This paper is a 2–3 page literary analysis. You will be allowed to choose your own topic, but your paper should focus on the character you have been assigned. Your paper should present an argument and be thesis driven. This means that you will be required to form an interpretation and support it using the text.
By Thursday, you should have a topic chosen for your paper. On a note card or sheet of paper, write what your preliminary thesis statement is. You may decide to change it later, but I want to ensure that you are thinking about your papers. This will be worth an all or nothing 5 points.
This paper will be due on Tuesday, November 9th.
Requirements
A title distinct to your paper
Thesis statement (A sentence in your introduction that summarizes your argument) 2–3 pages
Double spaced
Parenthetical documentation (no works cited/bibliography required) Sample Topic Questions
• Each of these characters undergoes a change during the seven years between the beginning and end of the book. How has your character evolved over time? What has been the toll of the 7 years? Be specific (go beyond: Dimmesdale/Chillingworth gets worse).
• All of these characters have two distinct sides that seem to be at odds (i.e.
Hester’s pride and shame). Identify two opposite sides of one character and argue which of them is dominant.
• Compare two chapters that deal with your character (i.e. “Hester at the Needle”
and “Another View of Hester” or “The Interior of a Heart” and “Minister in a Maze”).
What does an examination of these chapters tell us about a character or the relationships between two characters?
• Choose a symbol that is closely associated with your character. Why is this symbol associated with the character and what does it tell us about him/her? Is the symbol constant or does it change over the course of the book?
• Are there any points with regard to your character that you and another person in your group disagree on? Write a paper that argues your side of the disagreement and have your friend write the opposite point of view.
• All three of the main characters have a conflict between their conscious and unconscious desires. Write a paper that identifies both of these desires and argue in favor of the one that ultimately controls them.
• Adapt one of the questions from the discussion/debate for a paper. You will need to narrow the topic and make it more specific.
• Choose a topic of your own and get it approved by Thursday at the end of class.
and nineteenth centuries: the historical setting for the story and for the author’s reflections upon it. While the story will no doubt take center stage, it would be hard to develop a complete historical perspective for the novel without some understanding of the American Renaissance and the aesthetic that it gave rise to. To the extent that Sarah decides to introduce her students to the conventions of American romance, she will be able to make use of structuralism approaches as well discussion of the ways in which this genre creates expectations for its readers.
Should Sarah choose to address symbols and images within the text, she may find that archetypal criticism is valuable, as this approach will allow her students to interrogate the cultural and psychological bases of the story. Of less importance would be an investigation of Nathanial Hawthorne’s life. While much has been made of his Puritan roots, especially in interpretations of “Young Goodman Brown” (Hawthorne, 1999a), the author’s connection to the place and people of The Scarlet Letter will lead to marginal results at best.
Sarah decides to create several activities to help her students connect to the characters and the themes of this canonical novel. She wants to balance close textual reading with relevant connections to contemporary issues. First, she creates a character log assignment that requires students to become experts on a particular character through the text (see Activity 1, page 72). In keeping with her goals of having students argue with a canonical text, rather than simply receive it, she creates a discussion/debate activity (see Activity 2, page 73). Finally, to give students the opportunity to construct an individual interpretation of the text, she designs an essay assignment (see Activity 3, page 74).*
What Kinds of Texts Will Supplement Their Reading of The Scarlet Letter?
The subject of pregnancy out of wedlock is clearly an emotional and controversial one, and so any discussion of this topic in literature will require sensitivity and a good bit of preparation. Adding the perspectives of literary texts from other times and cultures, though, can be a valuable method for examining the issue. A few texts that look at this topic from differing cultural and historical perspectives are Maxine Hong Kingston’s (1989) The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Gloria Naylor’s (1983) Women of Brewster Place, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2004) Purple Hibiscus.
To familiarize students with both Hawthorne’s prose style and with seventeenth-century Salem, Sarah could assign “Young Goodman Brown” or “The Maypole of Marymount” (Hawthorne, 1999b).
ASSESSMENT
There are four general outcomes that we want for students as outcomes of literacy education: cultural literacy, aesthetic appreciation of literary art, well developed inter -pretive skills, and the ability to apply critical and theoretical perspectives. How can teachers assess these outcomes?
By cultural literacy we mean, literally, an ability to read our culture: the common beliefs, values, and ideas of our society. Classic literary texts allow us to do this because they represent, in significant part, our cultural heritage. They provide a perspective that spans our history as they represent historical choices about literary subjects, moral decisions, personal characteristics, and social conflicts.
TEACHING THE CLASSICS 75
Classics also allow us to track the history of our aesthetic judgments. They show us how narrative structures change over time, how the limits of taste and social tolerance shift, and how standards of beauty change and cultural values change. The assignment of “classic” works of literature contributes directly to these outcomes.
Gauging our expectations for the reception of classic texts is a matter of knowing the students. It depends on the kind of place in which you are teaching, the experiences the kids in the school have had, and the expectations they have for themselves and their school. Students from more traditional schools or more affluent districts may accept canonical texts without question, simply thinking that these are among the things they are supposed to do. Students attending an affluent suburban high school might be more friendly toward a book like The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald, 1991) than students at a less affluent urban school. The learning objectives that we plan around thus need to fit the settings in which we work.
For a book like The Scarlet Letter, we might imagine a specific set of objectives like the following:
• Understand and articulate the motivations of each of the main characters.
• Recognize and explain instances of narrative ambiguity.
• Understand and critique the novel as a reflection of American social norms.
• Apply a variety of critical lenses to the novel to discover more than one interpretation of the text. (See Teaching American literature on the website.)
Additional Resources
You will find the following books helpful as you consider using classics in the classroom.
Abrams, M. H. (1999). A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Appleman, D. (2009). Critical encounters in high school English: Teaching literary theory to adolescents. 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press & Urbana: IL, National Council of Teachers of English.
Blau, S. (2003). The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Carey-Webb A. (2001). Literature and Lives; A Response-based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English. Urbana, IL. : National Council of Teachers of English.
Jago, C. (2004). Classics in the classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Moon, B. (1999). Literary terms. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Scholes, R. (2001). The crafty reader. New Haven: Yale University Press.
For additional resources, see Teaching British literature, Teaching Shakespeare, and Syllabi, units, lesson plans, and activities on the website.)
PORTFOLIO REFLECTION
What classic texts did you read as a high school student? What memories to you have of how those classic texts were presented to you. Recall, in as much detail as you can, how, one of your literature teachers approached that text. Then, create your own lessons around that text, detailing what changes you would make and why.
*The authors thank Matthew Jabaily for these lessons on The Scarlet Letter.
76 WHAT LITERATURES ARE WE TEACHING?
C H A P T E R 5
The Recent Rise of Young Adult Literature
What Exactly is Young Adult Literature, and Why isn’t it in the Book Room? If it’s Not in the Book Room, Where Can I find it? Locating Quality Young Adult Literature How do I Possibly Choose?
Developing Selection Criteria What Can I Do (or Should I Avoid) with the Anthology?
Using What’s in the Book Room What if I Get into Trouble?
Censorship and the Complications of Choice
MILLENNIAL TEENS AND
CONTEMPORARY YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Judy Blume, meet MTV’s The Real World. Where once the protagonists of young-adult fiction simply pondered the prospect of sex, many of today’s teen characters are actually doin’it! Though outlets like Wal-Mart may decline to stock some of the racier titles in their stores, there’s a growing market for teen fiction (Barnes & Noble reports double-digit growth in YA sales in the past six years). And that’s let to more envelope pushing for an easily jaded audience. “These are the kids watching The O.C. on [Thursday]
nights,” notes FSG editor Wesley Adams.
“That’s going to inform what they want to read.”
(Gilbert Cruz, Entertainment Weekly, 2009) For literature teachers, the teenage population boom and the booming market for young adult literature is both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that teens are buying and reading young adult fiction in record numbers. The bad news for some is that what they are reading is even harder to control than it was in 1967 when S. E. Hinton wrote the Outsiders and Robert Lipsyte wrote The Contender. The frank and open inclusion of topics from AIDS to alienation in contemporary young adult literature may cause consternation with churches, parent groups, and school boards alike. On the other hand, if judiciously selected and tactfully handled,