I have always provided students in my composition class with essays, short stories, and poems.
Aside from giving them an occasional break from me and their daily writing, I knew intuitively that
literature helped students improve their writing. However, I never gave the idea
much thought until I had taught a particularly forceful short story--"Search and
Destroy" by Wayne Karlin¹--for the fourth or fifth time.
For some reason at that point, I asked myself: "What's my purpose in using 'Search and Destroy' in my Freshman Composition
Classes?" After some thought, four answers emerged.
The key to "Search and Destroy" was #1 for two reasons: a) I spend several weeks in Freshman Composition just on words; and b) in the three and one-half pages of "Search and Destroy" the reader's opinions/preconceived notions are perceptibly altered. (Indeed, any short story, essay, or poem that does this could be used.)
William F. Irmscher, in Teaching Expository Writing, writes:
A number of years ago, a senior professor in my department, who at that time was teaching his regular assignment of freshman composition, made an observation I have always remembered, mainly because he called my attention to the importance of one's basic attitude toward language. He was telling me about several foreign students he had in his classes and observed that all of them were doing a better job than the native-born students. Then he gave his reason: "I think they are all doing better because each of them has a respect for language that our students don't have." I have come to like the phrase--"a respect for language"--because it incorporates that same sense of awe that we express when we say we respect electricity or we respect a storm. These, like language, are vast unharnessed resources that only with knowledge and care we learn to control.²
Telling my students to respect language won't make them respect it; however, I can show them I respect, care about, and enjoy the language. From the beginning of the semester I work at showing my students the value of language. For example, I take two simple words--"tell" and "spill"--and attempt to engage the students' interest in them by discussing present meanings and, more importantly, the ways the words have changed over the past thousand years ("tell" meant to count and "spill" meant to kill).
We examine the versatility of the English language with its approximately 400,000 words, its diversity, e.g. , a common word such as "pitch" and its nearly twenty-five meanings, and the importance of context (using "torch" and "4x4" as examples). I also discuss a list of words that I enjoy--for meaning, sound, or whatever; the list includes jejune, kerf, quixotic, and doch-an-dorrach.
The first time around with all of this--from "tell" to "doch-an-dorrach"--l simply show the students that words and languages can be enjoyed. As the semester progresses, we do some dictionary work, connotation, denotation, and the like for which the students do assignments.
Through these activities and the discussion of insults, racial/ethnic slurs, and profanity, I work at showing how words are powerful and how they can be used and abused. Again, as lrmscher puts it, the language--much like electricity and storms--deserves respect for what it can do.³
The short story "Search and Destroy" is one of the stories I have found that best shows how powerful words can be. Though other short stories could be substituted for "Search and Destroy," it, more than most essays and stories I know, enables the students to experience the power of words. Even after having read the story more than 50 times, and having taught it many times, I am still moved by it--and the students pick up on this. My attitudes and feelings show and so influence my students.
But, my purpose in using "Search and Destroy" isn't
just to show the power of words; indeed, as the title of this article suggests, I
use the short story to improve student writing. As noted, there are three other reasons I use literature.
The first is that students often need to learn how to answer questions. Because this is supposedly
an easy task, one that was taught in the third or fourth grades, it is often neglected as
the students progress through the system. From the first reading assignment on, I hammer away at a basic rule for answering
any question: Incorporate the question into your answer.
Q: Why is the title of the story important?
A: The title of this story is (isn't) important because. . . .
Q: How does the author set the tone of the story?
A: The author sets the tone of the story by. . . .
This doesn't guarantee a good answer, but it does encourage students to write complete sentences and can provide the students with a topic sentence for a paragraph-length answer. Furthermore, it eliminates the dreaded blank sheet of paper.
Since there is a strong reaction to "Search and Destroy," it is a good story for students to create and answer their own questions. First, the questions which follow most essays and stories rarely have any meaning for my students. (Indian, average age 30, many with G.E.D.'s). Selecting an essay or story that elicits a strong respo[n]se but that is followed by uninspired or inappropriate questions, is a sure way of killing student interest in writing about the essay or story. Secondly, when students create their own questions, I find out what they see as important in the essay or story rather than what an editor sees as important. Furthermore, by writing their own questions, the students become more involved in the story, have a stake in what happens in the discussion and the writing about the story, and have taken a risk, a risk that is rewarded with five (or whatever number) correct answers. No doubt some students cop-out by asking and responding to what we might consider "easy" questions and answers. But are they all that "easy" for the students? Even if so, these questions and answers are generated by the students and, as such, belong to them. Still, I collect the questions and answers and select seven to ten of the more representative ones which I may then use as starting points for discussion and which I give to the class as an assignment.
With these three reasons as the basis for using "Search and Destroy," I then assign it to the students. One plan of action is this:
I assign the story and tell the students to read it once for the storyline (entertainment) and then twice or more for fuller understanding.
The students then create five questions about the story and answer those questions.
From these, I choose seven to ten of the most representative
questions.
ENGLISH 101
QUESTIONS TO "SEARCH AND DESTROY"
On a separate sheet of paper answer the following. Remember to incorporate the questions into your answers.
What was the author's purpose in using profanity? Was it necessary to the story or its message? Why?
Does the reader's attitude towards the rats change? How so?
How does the treatment of the babies affect the mother? the men? you?
What did the rats come to represent for the men? What evidence can you provide to support this?
If the rats represent something else, why does the author use rats?
What is the message of the story?
What does the story say to you?
We begin discussion of the story with my asking individual
students to say if they liked the story or not and to give a reason or two.
Since my classes usually have about ten students, each student gets a chance to offer opinions.
Irmscher believes that this method is faulty; he writes:
Much of the difficulty in the discussion technique begins with the "starter." Many teachers think they are inviting free and open discussion if they begin as saying asinformally as possible, "Well, what did you think of the essay [or story] we read?" or "Did you like it?" These are both dead-end questions, because students know that the teacher is not interested in hearing someone say the essay [or story] was dreary or dated. It's undoubtedly supposed to be "interesting," or the anthologists wouldn't have chosen it, and the teacher wouldn't have chosen the anthology. So they go along with those questions and say what they're supposed to say in order to get past that hurdle.4
In my classes, Irmscher's assertion is just not so, if for the simple reason that if I don't listen to my students, I can't expect them to listen to me. From day one, I encourage honesty and trust in my students, and by the time we get to "Search and Destroy," we have read several essays and have done a number of written assignments--all of which cultivate a spirit of honesty and trust which is the basis of my teaching.
If these "starter" questions don't generate sufficient discussion, I can use the seven to ten student-created questions as prompts. Because students already "know" the answers, they are more willing to take the risk of offering their thoughts.
Depending upon the discussion and at what point the students are in their writing, I have them do the following assignments:
Answer the seven to ten questions I have selected;
and one of the following:
In a paragraph, react to the story, the assignment of the
story, or the class reaction to the story;
--or--
Write a personal experience narrative that evokes a strong
reaction/feeling in the reader;
--or--
Write about any aspect of the story which was interesting
or important to you.
This brings us to the fourth and final reason for selecting a story such as "Search and Destroy." Students need to examine literature that calls for more than just literary analysis or expression of opinion; students need to examine stories that provide insight into history, psychology, etc. "Search and Destroy" does this by offering insights into history, sociology, psychology, law, and morality as well as offering a basis for analogies--all of which takes literature and writing beyond the Freshman Composition class and involves other aspects of school and, indeed, the students' lives beyond school. Students who experience such connections see literature and writing as more than just assignments and, as a result, literature and writing become more meaningful to the students.
The obvious lesson is questions and answers to short stories;
the most important lesson is to encourage students to take risks, to chance failure, and to learn by questioning.
Only by helping students to do these can we make their answers more meaningful to them.
By creating their own questions and providing their own answers, students get their values and attitudes in writing--a definite first step in
building student self-confidence. And self-confidence in their ability to think and to write about that thinking is absolutely essential if
students are to reach the goal of educating themselves once out of the institution.
Endnotes
¹Wayne
Karlin, "Search and Destroy," in Free Fire Zone: Short
Stories by Vietnam Veterans, eds. Karlin, Paquet, and Rottmann (New York, 1973), pp. 51-54.
This is a story about a group of Marines who are stationed in Vietnam and who are constantly harassed by
rats. After one of the Marines begins to crack up and shoots at the rats, the
men declare war on the animals--by then termed "gooks." The story ends after the capture of a mother rat and
her babies, the killing of the babies, and the torture death of the mother.
²William F. Irmscher, Teaching Expository Writing (New York,
1979), pp. 113-114.
³Irmscher, p. 114.
4Irmscher, pp. 86-87.
Bibliography
Irmscher, William F. Teaching Expository
Writing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.
Karlin, Wayne. "Search and Destroy."
Free Fire Zone: Short Stories
by Vietnam Veterans. Eds. Karlin, Paquet, and Rottmann. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1973.
Petrosky, Anthony R. "From Story to Essay: Reading and Writing."
College Composition and Communication, Vol 33, No.1, February
1982, pp. 19-36.
Sullivan, Jerry and John Hurley. Teaching Literature
Inductively. Anaheim, California: Canterbury Press, 1982.