest associational response they have.  In addition to leading to original writing, the developed association will often reveal a lot about the source test.  These developed associations could take the form of essays, or original poems, or of stories.  Again, common threads will appear, and the community will, gain access to each reader's response.
5. A response similar to the associational response is to ask readers to write down one or more occasions when they've experienced similar emotional responses.  Then the readers select one time they've felt similarly to the way the story or poem causes them to feel and write a description of that moment.  (This one is tricky in that the goal is not to pry into readers' emotions or personal lives so much as it is to extend the emotions of the piece as well as to discover the shared emotions.  The written piece that results can serve as the basis for original compositions.)
   

The kinds of writing about literature that live described so far might be called "Searching Inside Oneself" for understanding of literature and other art.  Another approach involves "Searching Outside Oneself."  Here's a way that procedure could work.

1. Read a story or poem.  As you read, write down ALL of the questions that come to mind about the piece.  Include questions that you're sure you can answer, questions you think the text will answer before you finish reading, questions someone else in the classroom might be able to answer, and questions you're not sure anyone can answer.
2. After you've finished reading, cross off all the questions that have been answered or that you can hypothesize as satisfactory if not verifiably correct answer for.
3. The teacher should then list the remaining questions on the board.  To do this have the readers give their unanswered questions.  (Many will be identical.)
4. Have the group answer any questions they can, and the teacher can do the same.
5. Students should have one to three questions remaining.  Students then select the question they most want answered or that they believe will contribute most to understanding the poem or story.  The students then research the answer for the question, and the students ultimately write papers about the researching process as well as the answer and the implications of the answer for the meaning of the story.
6. The students then share their essays with the class.

Something that's important here is that readers learn to write questions as they read.  In my experience, American students almost never have many questions even though they don't understand the poem or story.  In a sense they learn to "get into dialog" with material they read.  Then, we make no mystery of answering the earlier questions.  Finally, the writing assignment reveals that the manner in which the answer was sought and found (or not found) is as important as the answer, but more important, sharing both the process and the product with a community is important.  Everyone's understanding is enhanced.

I'm intrigued with the methods I've related here.  They're not original with me, but they truly have helped me become both a stronger reader and a more convincing writer.  I have been relieved of the responsibility of finding the correct literary answer to the meaning of what I read.  I've also realized that the frustration I so often feel when I finish reading a really good book is not with the fact that the story ended too soon, but rather with the fact that I'm not through with my interaction with the book.  I believe we should advance the idea that educated readers seek to enlarge on what they read by keeping a journal of their reading responses and questions.  The thing is that when readers begin by writing about their associations, paraphrases, feelings, and questions in an openly subjective manner, the longer they write the more analytical and eventually objective they become.  In this way, readers discover truths about themselves, about the text, and about the world both readers and text exist in.  (In school, as a result, this really is the sort of assignment that can be graded on length.  It's possible to begin by writing insincerely or dishonestly, but the more words one writes, the more the writer is likely to stumble onto some truth.)

If I have a criticism of students entering college these days, it's that they seem to believe the world consists of facts and skills that can be repeated or demonstrated, and that's all they have to do.  They don't view themselves as thinking people who can decide what things mean or what things should mean, and they don't view themselves as people capable of deciding how the world should be.  They just want to buy those parts of the world they personally like as advertised.  They don't seem to want to decide what the products should be or how they should be made.  Consequently, most of my students are willing to work at assigned tasks, but they rarely believe they have any business deciding what those tasks should be.  I sincerely believe the writing approach to reading and interpreting literature I've outlined here can help them change that view of themselves.