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73-11,564

ROBERTS, William Howell, 1940- AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVEL AS A MEANS OF ASSISTING STUDENTS IN MEETING THE DEMANDS OF A CHANGING SOCIETY.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Education, general

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN

NOVEL AS A MEANS OF ASSISTING STUDENTS IN

MEETING THE DEMANDS OF A CHANGING SOCIETY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of 'tjhe Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By William Howell Roberts, B.A,, B.Sc., M.A

The Ohio State University 1972

Approved by

Advisor Department of Humanities Education PLEASE NOTE:

Some pages may have

indistinct print.

Filmed as received.

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply Indebted to Dr. Frank Zidonis and

Dr. Wilfred Eberhart of The Ohio State University who

carefully read the manuscript# and who willingly gave

needed advice that prompted me to iaake many important

revisions.

I thank the students of Lowell State College who

frequently taught me while I was trying to teach them.

The many student teachers with whom I worked who

willingly used some of my ideas in their classes proved

to be a source that frequently reminded me of the real

problems of the adolescent reader.

I have thanked my wife, Patsy, many times for

reading and helping me with my manuscript. I can not

thank her enough for her continuous encouragement and

her tolerance of my shifting moods.

Without the help of my parents I never would have

been in the position to begin the manuscript. It is my

deepest regret that my mother is not alive to see my

manuscript, which is so much hers and to whom I have

dedicated my efforts.

ii t VITA

July 6, 1940• Born - Cleveland, Ohio

1 963 * • • • ® B.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1964a « e • 0 B.Sc., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1 9 6 4 - 1 9 6 7 e . Teacher of English, Groveport-Madison High School, Groveport, Ohio

1967• • • • • M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1967-1969 • • Instructor, Department of English, Urbana College, Urbana, Ohio

1969-1971 • • Teaching Associate, Department of Humanities Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1971...... Instructor, English, Director, English-Education, Lowell State College, Lowell',* Massachusetts

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field1 English Education Dr. Frank Zidonis

Minor Fields Nineteenth Century British Literature Dr. Richard Martin

Minor Fields Curriculum Development Dr. Paul Klohr

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

AC KNO WLEDGEMENTS...... i i

VITA, , ...... ill

INTRODUCTION 0 1

CHAPTER

I, NEED FOR ARGUMENT. 5 Organizational Plan

II. UNDERDOG VICTIM OF SOCIAL REGIMENTATION...... 31

Problems of selection

III. ADOLESCENT PROTAGONIST ...... 63

Nature of adolescent reader

IV. MINORITY PROTAGONIST ...... 103

Values of Examining Minority Experience

V. RELATED MATERIALS...... 1^0

Film Music Poetry

VI. SUMMARY* ...... oaeoe 177

BIBLIOGRAPHYa aaa^eaaeaaaaaae 183

iv INTRODUCTION

To every man his chance, regardless of his birth« his shining golden oppor­ tunity— to every man to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can make him.1

One of the major points that Postman and Weingartner emphasize in their Teaching as a Subversive Activity is that it is not so important to dwell on what our students learn. Rather, we should concentrate on how to learn or, better yet, how to live. They suggest that the student who has learned how to ask meaningful questions has not only secured for himself the key for successful and independent learning, but he has acquired a tool that will help him live a life as an individual with a clearly defined sense of identity. I submit that I subscribe wholeheartedly to this philosophical assumption about learning and living.

It is my intent to provide specific suggestions by which such a philosophical assumption can be effected in the secondary English class.

We live in a very complex age. An age which tends to emphasize organization and bureaucracy and deemphasize the individual. Since its inception as a nation, America has

t------Ronald Gross and Paul Osterman, ed., Individualismi Man in Modern Society (New Yorki Dell Publishing Company, 1971)» p. xxix. 2 prided itself on the ideal of rugged individualism.

Historically the values that have been directly corre­ lated with individualism are competition and hard work.

The individuals have stood up and they have been counted.

They have settled the West and they have provided us with a society of material abundance. Today the typical American is bewildered because these ideals of competition and hard work have been carried to the extreme. They have created for us a society of bureaucratic and technocratic expertise- a society that tends to place little value on the individual.

This is clearly a very dangerous trend. No longer can the individual express his individuality without being classified as an eccentric, an anarchist, or, at best, a member of a counter-culture. I believe that it goes without saying that an individual who lives a life controlled by external forces is living a life that is unfulfilled. 1 contend that the

American school is a place where we can begin to realize our value system so that the concept of individualism may once again be synonymous with "The American Dream". I am particularly concerned with the secondary English teacher.

The secondary English classroom roust be democratic and student-centered. We must listen more and talk less. Very soon our students will be entering a complex and oppressive adult society. I believe that it is our task to prepare the student to enter this world equipped with the tools that will help him define himself in the face of such 3 overwhelming odds. To begin with, w® must, by our class­ room atmosphere, let the student discover what it really means to be an individual.

We must also, for the reasons cited above, present our students with appropriate materials that show the individual fighting to maintain his individuality. Much contemporary fiction, film and music adheres to this very theme. This is the material our students should be discovering, examining and questioning. We must present the Student with a wide range of protagonists who are fighting for their individuality. Somewhere our students will relate these struggles to their own lives. It seems only logical that if our students are exposed to such materials in an atmosphere where individualism prevails, we may very well develop in the student a wider and deeper frame of reference which he needs to appraise himself and his society.

I am not suggesting that we foster a rebellious counter-culture, nor am I suggesting that we foster a culture that completely submits itself to the overwhelming forces of modern society. Rather, it is my contention that somewhere between these two extreme our students will discover alternative means of coping with the complexities of modern society. And, perhaps, some of our students may enter the adult world with some sense of how they can maintain a sense of identity and, at the same time, function 4 in a society that is becoming increasingly more oppressive*

< CHAPTER I

Today's legislators, educators, sociologists, anthropologists and theologians must be hearing the plain­ tive voices of American youth singing "I want to be me."

Have we closed our ears to this seemingly simple request?

Clearly the request is not simple. And, indeed, to the youth of our country it must seem to be an "impossible dream." It is unfortunate that an advanced society that pays so much attention to the needs of its members and gives them so much at the same time deprives them of the most important of all human needs— a clear vision of one's own identity. It is obvious that legislators can not legislate individualism and identity. Paradoxically, the more our government does for the comfort of the individual, the more it takes away from that individual's sense of who he is and where he is going. One must accept the premise that increasing technocracy and burgeoning bureaucracy impede the youth of today who want to find a place for the individual in a nation where rapid change has become the way of life. What seems to have happened is that human existence is being leveled down to a standard of "living" that technocratic expertise can control and cope with.

When figures are released revealing optimistically that

5 6 the nation's standard of living is on the upswing, one has to regard them with a degree of skepticism. The problem is semantic in nature. What is "living"? Is it the number of automobiles in the average garage? Is it the number of television sets in the average home?

Is it, in fact, even the number of dollars in the shopper's purse? I think not. "Living" must have something to do with self-worth, self-fulfillment, and a sense of who one really is and where he is headed. No legislator can control this. Much of the burden rests squarely on the shoulders of today's educators. Traditionally, one of the cardinal aims of education has been to prepare youth for responsible citizenship. Today the goal is just as apparent and, indeed, more complex. To meet this challenge our schools are going to have to change drastically.

Perhaps it is too late to move from a competitive society of fear, distrust, and conflict to a society of love, trust and cooperation to avert the disastrous future that many feel we are rushing toward at an ever-increasing rate of speed. Roszak, Tofflor, Postman, Weingartner, Glasser and countless others all see us headed on a course of self- destruction -if not destruction in the physical sense, certainly destruction in the sense of complete loss of identity.

This writer can not share the complete pessimism of some social critics, but h® clearly recognizes devastating 7 threats to the vitality of individualism. The threats are frightening enough to make it worth an all-out effort to try to replace fear with love, to replace distrust with trust, to replace conflict with cooperation. Although I am concerning myself specifically with the role of the secondary English teacher in effecting the needed changes,

I realize that success can only come from "total cooperation among all the teachers in a school system, cooperation between teachers and administrators, between teachers and students, cooperation between the school and the community."1

Kincaid goes on to develop the role of the school in a highly competitive society. "Although our schools did not invent our competitive society, they certainly did an excellent job of adapting to it, and of perpetuating the competitive spirit. As soon as a child entered our traditional school, he was placed in competition with his peers for grades, gold stars, or, in some cases, for money

O or coupons."* In their book, Teaching as a Subversive

Activity. Postman and Weingartner suggest that our schools and teachers are generally in a state of "future shock."

The world to which we are exposing our students no longer exists. Much of this problem, the authors suggest, is the direct result of the "change revolution." Changes are

^Gerald L. Kincaid, "Curriculum for the *70's» Cooperation is the Name of the Game”, The English Journal. LXI (May, 1972), P« 724. 2Ibld.. p. 724. 8 occurring so rapidly in all areas of our social, political and technological world that it is virtually impossible to teach relevant material. What is relevant today is outdated tomorrow. Postman and Weingartner emphasize "The best that can be said...assuming that you remember most of what you were told and read, is that you are a walking encyclopedia of outdated information.The real problem with which the teacher is confronted is the fact that change itself has changed. It was not long ago that one could very likely grow up and spend his life without moving more than a few miles from home, without ever confronting serious questions about one's behavior. Today's youth are not shrouded with this stability and consequent predictability. Referring to their now famous and overworked "clock metaphor," Postman and Weingartner say,

"But now, in just the last minute, we've reached the stage where change occurs so rapidly that each of us in the course of our lives has con­ tinuously to work out a set of values, beliefs, and patterns of behavior that are viable, or seem viable, to each of us personally. And just when we have identified a workable system, it turns out to be irrelevant because so much has changed while we were doing it."

^Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (New Yorks Delacarte Press, 1969), p. 1 1 . **Ibid.. p. 11. 9

The educational implications of the above condition are many. We live in a technocratic society which estranges man from his fellow man and from himself*

Today's youth readily sense a struggle with this dehuman­ izing enemy* It is our task to supply them with the tools and weapons for this battle* Under such a technocracy we become the most scientific of societies* Like Kafka's K* , men throughout the developed world "become more and more the bewildered dependents of inaccessible castles wherein inscrutable technicians conjure with their fate*"^

Like K. and other contemporary fictional protagonists* our youth are small and powerless in the face of inscrutable forces. In that youth are willing to face the struggle, they resemble in many ways the anti-heroes of much contempo­ rary fiction* It is important to note that youth typically sees himself, perhaps somewhat myopically, as a small incon­ sequential figure trapped by a technocracy he does not understand' if we can, as educators, correct the myopic vision, we will be serving a fundamental purpose* If the vision of our students is blurred, we should recognize that at least a vision is there* Like many of the contemporary anti-heroes— K. being a typical example— youth is rational! but he finds himself in an irrational society where logic, order and common sense are no longer present* He yearns for

^Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (New York! Anchor Books, 1 969), p* 13* 10

something to believe in, but he can find no way of defining

that belief. We can help* In the face of technocracy's

obstacles, we can show the student that "room to live" that

Kafka refers to in his diary*

"And I believe that even in the grip of inspiration I am swept along only within these narrow limits, which, however, I then no longer feel because I am being swept along* Nevertheless, within these limits there is room to live* and for this reason I shall probably exploit them to a despicable degree*" 6

Roszak emphasizes the deceptive extent that our lives are controlled and manipulated*

"The key problem we have to deal with is the paternalism of expertise within a socio-economic system which is so organized that it is inextricably beholden to expertise. And, moreover, to an exper­ tise which has learned a thousand ways to manipulate our acquiescence with an imperceptible subtlety."7

A graphic fictional portrayal of this subtle expertise can be seen in Kesey's "Combine" in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's

Nest* Here we see it microcosmically represented in the

£ Franz Kafka, The Trial (New York* Schocken Books, 1968), p. 277*

?Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture* p« 16. 11 cliche-character* Big Nurse. McMurphy has a sense of self, and the nurse is determined to "cure" him of his refusal to become immersed in "the system." Society is run by some secret force (the subtle expertise of Roszak) which controls and manipulates all of its members. The force that controls and manipulates our lives is graphically portrayed through the fictional characterizations of Ken Kesey.

"In a crude way, Big Nurse embodies the principles of Behaviorism believing that people can and must be adjusted to social norms....Big Nurse speaks for the fixed pattern, the unbreakable routine, the submission of individual will to mechanical, humorous control. McMurphy speaks an older American Language of freedom, unhindered movement, self-reliance, anarchic humor and a trust in the more animal instincts."8

The role of Kesey*s novel in the secondary curriculum will be discussed in depth later» but this writer feela that a brief exploration of it at this point may graphically reveal the plight that we, and most significantly the youth with the vision resembling Kafka's "room to live," must cope with. Kesey's book is about the American working man, deprived of his virility, his manhood and his intellect.

It is no wonder that the book has made an impression on

8Tony Tanner. City of Words (New York* Harper and Row, 1971)• p. 373. 12 today's young people, It is painfully real? yet, at the same time, it suggests alternatives that one can marshal in his quest to maintain a sense of self# To borrow from

Kesey*s microcosm, youth have not yet been lobotomizedt

They are the ones with a chance to resisto The sad commentary for educators is that they do not# They do not because they do not know how to# Perhaps the saddest thing of all in America is the fate of most of its teenagers# For at sixteen or seventeen, no matter how oppressive the society, there is still a moment when life and a feeling of "self" are within the grasp of the young.

This moment is what the secondary English teacher must capitalize on# At present, secondary education seems to be ignoring this opportunity# Through necessary ourriculum changes, the secondary English teacher can kindle the spark that allows students to pulse to music, wear clothes that express their bodies, flare against authority, seek new experience, know how to play, laugh and love. Charles

Reich maintains that this youthful change in consciousness that h© categorizes as Consciousness III in his The Greening of America will naturally evolve because of a change in the nature of youth. This writer feels Reich to be hopelessly optimistic# Yes, the new consciousness is there; but it is not self-perpetuating# It must be kindled if it is to endure# And if we are to help our students realize their desire to "want to be me" we must make their "impossible dream" possible through major changes in curriculum and (

13

educational philosophy. It is obvious, and certainly

could be documented by following any random graduating

class, that soon the youths' minds become figuratively

labotomized. Far too many young bodies have been cut off from self and are trapped in the endless corridors

controlled by the subtleties of our technocracy.

The educational implications of this mushrooming social

condition are frightening. We must fight it. And I can

not imagine anyone potentially more capable of the battle

than the secondary English teacher. And I can not imagine

a better weapon than the contemporary novel. I hope to

establish a dual focuss (1 ) to introduce the student to

our weapon— the contemporary novel, and (2 ) to let the

student discover how to arm himself in preparation for his

own battle. The contemporary novel shows man of all ages,

ethnic groups, and economic conditions victimized. Most

offer alternatives, not all pleasant, but, indeed, more

pleasant than wholly submitting oneself to blatant

dehumanization. This is the least that we can dot and we

have, I believe, a moral obligation to do so. We can not

allow our students to leave the secondary school defenseless

in a society that is eager to strip them of their identities.

We must stop machine-tooling the minds of our students to the needs of our various "'Baroque Bureauerocies'i corporate, o governmental, military, trade union, and educational."

o 7Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, p. 19. 14

A culture which subordinates or degrades visionary exper­

ience is also a culture which commits the sin of diminishing

our existence* Roszak, in a rather lengthly passage*

clearly illustrates the problem*

As the spell of scientific or quasi-scientific thought has spread in our culture from physical to the so-called behavioral sciences, and finally to scholarship in the arts and letters, the marked tendency has been to consign whatever is not fully and articulately available in the waking conscious­ ness for imperical or mathematical manipulation, to a purely negative catch-all category (in effect, the cultural garbage can) called the 'unconscious'•**or the 'irrationalor the 'mystical'...or the 'purely subjective.' The behavior on the basis of such blurred states of consciousness is at best to be some species of amusing eccentric, at worst to be plain mad, Conversly, behavior that is normal, valuable, productive, mentally healthy, socially respectable, intellectually defensible, sane, decent, and practical is supposed to have nothing to do with subjectivity.•.we feel that worth-while things come of such a state of mind— knowledge, solutions to problems, successful projects, money, power— whereas only some manner of unproductive self-indulgence comes from wallowing in 'mere feelings. '10

I feel quite strongly that this "creeping," or should I say,

"galloping" utilitarian rationality has to become the enemy of the secondary English teacher. Indeed, we must instill in our students the independence that will enable them to spend a lifetime "wallowing in mere feelingsAt the same time they must obviously funotion in a society that

10Ibid.. pp. 52-3o 3-5 discourages such endeavors# I do not feel# however# that

I am asking the impossible# If given the proper tools# one can function in a utilitarian society and, at the same time# transcend it# Indeed# assisting the student in making this transcendence is a heavy demand on the English teacher— but he must face it# He must forget about the traditional "What shall we learn?" concept# The focus must be on "How shall we learn?", or better yet, "How shall we live?" The contemporary novel is a very appropriate vehicle for realizing this end# I have found

Tony Tanner, Ihab Hassan and Jerry Bryant to be particularly useful here. However, the method by which the novel is presented is just as important as the content# To teach the contemporary novel in a traditional authoritarian manner would be self-defeating# I hope that this assumption will be sustained throughout even though the purpose at hand calls for a greater emphasis on content. Indeed, one must find his own methodj but clearly it should be open, flexible and student-centered# Some time will be devoted to discussing methodology, but the central emphasis shall be placed on the values one can extract from close character and thematic examination. But allow me to add here that it is far more beneficial for the student to make the discoveries# As the novels are being discussed, it will be assumed that this is the type of value system that the students discover and that they are not simply being 16 led toward them by the teacher. We can expose the students to the material, but it is up to the student to make it relevant and viable in his own value system. The student must bo encouraged to question and discover. Postman and

Weingartner suggest, and I concur, that once a student has learned how to ask relevant and appropriate and substantial questions— he has learned how to learn and no one or no thing (not even Roszak's "technocratic expertise") can prevent him from assimilating whatever he wants to or needs to. Hence, although the emphasis will be placed on the appropriateness of the content of selected contemporary novels, one must not forget the vital role of our students in discovering what the novel has to say to them as future participants in America's technocracy, I am not suggesting that such examination will change human nature, but I do feel that the examination of the problems and solutions of fictional anti-heroes may very well serve to modify human behavior. Perhaps the student will come to realize that it is far more difficult to "earn" one's sense of self than it is to earn one's material livelihood. And it clearly goes without saying that the attainment of the former can only help to make the latter more gratifying. A common laborer with a strong sense of self is going to b® a more complete individual than the chairman of the board without that sense of identity. 17

Contemporary novelists frequently see modern man as a rebel-victin— one who renounces and is rejectedt one who opposes and is opposed# Through a careful examination f of such protagonists, the student may very well develop a wider and deeper frame of reference which he needs to appraise himself and his society# Perhaps they will appreciate why Yakov Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he is falsely accused of committing# He lost a great deal in so doing, but he clearly found a great deal more#

He found out what it meant to be Yakov Bok# Perhaps they will appreciate why Randall McMurphy ultimately submits to a lobotomy enabling Chief Bromden to re-enter a world that had been taken away from him# Obviously the range of the protagonist’s reactions to his world will be broad# In his work on the contemporary American novel, Radical Innocence.

Ihab Hassan notes that the alienated hero of today responds in martyrdom or rebellion to the modern experience, some­ times even retreating to the extremes of invisibility or

"holy silence" or "demonic violence#" Usually, in his act of recoil against society, the protagonist tries to affirm his existence generally in a response between the two extremes# In very general terms we can, perhaps, classify this recoil as either defiance, submission, or "armed neutrality." We see the submission of Tommy Wilhelm in Bellow's Seize the Day# and the defiance of Finnerty and

Lasher in Vonnegut's Player Piano# But perhaps most 18

significantly we see the compromise position in characters

such as Bellow’s Henderson, Ellison's Invisible Man,

Malamud'B Frank Alpine and Yakov Bok, and Salinger's

Holden Caulfield, The student will ideally discover the latter group's means of coping with society to be the most compatible in which the individual can function and yet transcend oppression. It is important that the student be exposed to a wide range of reactions to contemporary society. The new hero brings the brilliant extremities of the modern conscience and imagination to bear on the equable tenor of our present culture, Hassan demonstrates how difficult it is to define the contemporary protagonist in terms of social values. Paradoxically, however, there is value in not being able to clearly define this elusive figure.

"Precisely what the new hero stands for, no one can yet define. He is not exactly the liberal's idea of the victim, not the conservative's idea of the pariah, not the radical's idea of the rebel. Or perhaps he is all of these and none in particular. Sometimes one aspect of his makeup is underscored, sometimes another. His capacity for pain seems very nearly saintly, and his passion for heresy almost criminal. But flawed in his sainthood and grotesque in his criminality, he finally appears as an expression of man's quenchless desix’e to affirm, despite the voids and vicissitudes of our age, the human sense of life,

•^Ihab Hassan, Radical Innocence (Princeton# Princeton University Press, 1961), p, 20, 19

Perhaps through a wide exposure, the student will

see that the modern self wavers somewhere between nihilism and sainthood in his quest for the meaning of life*

Clearly modern fiction demands that we project ourselves into the predicament of victims* Hassan points out how easy and important it is for the reader to see himself through the protagonist*

"Cunningly introspective, the modern novel redefines the identity of its central character and redirects his energies toward the virtues of love or self- discovery, virtues that are a good deal more personal than social. To become someone, to know who or what one is, to reach finally another human being with love, and to do so in terms that society may censure, this is the,passionate, bitter concern of the modern anti-hero."I2

The dilemma of the protagonist is likewise the passionate and bitter concern of today’s youth. As with our students the problem of the anti-hero is essentially one of identity.

We see him in his search for fulfillment, freedom, and self-definition. What he hopes to find is a position he can take within himself. Society may modify his awareness of himself, but his existence determines his course of action. It is a total loss of self-hood that defines the rebel-victim. And it is the discovery of self that

^ Ibid.. n. 22. 20 characterizes the anti-hero#

The concept of the rebel-victira will, indeed, be familiar to our students# They will have a lot to say ( about him# And they will be able to identify with him. They have seen him in such films as Sometimes a Great

Notion# The Fixer. Goodbye# Columbus. The Graduate. Easy

Rider. Midnight Cowboy. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Rabbit. Run, and many more# In fact, it is rather difficult not to find this type of figure in a contemporary film. This box-office appeal should give us some notion of the important place he holds in the "fantasies" of frustrated

Americans#

The student will likewise recognize this figure as an important part of his music. He will recognize him in such songs as "Woodstock," Jesus Christ Superstar. "Father and Son," "Longer Boats," "Fool on the Hill," "A Most

Peculiar Man," "Sunshine," "The Times They Are A-Changin'" to name a few#

The fact that the rebel-victim protagonist type is a part of our students' everyday lives is to our advantage for numerous reasons. In all probability students have already begun to formulate questions about him. Through a thoughtful examination of some of the protagonists of the contemporary novel, the student may very well be able to formulate a mechanism whereby he can function admirably and with a sense of self in our complex and oppressive 21

technocracy. It is important, however, that the students

make discoveries about the rebel-victim through questions

that they have articulated. The teacher may very well

need to offer a "lead question" on occasion, but the real

meaning to be assimilated into the lifestyles of our

students should come from their own questions. After all,

they are the only ones who can recognize how the problems

of the protagonist do or do not relate to their personal

lives. Some may not relate at all to a particular protagonist, while others may recognize a fictional representation of themselves or someone near to them. It would clearly be self-defeating if the teacher controlled the discussion and asked the questions. By so doing we are diminishing the significance of an individual relating to a character in his own way. We should not tell our students that they are like Holden Caulfield, or that their father is like Tommy Wilhelm— this they must discover. However,

I do believe that we can justifiably anticipate some of the questions the students may ask. These questions should lead to active production rather than passive absorption.^

How is it possible to be both rebel and victim?

Why is the rebel often victimized?

x^Bonnie Jo Lundblad, "The Reb&L-Victim* Past and Present," The English Journal. LX (Sept., 1971). pp» 764— 5° ( 0

22

Under what conditions and for what reasons does an individual rebel?

How can forces like nature, society, and fate victimize an individual?

Must a rebel-victim act or can he protest by silence?

Are those in the mainstream of society capable of evaluating the 'off center' character?

On what grounds can we evaluate a rebel-victim»s stancei ethical? moral? political? social?

If one is a rebel-victim at one point, is he necessarily a rebel at another?

How successful is the rebel-victim in his search fori personal freedom? love? order? expiation? identity?

Can the rebel-victim become initiated into society?

Can the rebel-victim contribute to the advancement of society?

This set of questions could serve as representative of the types of questions the students might ask. This writer feels that attitudes, concepts, generalizations, and values are best sharpened and assimilated through discussion and interaction. The new English classroom should be a seminar where students are given practice in discussing, questioning, analyzing, and testing values with other students and the teacher. The learning psychologist, Jerome S, Bruner, describes this essential ( 9

23

aspect of student involvement in his Toward a Theory

of Instruction. Here are some of Bruner's assumptions

about learning that are particularly pertinents

"Instruction should approximate the give and take of a seminar in which discussion is the vehicle of instruction*"

"The principal deficit in the lack of learning is the lack of opportunity to share in a dialogue.”

"Intellectual development depends upon a systematic and contingent interaction between a tutor and a learner." and

"Since the instructional process is essentially social— particularly in its early stages when it involves at least a teacher and student, it is clear that the child, especially if he is to cope with the school, must have minimal mastery of the social skills necessary for engaging in the instructional process."1^

The atmosphere in the new English classroom must be

open and student-centered. It must cease to be represented

solely by an artificial division between the teacher and

l^obert W« Blake, "The New Englishs Hot Stuff or Cool, Man Cool?", The English Journal. LX (Sept., 1971), pp. 731-2. 24 the student or between the student and a book. Robert

Blake describes an ideal classroom atmospheres

"What results is a new tutorial, a pedogogical happening, in which the teacher and students work and learn together. Since language is the means by which human beings interact and realize their humanity, then it follows that language is the key to functioning as a human being. Speaking, writing, and reading— and all facets of verbal and extra-verbal communication— are simply different manifestations of the same medium. We*re coming to realize, furthermore, the importance of how something is communicated rather than what the content is."15

Clearly the role of the teacher must become less dominant if our goal is to help our students realize who they are, where they are going, and what they are going to do once they get there. The central goal of the English teacher (or any teacher for that matter) is to make the learner or problem-solver self-sufficient. Any dominance or correction is dangerous in that it may very well cause the learner to become permanently dependent on the teacher and other authority figures. Such behavior, obviously, will defeat our purpose if v:e want our students to leave our schools as individuals dependent upon themselves as unique individuals armed with the tools necessary to

l5Ibid., p. 732. 25 realize a strong sense of self. The teacher should no longer capitalize upon the learner's mistakes* but rather he should help the learner achieve confidence in his own ability to evaluate his performance. As Blake suggests*

"...a new English is needed to cope with the 'totally new society...coming into being, one that rejects all our old values, conditioned responses, attitudes, and institutions."1®

If we cam accept Postman and Weingartner's assumptions as fact, and I believe we can, that because of the change revolution nothing is relevant! we must paradoxically accept the fact that by the same token little or nothing is irrelevant. It stands to reason that introducing students to fictional representations of the plight of modern man in the search for himself is perhaps the most relevant activity in which we as English teachers can offer our students. Indeed, it most assuredely will answer the persistent student clamor for relevance. After all, what is this relevance they are demanding other than the immediate and the dramatic? The contemporary novelist is likewise concerned with the immediate and the dramatic.

l6Ibid., p. 733 26

With this philosophy in mind, we can not demand the

students only read "our" novels® We must accept some of

their choices, and presumably a comfortable rapport will

lead them to accept some of ours. It seems reasonable to

assume that through their choices and through ours we will

be, in all probability, witnessing accounts of life in modern America.

"As teachers of reading we will find ourselves needing to deal with fantasy aplenty— science fiction; bizarre, neo-gothic adventurei spiritualism and Eastern mysticism; as well as with neo-muckraking, havoc-crying, and cynical put-downs of every kind. And as human beings m the midst of a revolution which is likely to last some time....What fool has the temerity to predict the trend of the 1970's, especially since few or none of us have caught up with the 1960's.

The organizational plan used in discussing the values

that can be derived from an examination of selected con­

temporary novels is based largely on a loose thematic approach. I do not necessarily mean to suggest that one follow such an approach in the classroom. In fact, I feel that it would be detrimental by being too structured and too contrived. Certainly, it would be a rather authoritative

■^Bernard R. Tanner, "Witnessing, or the Myth of the Global Village," The English Journal. LX (Sept., 1971). p. 7^5e 27 approach, and quite contradictary to the notions of the role of the learner as problem-solver and of flexibility in the classroom. Rather, I suggest that students' interests determine what novels are discussed. The thematic approach primarily serves as an organizational technique for this writer,

I plan to divide the contemporary novel into three broad categories. In each category I will analyze two or three novels in considerable depth with allusions to other related novels. One category focuses on the "underdog" victim of social regimentation, A second category deals with the adolescent— the adolescent exposing corruption, and the adolescent who represents truth or innocence in a society that no longer values those ideals. The final category focuses on the rebel-victim who is victimized by being a member of a minority group. There will of course be a certain overlap among the three categories.

In the "underdog" category I include Malamud's The Fixer. The Natural, and The Assistant: Bellow's

The Victim. Seize the Day, and Henderson the Rain King;

Ellison's Invisible Mant Angelou's I Know Why the Caged

Bird Sings» Vonnegut's God Bless You. Mr, Rosewater. and

Mother Nighti Bowles' The Sheltering Skvt and Kesey's

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The two novels that I plan to concentrate my discussion on are One Flew Over the

Cuckoo's Nest and The Assistant with more than secondary 28

references to Henderson the Rain King and Seize the Day.

In the category dealing with the adolescent, one

must include the important but overworked Catcher in the

Rye, Other novels that will be included in this category

are McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; Updike's

Rabbit. Runt Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms and The

Grass H a r m Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March.

Roth's Goodbye Columbusi Lee's To Kill a Mockingbirdi and

Golding's Lord of the Flies, I plan to discuss in some

depth Golding's Lord of the Fliesi McCullers' The Heart is

a Lonely Hunteri Updike's Rabbit. Run, and Roth's Goodbye.

Columbus,

In the section concerned with the rebel-victim as a member of a minority group, I include Ellison's Invisible

Mani Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings» Baldwin's

Go Tell it on the Mountaint Wallant's The Tenants of

Moonbloomi Malamud's The Fixer, I focus primarily on

Malamud's The Fixeri Ellison's Invisible M a m McCullers'

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; Baldwin's Go Tell it on the

Mountain, and Wrights' Native Son,

In the final chapter I discuss the rebel-victim as he appears outside of the novel, I examine him in the short story, the film, poetry, and popular music.

Before I begin a discussion of the individual novels, I feel that one point must be made. As I mentioned previously, today's youth do have a vision— a vision that 29 they desire to function as individuals. However, I believe that the very nature of this vision causes it to be somewhat distorted. Perhaps the major element causing this distortion is the rejection of the past by today's youth. Youth tend to see themselves and their culture as unique. And, indeed, in many respects they are correct. Since the vision is so present-oriented,

I believe that we have an obligation to stress more than just the immediate— although it should be clear by now that I feel it must be emphasized. We can not forget the universality and timelessness of man's concern to overcome oppression. To make the present scene meaningful, we should devote some time looking back. Lundblad suggests that "By first telescoping outside the students' immediate time/space orientation, and then drawing parallels to it, we may develop in the student a wider and deeper frame of reference which he needs to appraise himself and his society."^®

Indeed, the rebel-victim is central in contemporary fiction. However, victimization and rebellion have long been at the center of literature. While the rebel-victim has definite modern features and is understandably appealing to the youth of today, the same type of pro­ tagonist is evident in such figures as Milton's Satan,

10Lundblad, "The Rebel-Victirai Past and Present," Po 763. 30

Christ, Sophocles, Job, Prometheus and countless others.

Perhaps a look at such works as Hamlet, Oedipus Rex.

Bartleby the Scrivner, or The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn could help broaden our students' perspective when he

turns to the rebel-victim figure in contemporary fiction which is the problem at hand.

/ CHAPTER II

Most contemporary novels, among other similarities,

share three qualities that many administrators, citizen

groups and parents find objectionable» profane language,

an element of social criticism, and explicit description

of sexual experience. However, it has long been recog­

nized by concerned teachers that to withold good

literature from students is unfair. Educators must

therefore be prepared to defend their choices. Teachers

are too often left with a small group of "nice" books

that fail to excite students, emotionally or intellectually,

about the pleasures of reading and the range of cultural

perspectives that literature affords.

In a 1952 Supreme Court decision Justice William 0.

Douglas said that,

"Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect'*.. .A problem can no longer be pursued with impunity to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking* she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile* pursuit of knowledge is discouraged* , discussion often leaves off where it should begin."

^National Council of Teachers of English, "The Students Right to Read," 1962. 31 32

In an address to the Modern Language Association of America in 1940, James B. Conant had this to say about

the issue<

"It seems to me unlikely that a future citizen of a free country can be developed by education, in these days,..without the devout study of great literature. Such study is probably essential because for many people a sense of values must be felt, not proved by argumentation. For these people, it seems to me, not philosophy but poetry— using the word in its widest sense— poetry alone can first open the doors of discrimination. As a rule emotional reactions— the sharpening or the blunting of our sense of values— are determined at an early age. For these reasons, you who teach literature in our schools and colleges.•.have a big responsibility for the future of this republic."2

Although the situation has somewhat improved since these two early observations, today's English teacher is still manacled in the process of book selection. In its well-known document of 1962, "The Students' Right to

Read," the National Council of Teachers of English assumed the position that the right of any individual to read is based on the only tenable assumption for democratic living1 that the educated free man possesses the powers of discrimination and is to be entrusted with the determination of his own actions. In it's document,

2Ibid. 33

the Council made its* position in relation to book selection very clear.

"In selecting books for reading by young people, teachers of English consider the contribution which each work may make to the education of the reader, its aesthetic value, its appropriateness to the curriculum, and its readability both in structure and content for a particular group of students. Many works of literature important in our culture contain isolated elements to which some individuals may object. The literary artist is a seeker after truth, recording in structured form life as he perceives and feels it. As a creator, he must necessarily challenge at times the common beliefs or values of the culture, for creation is the process of identi­ fying new relationships out of which come new meanings. In seeking honestly for meanings behind reality, the artist strives to achieve a work of art which is always basically moral, although not necessarily conventionally moral. Moreover, the value and impact of any literary work must be examined as a whole and not in part— the impact of the entire work transcending words, phrases, or incidents out of which it is made."3

As idealistic as we would like to be, we must face

the fact that some citizens will object to some literary

works selected for use in the secondary English classroom.

Many of the complaints will be made by persons hostile to

free inquiry and open discussiont others will be made by misinformed or misguided persons who, acting on emotion

or rumor, simply do not understand how the books are to

3Ibid 3^ be used. Others will be made by well-intentioned persons who fear that harm will come to readers of certain books,

I believe that the recommendations made by the National

Council of Teachers of English concerning book selection are reasonable. To begin with, the choice should be carefully made, and the administrator must be kept well informed about the criteria and procedure used in book selection. Administrative support is of course a valuable insurance policy for the teacher of English,

In a statement in "The Students' Right to Read," the

Council specifically says that,

"In every school the English department should frame a clear statement that explains why litera­ ture is taught, by what standards it is chosen, what reputable and unbiased selection aids are used as guides. If the standards in choosing books for suggested reading lists differ from those used in selecting basic texts for all students; such differences should be clearly explained. This statement should be on file with the administration before any complaints are received,"

"Operating within such a policy, the English depart­ ment should—

1, Ask each English teacher to present his list of choices to a meeting of the English department• 35

2. File with administrators the list approved by teachers.

3. Give the teacher a chance to explain his choice if any book is questioned.

Such a procedure gives each teacher the right to expect support from fellow teachers and administrators whenever someone objects to a book."^

In another apt passage, the Council points out an ironic effect resulting from the complaints of the uninformedi

"Too many schools give in to belligerent threats of community sanctions and vague references to the backing of powerful forces. As a result, without due process, without a spe­ cific charge having been heard, students are denied the right to read. The many parents who want their children to have a broad ^ education are victims of the few who do not."'*

Asking the complainants to file a standardized form will discourage many chronic complainers because the form will necessitate a thoughtful reading of the

4Ibidc

■%bid. novel. At the same time, it will serve to encourage

the responsible complainant because he knows that he will be properly heard. The Council suggests that the following form be used. I feel that the form will serve the purpose for which it was designed quite effectively. 37

CITIZEN'S REQUEST FOR RECONSIDERATION OF A BOOK

Author Hardcover Paperback

Title

Publisher (if known)

Request initiated by______

T elephone ______Address______

City______Zip Code______Complainant represents himself (name organization) ______(identify other group) ~

1 8 To what in the book do you object? (Please be specific.)

2. What do you feel might be the result of reading this book?

3. For what age group would you recommend this book?

4. Is there anything good about this book?

5. Did you read the entire book? What parts?

6 . Are you aware of the judgment of this by literary critics?

7. What do you believe is the theme of this book?

8 . What would you like your school to do about this book?

do not assign it to my child withdraw it from all students as well as from my child send it back to the English department office for reevaluation

9. In its place, what book of equal literary quality would you recommend that would convey as valuable a picture and perspective of our civilization?

Signature of Complainant 38

In addition to the advantages already cited, using this form will accomplish the following*

1, Formalize and make official the complaint,

2. Indicate specifically the book in question,

3« Identify the complainant, b. Reveal the size of his backing,

5o Require him to clarify his thinking on the book in order to make an intelligent statement on the specific objection, (#1 and #2 ) • 6, Cause him to evaluate the book, especially for other groups beyond the one he has immediately in mind, (#3 and #4)

7, Establish to what extent he is familiar with the book, (#5 ) 8 , Give him an opportunity to recognize the criticism and intent of the book or to realize his failure to understand, (#6 and #7)

9, Give him, finally, .alternative actions to be taken on the book,6

If our students are to experience part of the real world struggle through the literature that they read, we must choose books that reflect that world. If the selection is sprinkled with profanities or explicit descriptions of sexual activity, so be it. We must be the judge as to what is art and what is not. We clearly must be prepared to defend our choices, but we must not let this

Ibid, 39

factor intimidate us. If we are to succeed, we must present our students with relevant reading material.

How can we expect literature to reflect the values of our complex age, much less change our students' values,

if we assign them "sugar-coated” versions of reality.

The student will not accept such choices} and, indeed, our time will have been wasted. Our primary goal in the teaching of literature must be to prepare our students to function successfully in society. Harsh reality is to be dealt with directly, not camouflagedunder the facade of outdated classroom decorum. The media is making no attempt to hide the real world, why should the English teacher.

Indeed, one can expect some hostile reactions to

Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Although

frequently accused of being obscene, racist, or immoral, the book is indeed none of these, in my judgment. A recent personal experience with a student teacher who used this book in the classroom gives me some factual base in which to place my anticipation of hostile parental reaction. Like all good literature, the book attempts to give an accurate picture of some part of the human condition which is less than perfect. Kesey's book is set in a mental hospital; the language, attitudes, and habits of the inmates are typical of disturbed men whose already distorted world is being further 40 systematically dehumanized by the ward nurses# Some feel that the book is not a decent book for students to read or for teachers to teach# While literary critics might be able to dismiss such pronouncements as simply untutored, teachers have to deal with them seriously in the interest of preserving their right of access to literature and the students' right to read# Sutherland identifies the issue when she writes that "To charge that the book is obscene, racist, or immoral because it gives a realistic picture of the world of the insane is to demonstrate a lack of the minimum competency in under­ standing literature we expect of high school students."?

To judge a book simply on a few passages which contain unconventional language or fantasies is missing the point, or rather, the value, of literature# I believe that this book will not only enrich our curricula, but it will help the student improve his power of discrimination and his quality of choices. The book successfully demonstrates human weakness, eccentricity, and suffering# If read and discussed tastefully, it will help our students increase their respect for the transforming power of love# By so doing they will see how one may overcome weakness, tolerate eccentricity, and endure suffering.

?Janet R# Sutherland, "A Defense of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The English Journal, LXI (January 1972), p#28# 41

In a particularly apt passage Sutherland clearly demonstrates why the book has the power to transcend unfounded criticism, and, indeed, why it should secure for itself an important place in the upper secondary

English curriculumi

To understand the book, then, is to experience through this unique point of view the emergence of at least three themes which the book has in common with other works of literature. First, there is the idea that we must look beyond appearances to judge reality. Just as the reader has to look beyond the typically racist language of the inmates to find in the book as a whole a document of witness against the dehumanizing, sick effects of racism in our society, so Bromden has to look beyond the perception of the world which limits his concept of self. When the perception changes, he begins to see the reality of his growth. Chief Bromden is sick from racism and is made whole again when he learns to laugh in spite of it and to realize his identity as an American Indian. Second, there is the idea that fools and madmen have wisdom. Writers from Shakespeare to Kesey have suggested that the world is sometimes so out of joint that it can only be seen from some perspective so different that it cuts through illusion to truth. Lear and Hamlet both experience a kind of madness for this reason, madness in which it might be added, they too abandon propriety of speech. (Polite language has hardly ever been associated with madness in literature.) And through this madness, in Kesey's book, the third theme emerges* the idea that the bumbling fool may be transformed into a worker of good deeds. McMurphy assumes almost the stature of the typical quest hero at his death. The circumstances of his life have required him to rise above the 'lowness' of his original station to become a deliverer, to give up his life^for his friend. The idea that each human soul l*s worthy, and it is the genius of heroism to work transforming 42

deeds which discover the worthiness both in themselves and in other humble men.

The book, then, works through the eyes and action of madmen to go from a vision of the world where all human things are potentially sacred. Certainly teaching the book compels a discussion of obscenity, for it is impossible to understand it fully without fully realizing that what people do to each other in cruelty is the true obscenity, not shadow words. The book does not teach profanity; it teaches that the world of the insane is full of profanity. It does not teach racism; it clearly connects racism with cruelty and insanity. It does not teach immorality; it suggests that the fantasies of an unbalanced person are sensitive to a disruption or ordinary morality.8

I am sure that this type of defense may very well be necessary for many of the contemporary novels that one chooses to use in the secondary English class.

However, the attempt to "protect" students from these novels is misguided. Many students will read these books on their own. We should not neglect the opportunity to provide a framework of reason in which such an admittedly difficult book can be read, discussed, and understood. If we ignore this very relevant literature, we, ourselves, will become like Kesey's Big Nurse— a Big

Nurse of education who further alienates the youth with whom we are attempting to communicate. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest offers a youth a great deal in enabling him to understand himself, his

°Ibid.. p. 29-30. 43

society, and how to cope with the aspect of losing

oneself in that society. Kesey presents the whole scheme

in an elaborate microcosm that is not too difficult for

the above average tenth, eleventh or twelfth grader to

understand. The popularity of the novel among young

people certainly testifies to its high interest appeal.

Kesey's book depicts the shrinkage of the authentic

self in a suffocating society and tells the story of the

liberation of men who have long withdrawn into themselves

through fear. The setting is quite obviously a microcosm

of the oppressiveness of modern American society. The

simplified symbol that Kesey chooses to use for society is a mental hospital whose wards are dominated by a

priestess of the system or "Combine" with dread authority—

Big Nurse. She controls the systematically malicious

apparatus that alienates the patients from their society

and from themselves. Perhaps the most expedient means

of examining what this book has to offer its young readers

is through an examination of its three major characters—

Big Nurse, Chief Bromden, and Randle McMurphy.

Big Nurse is a symbolic representation of the unseen

technocratic expertise that allows the individual only

the amount of individualism that can be controlled.

Roszak describes this expertise in The Making of a

Counter-Culture. Kesey describes it as the "Combine" ' • in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Big Nurse is the 44 nameless, sexless servant of society's secret force that controls and manipulates all of its members* Big Nurse keeps the patients cowed and docile, either by subtle humiliations or punitive electric shock treatment. In a crude way she embodies the principles of Behaviorism, believing that people can and must be adjusted to social norms. The reader's first introduction to Big Nurse comes through the eyes of the novel's schizophrenic narrator— Chief "Broom,” The description clearly emphasizes her total lack of the human qualities of emotion and expression. She is depicted as a piece of apparatus that mechanically controls and dominates the lives of those around heri

I'm mopping near the ward door when a key hits it from the other side and I know it's the Big Nurse by the way the lockworks cleave to the key, soft and swift and familiar, she's been around locks so long. She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel— tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which. She's carrying her woven wicker bag like the ones the Umqua tribe sells out along the hot August highway, a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle. She's had it all the years I've been here. It's a loose weave and I can see inside it; there's no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she's got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties ^5

today— wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmaker's pliers, rolls of copper wire...°

The mechanistic imagery clearly underscores how the Big

Nurse has reduced her patients to puppets, mechanically obeying her rules.

Into this world comes Randle Patrick McMurphy, a huge red-headed Irishman, who thinks that a term in a mental hospital will be easier than serving out a sentence on a road gang. He is the prototypical rebel, with a well-developed sense of his own identity. The opposition between Big Nurse and McMurphy is intentionally stark.

Early in the novel McMurphy describes Big Nurse to

Hardingi

Right at your balls. No, that nurse ain't some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a ball-cutter. I've seen a thousand of 'em, old and young, men and women. Seen 'em all over the country and in the homes— people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst. You ever been kneed in the nuts in a brawl, buddy? Stops you cold,

^Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. (New Yorki The VikingPress, 1962},_pp. 3-^. k 6

don't it? There's nothing worse. It makes you sick, it saps every bit of strength you got. If you're up against a guy who wants to make you weaker instead of making himself stronger, then watch for his knee, he's gonna go for your vitals. And that's what that old buzzard is doing, going for your vitals.10

From the outset, it is clear that McMurphy's task is to train the patients to assert their identities, and to overthrow the tyranny of the emasculating Big Nurse.

This becomes quite evident in his first major struggle with Big Nurse. He manages to persuade the patients to vote with him against Big Nurse in changing Television time to the daytime while the World Series is on.

Again the schizophrenic Chief Bromden narrates«

The first hand that comes up, I can tell, is McMurphy's, because of the bandage where the control panel cut into him when he tried to lift it. And then off down the slope I see them, other hands coming up out of the fog. It's like.,,that big red hand of McMurphy's is reaching into the fog and dropping down and dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them blinking into the open. First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching T.V., but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy

10Ibid». p. 58. ^7

to Disturbed, against the way she's talked and acted and beat them down for years .H

Again and again McMurphy tries to inculcate by

example the possibilities for independent action, for the assertion of self against the system. His strength

comes from the fact that he lives his own being, not a being forced on him by the "Combine", Big Nurse over­ ruled the vote to watch the World Series on a techni­

cality, In spite of her ruling, McMurphy puts down his

tasks and pulls his chair in front of the Television

to watch the World Series, The patients watch to see who will win this battle of wills. Big Nurse turns

off the power to the television set and McMurphy, now

joined by the others, sits staring at the empty screen.

Clearly there is a lesson for the young readers here.

They will recognize the need for authority to establish

itself through reasonable action; that individuals do,

in fact, have the power to meaningfully protest arbitrary and oppressive authority. Once again, I refer to Sutherlands' defense,

"It is unfortunate that the patron who has lodged the objection to this book was so

( 0 11Ibid,, p, 13^0 1*8

distracted by its alleged obscenity, racism, and immorality that he couldn't appreciate this scene. It has something to say about the need for authority to establish itself through reasonable, not arbitrary action. It also illustrates the utter futility of ever trying to get between a human being „ and anything he holds as dear as baseball."1

McMurphy's most significant act is to persuade a group of patients to accompany him on a one-day fishing trip. It is symbolically suggested in this scene that his greatest source of strength comes from nature— this is what McMurphy teaches the patients on the fishing trip; and this is what liberates them. In spite of

Big Nurse's attempt to discourage the men, the trip is a success. Its therapeutic value is that, confronted with reality and nature, the men are provided the opportunity to engage in an honest struggle. Jerry Bryant asserts that "Nature, does not, like the combine seek to imprisoni it invites struggle to survive. And struggle is the creative act of rebellion by which men define themselves.Thus, through an act of spontaneous love and unselfish and independent behavior, McMurphy has liberated the men who have for so long been oppressed

12Sutherland, "A Defense of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." p. 31*

■^Jerry H. Bryant, The Open Decision. (New York* The Free Press, 1970)> P» 271. by the "Combine." To students the liberator is a man with a sense of self and a feeling of love for the weak and oppressed. Tanner ably justifies McMurphy*e profanity«

"His profanity is a verbal manifestation of the indecencies they (the patients) suffer, the only appropriate response to it, a foil which helps us to see its actual nature, and a means by which the scene is transformed into a world in which some tenderness and love are possible. Big Nurse speaks properly but does unspeakable things. McMurphy*s speech is outrageous} he fights the profane with the super profane and moves beyond profanity to help the men create a new respect for themselves,"

The price of liberation of these men is high— the destruction of McMurphy. McMurphy has to risk his own selfhood for that of the others. By submitting to a lobotomy, McMurphy sacrifices himself in a Christ-like manner in order that the others may "live." When he finally moves to attack Big Nurse, the act which gives her the excuse to have him lobotomized, the narrator recallsi

"We couldn't stop him because we were the ones making him do it. It wasn't the nurse

■^Sutherland, "A Defense of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." p. 29, 50

that was forcing him, it was our need that was...pushing him up, rising and standing like one of those motion-picture zombies, obeying orders beamed at him from forty masters. Fantasies of the weak converge upon himi one of the burdens McMurphy is carrying (and he is exhausted by the end) is the number of wishfulfillment reveries which are secretly, perhaps unconsciously, projected on to him by the inmates.

We must read McMurphy, then, in two ways. Indeed, he is an authentic rebel who dances to his own music.

However, there is also the sense that he is stepping to the music that he hears— the collective dreams and hopes of the patients. Perhaps McMurphy’s real heroism is in his realizing his obligation to the

oppressed men, yet still maintaining his "rebel" image.

His strength comes from his ability to support those

fantasies that are projected on him. Perhaps one could very well apply the old elicit— "he lost the battle but won the war" to the character of McMurphy.

He lost in that he sacrificed himself. In a greater and more heroic sense, he won by liberating the patients from the unreasonable authority of the "Combine". The patients can now re-enter the real world that Randle

McMurphy introduced them to. McMurphy frequently lost to the Nurse, yet his victory was largely due to his

■^Tanner, City of Words, pp. 37^-5» 51

incessant display of independent behavior. He stood

up against authority. And if students can learn anything from this admirable character it can perhaps be summed up best by McMurphy himself when he says, after failing in his attempt to tear the control panel off of the floor, "But I tried, though. Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't 1? " ^

Perhaps McMurphy's victory and sense of love and sacrifice can best be realized through a brief examination of the character of Chief Bromden. It is through Chief "Broom," a giant, schizophrenic Indian, and the narrator of the story, that we see the character of McMurphy. He seems to represent the towering vitality of the original life of America, now terrified to impotence by all the mechanical paraphernalia of the white man's institutions. McMurphy teaches him to regain the use of his strength and at the end of the novel he is running away from the hospital towards the country of his ancestors. The Chief's vision of the hospital as a great nightmare of hidden machinery is quite convincing. Gradually the Chief sees less "Fog" and more reality, McMurphy is the man who demonstrates that the "Fog" is not all-powerful. Kesey makes the scene of the hospital as a microcosm of modern America

Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, p. 121 52 very real when the men leave the hospital for the one-day fishing trip. Tanner makes the extension from the hospital to the real world very clear.

"What others would call factories and suburban housing developments, Big Chief sees as evidence of the growing power of the combine, which works to keep people 'jerking around in a pattern*. What the combine is spreading is another version of entropy— all individual distinctions and differences erased and nature's variety brought down to the deadly uniformity of a mechanically repeated pattern# Some people may want to get out, or protest, but any such deviants are sent to the hospital where special machines can adjust them. One interesting point is that a simple man may escape the combine— 'being simple like that put him out of the clutch of the combine. They weren't able to mold him into a slot.'"17

Perhaps Kesey can help us demonstrate to our students that it is rather difficult for irresponsible authority, or a dehumanizing technocracy, or a "combine" to control an individual who has a strong sense of self and who, most significantly, is not afraid to demonstrate independent behavior. Kesey may very well help to convince our students that their "impossible dream" is, in fact, quite possible for the individual who is strong

•^Tanner. City of Words, p. 376. 53 enough to dance to his own music* As Sutherland observes, "The idea is that each human soul is worthy, and it is the genius of heroism to work transforming f deeds which discover the worthiness both in themselves 1 ft and in other humble men*"-1,0

It seems, then, that our major task in presenting this book to a group of students is to help them see through Kesey's microcosm into their own lives. Perhaps they too will discover how, in many less spectacular ways, the "Combine" is manipulating their lives and the lives of those around them. Only through such a realization can an individual recognize the value of independent behavior in the face of unreasonable authority. I do not mean to suggest that I plan to use such novels to teach our students to become revolutionaries

(in many ways they are controlled by an artificial

"apparatus" as much as the patients of the hospital).

We can, however, use such novels to assist our students to become happy human beings with a strong and gratifying sense of who they are. If our students can enter the adult world with this awareness, they will certainly be less vulnerable to artificial manipulation and unreasonable authority.

■^Sutherland, "A Defense of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." p. 30® 5^

Whereas Ken Kesey suggests that man can escape his suffering and imprisonment, though not without great sacrifice, Bernard Malamud, on the other hand, is f0 not quite so optimistic. He seems to suggest that man must face his imprisonment as a condition from which he can not escape. Malamud's protagonists can only find a degree of happiness through the manner in which they accept their conditions. His characters find their happiness in the degree of spiritual freedom that they can retain in the face of suffering and oppression.

The world of The Assistant is extremely bleak. The setting is frequently described as a prison. It is a failing grocery store in Brooklyn run by a destitute

Jew— Morris Bober. Malamud makes Morris's economic failures depressingly realistic. He is depicted as a poor Jew, a consistently good man who is constantly plagued with bad luck and misfortune. The bleakness of the setting is made very clear in the opening sentence, and the tone remains consistent throughout the novel.

The early November street was dark though night had ended, but the wind, to the grocer's surprise, already clawed. It flung his apron into his face as he bent for the two milk cases at the curb. Morris Bober dragged the heavy boxes to tht^ door, panting. A large brown bag of hard x’olls stood in the doorway along with the sour­ faced, gray-haired Poilisheh huddled there, who wanted one.... 55

Morris went back to waiting. In twenty-one years the store had changed little. Twice he had painted all over, once added new shelving. The old-fashioned double windows at the front a carpenter had made into a single one. Ten years ago the sign hanging outside fell to the ground but he had never replaced it. Once, when business hit a long good spell, he had had the wooden icebox ripped out and a new white refrigerated showcase put in. The showcase stood at the front in line with the old counter and he often leaned against it as he stared out of the window. Otherwise the store was the same. Years ago it was more a delicatessen} now, though he still sold a little delicatessen, it was more a poor grocery.

This is a glimpse at the world in which Morris, his wife, Ida, and his daughter, Helen, are imprisoned.

As in Kesey's novel, a stranger, who profoundly affects the suffering characters and, more significantly, is profoundly affected by them, enters this starkly drawn world. Frank Alpine enters the novel by helping Ward

Minogue rob Morris Bober. Full of remorse, and anxious to redeem himself from past mistakes, Frank reveals his complicity to Morris. Morris sympathizes with Frank, feeds him, and gives him an opportunity to redeem himself. Frank has spent his entire life running from mistakes that he seems chronically to make. As Bryant

1^Bernard Malamud, The Assistant. (New Yorki Dell Publishing Coo, Inc., 1957). PP« 1-3. 56 asserts, "Hating himself both for his missed chances and for running from situations of his own making, he yearns for that freedom that would give him the power to revise the past, to escape the consequences of his acts, and to keep all options open even when a 20 choice has irrevocably closed some of them,"

The central action of the novel develops primarily from Bober's relation to Frank Alpine, and, to some extent, from Frank's relation to Helen, The theme of the book is the regeneration of Frank— his literal and symbolic conversion to the Jewish faith, Frank's conversion comes from the influence of Morris Bober.

In many respects Morris and Frank are very much alike,

Morris suffers, Morris, too, has made his share of mistakes, Morris, however, has a certain staying power.

Unlike Frank, he does not run from past mistakes, Ihab

Hassan vividly describes suffering of Morris*

"Morris Bober, to be sure, is another example of the eiron, the humble man. He is more. He has endurance, the power to accept suffering without yielding to the hebetude which years of pain induce. He is acquainted with/the tragic qualities of life— 'The world suffers. He felt every schmerz'— and he defines the Jew as a suffering man with a good heart, one who reconciles

20 Bryant, The Open Decision., p* 329® 57

himself to agony, not because he wants to be agonized, as Frank suggests, but for the sake of the Law— the Hebraic ideal of virtue. Yet this is only one source of Bober's strength. His other source is charity, which in his case becomes nearly quixotic."21

Instead of running from his mistakes, Morris surrounds himself with them, bitter trophies of his failures.

Their symbol is the grocery store, which is the source of Morris's bitterness, suffering, and frustration.

But Morris accepts this condition. Ironically, the store is also Morris's source of strength and humanity.

Frank can not understand the willingness with which

Morris accepts his destitute condition. More signifi­ cantly, Frank can not understand how Morris has the spiritual fortitude not only enabling him to know who

Morris Bober is, but to passively accept it. Frank has a lot to learn about what it means to suffer, and most important, about what it means to be a Jew*

'I think other religions have those ideas too,' Frank said. 'But tell me why it is that the Jews suffer so damn much Morris? It seems to me that they like to suffer, don't they?'

^Hassan, Radical Innocence, p. 163 58

'Do you like to suffer? They suffer because they are Jews.'

'That's what I mean, they suffer more than they have to.'

'If you live, you suffer. Some people suffer more, but not because they want. But I think if a Jew don't suffer for the Law, he will suffer for nothing.'

'What do you suffer for, Morris?' Frank said.

'I suffer for you,' Morris said calmly.

Frank laid his knife down on the table. His mouth ached. 'What do you^mean?'

'I mean you suffer for me.'

The clerk let it go at that.

'If a Jew forgets the Law,' Morris ended, 'he is not a good Jew, and not a good man.'22

For Morris the Law is to do what is right, to be honest and to be good. To Morris, his only reward is to sacrifice for others. Part of his suffering comes from that sacrifice, but its purpose is the affirmation of other human beings. This is what Frank learns from

Morris, and it is not without a lot of mistakes and suffering that his lesson finally becomes meaningful— that he finally learns who Frank Alpine really is.

22 Malamud, The Assistant, p. 150. 59

Bryant has a clear vision of Frank's conversioni

"It is this positive view that Frank Alpine finally substitutes for his negative dream of escape and restitution. That substitution does not take place until after Morris dies. After the funeral, Frank returns to the store, from which Morris had earlier banned him. Frank's aim is to win back Helen by working so hard that she will eventually forgive him and allow him to send her to college. But Frank has subtly changed. He does not run from his mistakes as he once did, nor does he seek some suspension of the rules of his condition.^3

Now he is living according to the Law— eagerly suffering

for another— Helen. Through this suffering, Frank

finds the new life for which he had long been searching*

"Frank becomes Morris Bober. He takes over the grocery

store; he follows Morris's old routine; and in the

Spring he has himself circumcised and becomes a Jew.

He embraces the Law, accepts suffering as a token of oh. purpose m human experience."

Chief Broom was liberated by the sacrifices of

Randle McMurphy. Frank Alpine was liberated, paradoxically,

by placing himself in Morris Bober's prison. However, both men found their identities through an individual

23Bryant, The Open Decision, p. 331. 2^Ibid.. p. 332, 60 who is willing to suffer for others. Malamud tells our students that they can find themselves by accepting their unique conditions. In so doing, they may very well suffer— the degree of which depends on their condition— but, indeed, they will have found compassion, love, and a willingness to sacrifice for others. They will certainly have found a sense of self. And perhaps, after all, this is what identity is all about. One must accept his condition and himself as he is if he is to make his own life meaningful to himself and to others.

These two novels are among a large group of contemporary novels that show modern man as an underdog victim of social regimentation. I chose these novels because I believe that they are relevant, comprehensible, and interesting to upper level secondary school students.

I have also observed apprentice teachers present each of these novels successfully. They were received quite well by the students, and each stimulated relevant and meaningful discussion. In Chapter I I suggested a sampling of the many novels that could be included in this section. Also, many of the novels that I have placed in the other two categories with which I am concerned will fit neatly into this category. One novelist that seems to suggest a less optimistic view of the individual finding a sense of self in our 61

complex age is Saul Bellow. Seize the Day may very

well be representative. It is shorter than most of

Bellow's novels, but it strikes me as perhaps being

less interesting and relevant for the secondary

student than either The Assistant or One Flew Over the

Cuckoo's Nest. However, in the character of Tommy

Wilhelm, Bellow presents a character that is, indeed,

an underdog victim of social regimentation. Tommy is a weaker individual than the protagonists I have

examined previously. He is a man who is not tough

enough to rebel, convert, or be converted. Like

Frank Alpine, he is a chronic maker of mistakes. But

unlike Frank Alpine, he does not run from them. He

frequently surrenders himself into tears as he moves,

at the age of forty, to a retirement hotel in New York City. Tommy can not face his condition. He dreams of

the past, and longs for a lucky windfall to deliver him.

However, Bellow is in actuality not overly critical of Tommy, He seems to imply that our technocracy can not allow a man of sensitivity to do anything but retreat.

Like Bromden and Alpine, Tommy feels trapped by his own being. The trap, Bellow maintains, is inescapable.

Even with a more masculine and eccentric protagonist, Henderson, in the novel Henderson the Rain King; Bellow's view of man's condition is not much more optimistic.

Henderson has an intense desire to find himself, but he too fails in doing so. The only thing that enables

Henderson to achieve some sense of selfdom is a lengthy and allegorical trip to primitive Africa where he is literally initiated into realizing a sense of his own identity. Bellow, indeed, implies that this sense can not be found in America; and the reader is left wondering whether Henderson can sustain this sense of self once he returns to a modern society. CHAPTER III

Many contemporary novelists focus directly upon an adolescent protagonist and how he does or does not cope with the problems brought on with social regimentation.

Frequently we see the adolescent who represents truth or innocence in a society that no longer values those ideals. More often that not, he is a figure that exposes corruptive forces in the world around him. Some novels that are related to this broad theme are Capote’s Other

Voices, Other Rooms; Roth's Goodbye. Columbus; Lee's

To Kill a Mockingbird} McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely

Hunter» Golding's Lord of the Fliest Updike's Rabbit, Run; and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. I find it difficult not to begin the discussion in this section with a brief look at Holden Caulfield, who has certainly established a place for himself beside other great American adolescent protagonists— Huckleberry Finn, Henry Fleming, and Billy

Budd, to name a few. There are those who believe that

Holden initiated the adolescent's quest for identity in a mad world. If he did not initiate it, he is certainly the giant figure among a large cast of adolescent protagonists.

Before turning directly to the adolescent protagonist, however, I believe that we must consider the adolescent

63 64-

reader. To begin with, we must never enter a classroom

under the false assumption that students will auto­

matically "turn on" to every book that we suggest. More often than not, the opposite will be the case,

even with contemporary novels that we feel have high

interest value such as those that I have suggested and

will continue to suggest. We must be fair with our

students and not simply tolerate their interests.

We must be patient as they explore their immediate world and begin to articulate questions about it if we are to expect them to articulate questions about

the adult world that seems so distant to them. Our

educational system tends to discourage questioning

from the students. How often is the child permitted to do some telling and asking of his own? Charles Greiner describes the current situation rather

effectively!

The child whose head is filled with impossible dreams and innumerable questions has little difficulty making connections, relating, absorbing. His bag is the world. Then we send him to school for the cure. By the time he is fifteen we've succeeded? not many dreams are left; very 'few questions are asked. We've schooled him into complete withdrawal. We've taken from him the ability to abandon himself to illusion. He goes to see Peter Pan and looks for the wires. If he 65

has any questions, he's learned to keep them to himself. We've smothered his - imagination and strangled his curiosity.•L

If we ever want our students to effectively read

"our" novels, we must narrow the ever-widening communi­ cation gap between teacher and student. To do this, we must move toward what's relevant. If we begin where they are, perhaps we can lead them to attaining a broader interest in the world that they are soon to enter: "First, we must realize that the place to start is home, the youngster's home, the 'place he hasn't to deserve,' whether it's a palace or a poolhall, a 2 duplex or a drag-strip." In writing about the communi cation gap, the Reverend John Culkin has this to say:

You can't communicate with kids unless you know what they're really like. This doesn't at all mean that you have to accept their values. It has nothing to do with becoming their pal, with over-identifying with their group mores. That's no help at all. Your job is to lead them, or better, to help them lead themselves along certain worthwhile patterns of behavior. But

■^-Charles F. Greiner, "Hook-up, Plug in, Connect: Relevancy is All," The English Journal. LVIII (January, 1969). p» 23. Ibid., p. 25. wherever you want to take them, there is only one starting place— where they are. It's not what you say that counts. It's what they hear.3

Perhaps the best way to begin such a program is to discover what the students want to know— not what the department chairman or superintendent think they ought to know. It seems logical to me that if we ask our students what they want to know, we can more successfully and realistically worry about what they ought to know later. In all probability, the former will prove to be a reliable gauge for determining the latter.

Greiner asks his students to list any three questions that they would like to have answered. The students are urged to let their private selves ask the questionsi "The questions did not have to do with

English or school subjects at all. I wanted honest questions, no matter how unanswerable, controversial, h. or silly they seemed to be." A partial list of questions Greiner received indicates the range and

^The Rev. John M. Culkin, "Film Study in the High School," (Fordham, New Yorki Fordham Film Study Center). ^Greiner, p. 26. 67

depth of student interest*-*

Why do I have blemishes and other kids don't?

Does it take more courage to burn your draft card or go to Vietnam?

How do people keep happy with each other after they're married for awhile? Or is it impossible?

What comes after Life?

What makes people believe that their religion is the most sensible and best? Why are there different races?

Why does God sometimes make babies suffer and allow people to be born who are crazy or who have crippled bodies?

Will we ever be able to live together without prejudice? If so, how do we start?

Was it really smart to invent the atomic bomb?

What is the real meaning of average?

Why is it important to belong somewhere?-*

Greiner contends that it does not matter if some of the questions are unanswerable; but it is certainly significant to note that they are all universal in nature.

"It is important for him to discover what the scientist,

-*Ibid«, p. 28. the historian, the poet, and the musician have all been puzzled about..." I concur that it is important to spend time with these questions and let the students try to find some answers. Obviously, by virtue of the nature of the questions, the answers will always lead to other ideas worth exploring. Certainly a question like "Why is it important to belong somewhere?" can lead to some of the literature that I am recommending Obviously, asking the students what they want to know is not going to solve all of our problems. However, it at least helps to make a connection, a means to "tune in" to what is relevant, a way to narrow the communication gap. It seems that such an activity will enable us to develop a rapport in which the students can study literature under us, and at the same time have a sense of trust in us. It would be hopelessly idealistic to suggest that the students are ready and eager to "tune in to our choices. We should begin by being extremely tolerant of student choices as to the books they choose to read. To institute most of my suggestions, we must be prepared to accept the proposition that literature does not necessarily occur in books, but in the experience readers have with books. Arthur Daigon

6Ibid.. p. 28. 69 urges the English teacher to be tolerant of student tastes« "...we must provide the materials, however grating they sure on our refined literary sensibilities and tastes, which will seriously and pleasurably involve students on, or near, their own levels of literary response, as a first step in ascending the f ladder of literary discrimination."?

If we are ever going to make questioning readers of young people, we will have to turn to the fiction of contemporary writers. And this means not just the best writers, but the work of popular writers of all kinds. Perhaps occasionally one of the "modern classics" may prove to be a useful book, but we can expect to help most students find their place in the modern experience only through popular works within their intellectual and emotional reach. The teacher who feels comfortable only with materpieces will find this a tough assignment; but if we believe that literature ought to serve the reader by helping him learn how to be at home in his own time, and at home in his own world, then we O must turn to books he can read. John Rouse articulately

^Arthur Daigon and Ronald T. Laoonte, Challenge and Change in the Teaching of English. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 19717,'p. 19. Q John Rouse, "In Defense of Trash," Media and Methods. (September, 1966), p. 27. describes the double standard that typically prevails in a secondary literature program*

How can we account for the curious fact that books which have delighted and instructed thousands are often regarded by teachers as bad, whereas books that have bored generations of school children and turned them against reading are thought of as good? Such views are not taken as evidence of woolly-headedness, I am sorry to say. They derive from an abstract literary standard that treats books as ends in themselves, quite apart from any immediate interest or usefulness these books may have for the reader. It is this standard that produces classroom anthologies constructed on the principle that what's difficult or dull must be good, and lists of required reading drawn up as though every kid in the class was going on to graduate school for advanced literary training. It is acquired by apprentice English teachers in college survey courses, where they learn that good books are objects to be admired, not experiences to be enjoyed.

Suppose we try a different standard, and define as good that book which really gives the student a meaningful emotional experience. Then only rarely will a classic turn out to be a good book. The pleasure that comes from experiencing ideas, attitudes and emotions the reader recognizes as relevant to his condition is provided for most people by books of less than highest literary quality, sometimes even by trash. Anything worth doing with literature in the classroom probably depends on finding books that give this experience. To see a student interested in a book and concerned about the welfare of its people is a fine thing, whether that book is The Red Badge of Courage or Road Rocket.9

^Ibid., p. 26, ( 4

71

If we enjoy Road Rocket with our students, it

seems to me that we may he getting closer to their

enjoying The Catcher in the Rye with us. The recurrent

theme of identity is common in much contemporary

literature regardless of literary quality. Our job

is to gradually develop a more sophisticated taste in

our students. However, we can not force such a

development. We must be tolerant and patient.

Unfortunately, many teachers select books to satisfy

their own needs and not those of the students. Teachers

tend to feel "safe" behind the academic respectability

of a six-week unit on Hamlet. Any book that touches

on the actual concerns of life is apt to arouse the powerful emotional energies students bring into the

classroom. This is what we should invite, not avoid.

Rouse asserts that young people need to read contemporary

books. "Young people need books in the modern idiom,

then, to help them work through— emotionally and

intellectually— the concerns they feel are important.

Any any book that helps them do this will be a good book, whether or not it is admired by the cognoscenti."^0

Clearly, in considering the adolescent reader, we must accept the fact that great themes are found not only in "great" books. Likewise, we must accept the

10Ibid., p. 28. 72

fact that in reality our job is not to toach literature

as much as it is to influence behavior. Rouse suggests

that

...as teachers we should value a book above all for the help it gives us in shaping the interior world by which the student interprets his experience and guides his impulses into action. I suggest, then, that literary analysis be abandoned as a major classroom activity and that instead we spend the time helping the student explore the experience a book gives him. This means, of course, a frank discussion of real attitudes and feelings.

With the adolescent reader constantly in mind, I

firmly believe that we can lead him to an appreciation

of some of the contemporary novels that I am recommending.

We must first, however, listen to his own questions about his world. And we must tolerate his own choice

of books. Ultimately, however, if a trusting rapport is established, our students will appreciate and identify with such protagonists as Holden Caulfield, Mick Kelly, and Harry Angstrom. Clearly, all students are not going to relate to all books. We are obliged to find books that will interest young people and that deal with matters important enough to provoke them into discussion.

•^Ibid.. p. 2 9 , 73

With understanding and patience on our part, our

students may very well see part of themselves and

their world in The Catcher in the Rye, Rabbit, Run.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Goodbye, Columbus to name a few novels that deal directly with the adolescent experience. We can not rush them, however.

We must listen to their questions and read their books until we have established the mutual trust that will perhaps entice our students to real some of the books that I am suggesting as appropriate experiences for young adults about to enter a society that may deprive them of a sense of identity.

If we succeed in developing a tolerance level for the literature that our students choose to read, and earn their trust by devoting time to the discussion and answering of their questions pertinent to their own lives, we may very well bring them to an important transition in the literature class. The transition to which I am referring is the willingness of the students to look at some novels that we offer that may very well have relevance to their lives. Our students, like

Holden Caulfield, are on the verge of entering adulthood.

It may be distasteful to them to think that they must enter the adult world, they have become afraid of this natural human condition: adulthood, Caulfield is, 7k likewise, repulsed by this prospect. And, indeed, this confrontation with self is one of the central dilemmas of our age. Like most of our students, Holden seems alone and separated from his world. Salinger makes this quite apparent in the opening pages of the novel as the protagonist stands alone on Pencey Prep's campus while his fellow students watch a football game in the stadium below«

Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all.,.12

Holden finds himself at a crossroads and the location becomes for him a symbol of dissolution.

It comes partly from the fact that Holden, at sixteen, is on the verge of entering the new territory of adulthood. The change means that he will be something else when he moves from his familiar identity as an adolescent to the unknown world of the adult. Holden

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye. (New Yorki Bantam Books, 195!)» P® 2. fears change because it means loss of self. However,

it seems that what he fears most is his perception

of the world that he must enter. He is keenly aware

of the failures of the adult world, and he flees from

its mendacity. Nevertheless, as Hassan points out,

"from the moment Holden leaves Pencey behind, leaves

its Stradlaters and Ackleys, its oafs, creeps, and hypocrites, and dons his red hunting cap— why not, it's a mad world, isn't it?— we know that we are on an adventure of pure self-expression, if not self-discovery.

In his quest it appears that Holden wants to preserve something rather than find something. He wants to preserve the authenticity and spontaneity that he seems to see only in children and childlike grownups. He sees himself as a protector of those values of love and spontaneity— as a "catcher in the rye.” Jerry Bryant aptly describes Holden's vision of himself,

"He fancies himself as the only grown-up standing in a field of rye grass at the edge of 'some crazy cliff.' In the field children play, and his job is to keep them from running over the edge of the cliff. The edge of the cliff, analogous

^ H a s s a n , Radical Innocence, p. 273. to the curbs of the street and the roads that Holden must cross, suggests the end of childhood genuineness. Falling over the cliff is falling into the 'death' of adulthood.

In many respects Holden is repulsed by the very things that repulse our students— material values and the inhumanity of the world around him. (If we are not careful, we may become a symbol of this repulsion to our students.) Love is a very important word for today's teenagers. It is in their music and a dominant force in their life styles. Like

Holden, they are repulsed by phoniness. And like

Holden's perception, phoniness is the absence of love, and, often, the substitution of pretense for love.

Grunwald contends that "Holden is repulsed because material values draw on what little store of love there is in the world and expand on things instead of people.

One need not dwell on Salinger's pessimism to make The Catcher in the Rye a meaningful experience for our students. It certainly opens many doors for dis­ cussion of a very important aspect of the adolescent's development. Our students must seek for themselves alternate ways of entering the adult world and coping

Bryant, The Open Decision, p. 238.

■^Henry Anatole Grunwald, ed., Salinger. (New York Pocket Books, 1962), p. 198. 77 with it. Obviously Holden's withdrawal to unspoiled and imaginary places is not the practical solution.

It is clearly not the position that I referred to in an earlier chapter as armed neutrality. Nevertheless, he graphically reveals the problems to the adolescent reader. Dan Wakefield vividly describes Holden's ultimate dilemma:

Lator on, Holden imagines escaping to a cabin in the woods where 'I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me. If anybody tries to do anything phony they couldn't stay,' But the cabin in the woods and the field of rye are not to be found in the real world. Holden can find the world of love only within his imagination.,..16

Perhaps we can get our students to see that this is just the end of one leg of the journey— it is not necessarily the end of the search. Perhaps our students can recognize that Holden does succeed in making us perceive that the world is crazy, but his vision is largely a byproduct of his own adolescent instability.

Perhaps our students can discuss values and discover alternate routes in their quest for love, genuineness, and stability. Bryant describes what change means to

l6Ibid., p. 200. Holden Caulfield. "For Holden change means the

destruction of all that is good and desirable. But

change and the death it inevitably leads to are the

defining features of human life. To reject them is

to reject the unnegotiable conditions inherent in

one's situation, to reject life itself."1? Perhaps

our students could well respond to the advice that

Holden's former teacher, Mr. Antolini, offers*

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them— if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.10

Kirschenbaum and Simon offer an activity that can be effectively utilized at this point, but certainly

can work with any piece of literature. They believe

that a major portion of the time spent in the English

1?Bryant, The Onan Decision, p. 239. 1 R Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, p. I89. 79 t 4 class should he devoted to a search for values:

...for until we make the search for values a consistent and persistent objective (and a behavioral one at that), we will witness all too many students going through the motions without writing or reading much of anything which really matters to them in English classes

Kirschenbaum and Simon suggest that the English teacher

employ a value sheet which is simply a ditto upon which

is written a provocative and value-laden statement.

The first part of the value sheet is the stimulator.

The second half of the value sheet asks a series of

questions which help the student to clarify his thinking

about the values problems raised by the stimulator.

In describing the value sheet Kirschenbaum and Simon

maintain that the

"emphasis here is upon 'you' questions. What we are after is what the student himself thinks, and not what he believes is the answer the teacher is looking for. Our questions must never be moralizing

■^Howard Kirschenbaum and Sidney B. Simon, "Teaching English with a Focus on Values," The English Journal LVIII (October, 1969), p. 10?1. 80

ones, and we must do everything possible to see that there are no implied or best answers."20

Using this general form, an English teacher can make use of values sheets to lift his subject matter beyond the factual and conceptual levels and raise it to the values level. It seems to me that the values sheet can be used effectively with a novel. One could use the novel itself as the stimulator? or one could concentrate on a fragment from the novel. The values sheet is an excellent means of bringing together the personal and the academic in a literature unit. They involve students personally in the reading and writing adventure, and help them, through increased self-awareness, to make better, wiser, and more thoughtful choices in life.

If one were working with a mature class, perhaps he could very well use the entire novel as a stimulator in his values sheet. The following questions are a few examples of many that involve value judgment and have no right or wrong answer. Perhaps the students could discuss some of the questions in groups. Indeed, they should become personally involved in the work.

Such an exercise in a student-centered atmosphere

20Ibid.. p. 1073. 81 should help the student make wiser choices when he is confronted with Holden's dilemma as he will undoubtedly be.

1. Have you ever known anyone like Holden Caulfield? In what ways was this individual like Holden?

2. Have you ever felt as unfulfilled as Holden? If so, how did you feel and what were the circumstances? What did you do?

3. Is Holden justified in keeping the fact that he ’flunked out' of Pencey from his parents?

Why is Holden so attracted to his sister, Phoebe, and his dead brother, Allie?

5. Does Mr. Antolini offer Holden sound advice? Is Holden ready for such advice? How would you react to such advice?

6. How does Holden feel about himself?

7# Will Holden ever be able to participate effectively in the adult world? Is it possible to participate effectively in the adult world and still maintain a sense of identity?

8. Why is Holden attracted to the two nuns?

9» What repulses Holden about adult life? Have you ever felt this way?

10. Why does Holden desire to be a 'catcher in the rye'?

11. Have you ever wished to escape to the wilderness? If so, what were the circumstances? Is this a valid solution?

12. What do you feel Holden will do 'next year'? 82

13* Is it Holden's fault that he flunked out of Pencey? 14. Is Holden accurate when he repeatedly says, 'Boy, am I crazy'?

15. Can one run from his problems? Have you ever felt better off for so doing?

16. Does Holden have any unbreakable ties with the world? Explain.

17. Is there a sense of affirmation at the end of the novel. Why, or why not?

18. Do you feel the novel is funny? Why?

19» Does Holden achieve individual satisfaction?

If Holden Caulfield represents a negative prota­

gonist demonstrating to our students how not to enter

the adult world, Mick Kelly, in McCuller's The Heart

is a Lonely Hunter may, in her quiet and personal

search for beauty, depict an agonizing yet positive

sense of fulfillment; yet at the same time there is a

sense of her being denied some of the splendor of

adolescence. This novel is particularly unique in

that it could fit neatly into each of the three categories that I have suggested. Jake and Biff

clearly represent underdog figures who are victims of social regimentation. Mick Kelly beautifully

depicts the adolescent entering the adult world.

Dr. Copeland and his family are clearly victimized by virtue of the fact that they are black. Interestingly, 83 '

the central character around whom the other characters

evolve, John Singer, the deaf-mute, defies categoriza­ tion by me as well as singular categorization by the

other characters. In a way he is an underdog figure.

And in another way his handicap places him in a minority group. However, he is not clearly and

singularly defined. He is defined by the other characters— each having his own definition of what

Singer is all about. I have chosen to include the novel in this category because I was personally touched by the delicate portrayal of the young girl,

Mick Kelly, and her manner of crossing the threshold into the adult world.

The book takes its shape from the singular relation of the characters to one another. All of the characters are drawn toward one man, the deaf-mute, Singer, who stands at the center. Clearly the novel's structure is broken up to convey the sense of isolation. In a way, each character is victimized by the dreams that nourish his dignity. The story of Mick's initiation into the adult world is full of ironic pathos. It is delicate, and symbolically deals with her own search for the secrets that will resolve the mystery of her being. Mick’s "inner music" symbolizes this relentless yet partially unfulfilled quest: 84

This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored— a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before....The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen. It was over, and she sat very stiff with her arms around her knees. Another program came on the radio and she put her fingers in her ears. The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember but no sound at all came to her....

Mick does not fight her initiation into the adult world, as does Holden Caulfield. Rather, her vacilla­ tion between adolescence and adulthood supplies the novel with a sense of ironic pathos. Her "inner music" and her relationship with people like Biff, Harry and her father suggest the dilemma of her search. She seems to be searching at the same time for privacy and public recognition. Her relationship with the deaf-mute,

John Singer, approaches a compromise between the two and hints at a one-sided, yet ideal, love. Singer's mysterious suicide vaults Mick abruptly and pathetically

21 xCarson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. (New York: Bantam Books, 1940), pp. 100-1. into adulthood— there is no more vacillations

What good was it? That was the question she would like to know. What the hell good was it. All the plans she had made, and the music. When all that came of it was this trap— the store, then home to sleep, and back at the store again. The clock in front of the place where Mister Singer used to work pointed to seven. And she was just getting off. Whenever there was overtime the manager always told her to stay. Because she could stand longer on her feet and work harder before giving out than any other girl.... Mick raked her hair from her forehead. Her mouth was open so that her cheeks seemed hollow. There were these two things she could never believe. That Mister Singer had killed himself and was dead. And that she was grown and had to work at Woolworth’s.22

Clearly her initiation into the adult world is unfulfilled, yet she accepts it. Hassan vividly describes the pathos of Mick’s initiation.

"We see her revert to childhood in a decorously adolescent party? grope toward an adult understanding of her broken father; suddenly confront the experience of broken knowledge; and finally, assuming too early a financial duty incommensurate with her dream of fulfillment, we see her settle down to a life of drudgery in a

22Ibid., pp. 299-3OO. 86

Woolworth store. Her 'initiation,' which leads to a dead end, is complete, and it is attended by the bitter feeling that she has been somehow c h e a t e d . "^3

Each of these novels provides the adolescent reader with the experience of the adolescent attempting to cope with the adult world. Perhaps more signifi­ cantly, each provides the group of students with a stimulus for thought and discussion as to how they will cope with the problem which, in all probability, is looming larger and larger in their own minds.

Perhaps these are the novels with which we should begin when our students are ready. These novels examine transition. The novels in the other categories look rather bleakly and directly at the elusive adult world. Thus far, all of the novels are pretty "heavy,” and clearly none too optimistic. Philip Roth's

Goodbye. Columbus, although examining the same adolescent problems, does so in a lighter and more humorous manner; and it may very well provide some needed relief. Although the novella is humorous, it is far from an affirmation. Roth skillfully dissects a passionate love affair of two Jewish adolescents. A superficial

93 -'Hassan, Radical Innocence, p. 212. 87 reading of this novel may cause one to miss its serious undertones. The humor is one obvious reason for this. A more significant reason, however, has to be the fact that Roth seems to be, in his vision, concerned with stressing outer reality more and self less. Nevertheless, the desire of Neil Klugraan to find his identity is there from the outset of the novel»

I had strange fellows at the library and, in truth, there were many hours when I never quite knew how I'd gotten there or why I stayed. But I did stay and after a while waited patiently for that day when I would go into the men's room or the main floor for a cigarette and, studying myself as I expelled smoke into the mirror, would see that at some moment during the morning I had gone pale, and that under my skin, as under McKee's and Scapello's and Miss Winney's, there was a thin cushion of. air separating the blood from the flesh. ^

Just as Neil felt out of place at the library, he felt equally out of place at the Patimkin mansion and at his Aunts' house. Although twenty-three, he is, indeed, experiencing an adolescent quest for identity.

Roth makes it perfectly clear that the adult characters are in their own traps. Neil sees this and does not

2 II , Philip Roth, Goodbye. Columbus. (New Yorki Bantam Books, 1959)» P* 23, want it for himself. He sees it clearly in Mr. Patimkin' brother, Leo, and his Aunt Gladys:

...Life was a throwing off for poor Aunt Gladys, her greatest joys were taking out the garbage, emptying her pantry, and making threadbare bundles for what she still referred to as the Poor Jews in Palestine. I only hope she dies with an empty refrigerator, otherwise she'll ruin eternity for everyone else, what with her Velveeta turning green, and her navel oranges growing fuzzy jackets down below. 5

If Roth masks this sense of alienation through his humor and concern with outer reality throughout the work, he certainly drives home the point at the end— again using the mirror motif. At the end of the novella Neil stands staring at his reflection in a library window in Harvard Yard after the unpleasant conclusion of his affair. Tanner describes the mirror image in terms of Roth's philosophical position.

"This shift in vision whereby a scrutiny of the image of the reflected self gives way to a perception of actual external objects is apt to Roth's work. In one form or another, the majority of his work

2^Ibid,, p. 4. has been preoccupied with the problem— what is this mysterious me rushing towards the edge, or staring back at me from the glass,"2®

Neil is looking for that elusive definition of self throughout the work. He can not find it at the library, unless he is intentionally disrupting the dull routine of the city library. He can not find it through Brenda, although he temporarily feels that he has done so. He can not find it through his religii which he has a great deal of difficulty talking about with Brenda's mother. At the end of the novel he awakens to the fact that there is nothing. Once again we see Roth employ the mirror symbol to demonstrate what he (Roth) feels to be the unfortunate yet typical dilemma of the modern Americani

I was only that substance, I thought, those limbs, that face that I saw in front of me. I looked, but the outside of me gave up little information about the inside of me. I wished I could scoot around to the other side of the window...to get behind that image and catch whatever it was that looked between those eyes.,.I looked hard at the image of me, at that darkening of the

2^ Tanner, City of Words, p. 312. 90

glass, and then my gaze pushed through it, over the cool floor, to a broken wall of books imperfectly shelved,2?

f 0

He is more subtle to be sure; but Roth does, indeed, show us the adolescent asking who he is and where is his place in the adult world, Neil's quest is somewhat artificial, however, as he loses sight of himself in his quest not only for Brenda, but for her expensive life-style. We know from the beginning that the quest will fail. It is adolescent, and it is based on artificialities— "the fruit growing refrigera­ tors and sporting goods trees" that are humorously recognized by Neil as symbols of the empty yet material life style of Brenda's family. The quest fails not so much because Neil is unworthy, but because the quest itself is. Neil and Brenda seem to know something of this from the beginning and they end their romance with an argument which both of them seem to have planned, Neil fits into the Patimkin life-style no more than he fits into St. Patrick's cathedral, the library, or the life-styles of Aunt Gladys and Uncle

Max. "Neil Klugman, who wanted to rise on tiny wings

^Roth, Goodbye. Columbus, p. 96-97* to Short Hills, by grace descends from Brenda's

Radcliffe back to work at the Newark library* 'just

as the sun was rising on the first day of the Jewish

New Year.’"28

Another novel that vividly portrays the agonizing

process of maturing is Updike's Rabbit. Run. As in

Goodbye, Columbus, the protagonist is in his early

twenties, but his vision and experience is clearly

adolescent.

In Rabbit. Run, John Updike presents a grown man

with the same problems as those of the adolescent

Holden Caulfield. Updike, however, seems to show less

approval of his protagonist than does Salinger. The’

title indicates Harry Angstrom's means of dealing with

his situation— he runs. He runs to the fantasy world

of his high school days when he was a basketball hero.

Here he experienced the joy of unhindered, graceful

movement on the basketball courts. Updike presents

this motif very early in the novels

Rabbit takes off his coat, folds it nicely, and rests it on a clesyi ash can lid. Behind him the dungarees begin*to scuffle again. He goes into the scrimmaging thick

“^Glenn Meeter,Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth. (Grand Rapidss William B. Eerdman, Publisher, 1968), P» 92

of them for the ball, flips it from two weak white hands, has it in his own. That old stretched leather feeling makes his whole body go taut, gives his arms wings. It feels like he's reaching down through the years to touch this tautness...

Rabbit's problem is that the adolescent world has been taken away from him and he can not find a place in the adult world. He can not face up to the conditions of being human— time, change, and responsibility. He runs from crying babies, a slovenly pregnant wife, having to sell used cars, and the pressures of parents.

Rabbit can not accept maturity. To him, maturity is the same thing as death. He runs into nothingness, and equates nothingness with adulthood. Jerry Bryant effectively describes what maturity means to Harry

Angstrom«

For Harry, maturity means accepting respon­ sibility for one's actions even when they bring consequences different from those originally intended. Maturity means his returning to his wife and the world of cluttered apartments and dirty diapers, of selling cars and answering the expectations of parents. Maturity means smothering what

2 ^ J o h n Updike, Rabbit. Run (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., I960), p. 8. 93

he regards as his true self by surrending absolute freedom. The world outside himself has no values useful for him. It only threatens him.30

Harry's discovery at the end of the novel reveals

the theme of the book: "Funny, how what makes you move is so simple and the field you must move in is so

crowded."31 How crowded this particular field is, and

how Harry attempts to find a place in it is what the novel is all about— in broader terms, it is what growing up is all about. Hopefully our readers will discover more appropriate modes of motion within this field than running.

Updike offers a message to our students. More than

Salinger, or most contemporary American novelists for that matter, he does considerable justice to all the other people who are adversely affected by Harry's discontinuous maneuverings— the women who suffer and the parents who grieve. The lesson is unmistakeably clear— one must accept the responsibilities that he assumes when he walks onto the adult playing field. Updike is quite realistic as he stresses the point that while leaving seems easy, to discover destination is difficult. Like many figures that we have already

3°Bryant, The Open Decision, p. 2^1,

•^Updike, Rabbit. Run, p. 27*K 9^

examined— Holden Caulfield, Frank Alpine, Henderson,

to name a few— Harry gets the feeling that no matter

how he moves he cannot get free of the system. Harry's

movements have no constructive goal, no destination.

This novel, perhaps more effectively than The Catcher

in the Rye, could serve as a stimulator for a values

sheet. Harry's problems are our students' problems.

The novel provides an excellent vehicle for opening

the discussion. If novels are not life, but a picture

of life, not reality, but a view of reality, let's

begin by letting the students have a realistic look

at the problems of their own lives. Updike provides

this experience. This novel, like many others,

pictures adolescence in both its mixed up confusion and its splendid potentiality. We must be concerned with student interest— and if the student is interested

in the problems of his own immediate world, let’s begin there. Undoubtedly a student-centered discussion of

such adolescent protagonists as Holden Caulfield,

Mick Kelly, Neil Klugman, and Harry Angstrom will provide our students with a clearer look at themselves.

Such discussion will enable our students to make wiser and more meaningful decisions when they enter the adult world. It is absurd to assume that this type

of discussion will supply our students with all of the necessary equipment to successfully find the meaning 95

of their lives in an adult world. All that I can

suggest is that the more time that we spend discussing

the plights of many of the contemporary protagonists

that I have included, the wider will be the range of

experience that we provide for our students. These

varied experiences should help to encourage the f adolescent reader to seriously consider-emotionally

and intellectually-the problems that he feels are

important. If he rejects the "running" of Harry Angstrom,

he may very well approve of the stoio acceptance of Mick

Kelly. By so doing, he has in all probability reached

such value judgment by looking at himself and his world.

If this is the case, and the student, indeed, reaches

the value judgment himself, he will perhaps have found

some assistance in entering the world that Holden fears

and Harry flees.

Another novel that I feel obliged to mention

since I have had so much personal success with it in

the classroom is Golding's Lord of the Flies. Golding

is not American, but in this case it does not matter.

The story is given a sense of timelessness in that

the setting is an unknown island and the time is

simply in the future. The fact that the boys are

not given a last name also contributes to this sense.

Golding's philosophical framework is somewhat

inconsistent with the thinking of today's independent 96 and idealistic students. One can certainly quarrel with Golding on philosophical grounds, hut his novel is convincing whether his philosophy is or not. A very worthwhile discussion could stem from Golding's view that man is basically evil and needs society to control his basest drives. I have found that the high school student has a particular advantage when reading Lord of the Flies. The students are both older than the protagonists of the novel, yet younger than adults. Thus, they can entertain a degree of objectivity in evaluating the view of man and society that Golding presents. Gladys Verdemanis testifies to the fact that student testimony pertaining to the value of this novel is convincing.

f It is intriguingly debatable— symbolic enough to warrant a wide range of diverse and credible interpretations.

It has the material for a dozen good bull sessions.

His characters are intense, emotional, moody, and therefore capable of drawing the young person's fullest empathies. He has captured the essence of a new generation growing up under the shadow of the bomb.

Realizing that others, too, are afraid makes one less ashamed of his own nightmares and feelings of inadequacy.32

32 Gladys Verdemanis, "Lord of the Flies in the Classroom— No Passing Fad," English Journal, LIII (Nov. 196^), p. 572. 97

Lord of the Flies is extremely useful for several very pragmatic reasons. It is easy to read and it is short. It is deceptively simple, and yet can be considered at various levels of sophistication provoking intense and deep reactions at all levels. The characters resemble universal symbols more than they do real people. They are impersonal. Golding provides them with no last names. They seem to be suggestive of different types of human behavior in conflict. This becomes apparent early in the novel•

They faced each other on the bright beach, astonished at the rub of feeling. Ralph looked away first, pretending interest in a group of little ones on the sand. From beyond the platform came the shouting of the hunters in the swimming pool. On the end of the platform Piggy was lying flat, looking down into the brilliant water.

But when they reached the shelter Simon was not to be seen. Ralph put his head in the hole, withdrew it, and turned to Jack.

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate. 'If I could only get a pig!'

'I'll come back and go on with the shelter.'

They looked at each other, baffled in love and hate. All the warm salt water of the bathing pool and the shouting and splashing 98

and laughing were only just sufficient to bring them together again.33

This early passage demonstrates the different psychological types in conflict personified through the boys. Piggy is fat and not at all physically inclined.

He wears glasses and has a severe case of asthma.

However, he is extremely practical and seems to be the only one with a clear conception of the problems and needs of the island. He seems to represent the intelligent and perceptive powers of man.

Jack, on the other hand, is very aggressive and a leader. He seems to be Ralph's rival from the outset.

He is sure of himself and quite physical. He seems to represent lust and unrestrained passion. He acts on impulse with little regard to the consequences of his actso He primary concern is with the pleasures and needs of the moment. It seems only natural that he be the self-appointed leader of the hunters.

Ralph seems to be the leader from the opening of the novel. His primary interest seems to be to establish a rational social order and maintain his authority. Although he does not have the insight and perceptive powers of Piggy, he seems to represent rationality.

33william Golding, Lord of the Flies, (New Yorki Capricorn Books, 1959)» pp. ^9-50• 99

Simon is an unusual child - a loner who apparently represents the visionary. He finds the meaning of

things because he is able to look behind events and people.

I do not feel that it would be at all difficult

for our students to see these contrasting traits-Golding f demands it of his readers. It strides me that some

simulated activities could be very worthwhile here.

Perhaps before reading the novel, we could describe the hypothetical situation to our students and ask them to use their own values to determine what they would do in such a situation. Clearly there would be a clash which would serve as an effective means of

introducing the novel. Perhaps an even more worthwhile activity would be to ask our students to play specific roles that we have assigned. This simulation would be after the fact. The roles could range from the officer who rescues the boy to Piggy's aunt to a group of British adults and adolescents. The task of the students would be to evaluate the boys® adventure.

Jack, Ralph and some other survivor could testify. It seems to me that such an activity would clearly fuse the personal and the academic. The students will be forced to look at the episode from varying points of view. Not only will this activity help them to understand Golding's novel, but of primary importance, 100

the activity will help them to better understand themselves. Certainly there will be more actual

"experiencing" than even a student-centered discussion

of the novel could provide.

I have found through working with my apprentice teachers that such simulated role-playing activities genuinely involve the whole class. Such activities could be tried with various novels. Perhaps the class could assume roles of the people with whom Holden

Caulfield encountered. Obviously, his parents, his teachers, his brother and sister, and his friends would be some of the roles. Once the students have had an

opportunity to consider their roles, their task would be to discuss the future of Holden Caulfield. It strikes me that in such a simulated situation, the students will be forced to accept and reject values that they may very well have never considered. If this succeeds, we have, indeed, fused the personal and the academic. The novel comes closer to the students own experience and presumably the decisions that the students reach in simulation will have some bearing on decisions they may very well have to make later pertaining to their own lives. If we have succeeded in doing this, we may very well have succeeded in helping our student achieve a sense of self when it becomes their turn to enter the complex adult world. 101

The novel dealing with adolescent problems will help us foster a deeper understanding of our pupils and, in turn, they of themselves. Greiner suggests that we "plug into" the adolescent worldi

What's happening? Youth is happening. They are where the action is. When we become less concerned with the length of their skirts and their hair and pay more attention to the breadth of their knowledge of their environ­ ment and the depth of their understanding of themselves, both of our worlds will be made somehow better. For each of us, the journey through life is dark and difficult. Missed connections only make it more s o . 3^

The tragedy of the typical English classroom is that the administrators and curriculum designers are taking the student— an already somewhat disoriented traveller— even further from where he should be going.

I am convinced that significant change in the teaching of English can be achieved. We must listen to the problems of our students and be tolerant of what they want to read and discuss. If we are fair to them, they will respond to our recommendations. The English classroom should be viewed as the humanistic center of the school and the community. It should be the place for our student to discover that his "personal"

Greiner, p. 29. problem may not be all that personal— that his unanswerable” question may very well have been confronting thinkers for centuries. Our classroom f0 must make room for the special and unique problems that are important to those who populate it. CHAPTER IV

Thus far I have concerned myself with the oppressed protagonist and how he or she manages to cope with oppression and still maintain a sense of identity.

It is for this reason that I chose to discuss the plight of some black and Jewish protagonists. The primary objective, then, is to examine the protagonist and attempt to relate his experiences meaningfully to the students. An obvious "fringe benefit" here will be that our students will recognize the cultural differences and will perhaps develop a deeper understanding of the unique experience of the black and the Jew. Perhaps this understanding will prevent our students from becoming oppressors themselves. I have attempted to choose novels that are universal enough to enable our students to relate to the protagonist even though the students may very well not be members of the particular minority group whose problems are being / 9 examined. Oppression is oppression, and the minority protagonists are still fighting for a sense of identity.

Presumably, the student will recognize that his experience is not as distinct from the black or Jewish experiences as he may have initially felt it to be.

103 104 f 9 The examination of the minority protagonist could very well he worthwhile for the typical white student for two reasons: by having examined some of the novels that I have included in earlier chapters, he will relate to the oppression; and he will empathize with the black or the Jew who is in a state of double jeopardy-he is oppressed, like all of us, because he is living in a technocratic society that discourages individualism, and he is oppressed by the fact that he is black, or that he is a Jew, or an American

Indian. Ideally, our students will recognize that perhaps one of the most serious and long-standing threats to the American ideal of individualism is

America's treatment of its minority groups. Clearly, no one will ever be able to enjoy individualism unless the privilege is afforded to all of the members of our society,

Ralph Ellison begins his novel, Invisible Man. by asserting:

,.,.I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquid-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus side shows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When 105

they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination— indeed, everything and anything except me.l

Indeed, this passage reflects the black experience, but not only the black experience. It reflects the individual, black or white, who desires recognition as an individual. Holden Caulfield could very well make such a statement-the antecedent of Ellison's they would be the adult world rather than the white world. Clearly Kesey's Chief Broom could have made such a statement. Compare what Broom had to say at the beginning of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with the passage from Ellison's work.

They laugh and then I hear them mumbling behind me, heads close together. Hum of black machinery, hammering hate and death and other hospital secrets. They don't bother not talking out loud about their hate Secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I'm cagey enough to fool them that much. If my being half Indian ever helped me in any

^Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. (New York: New American Library, 19t3rTTr~V*~T» 106

way in this dirty life, it helped me being cagey, helped me all these years,2

The resemblance is striking. In each case we see an individual who is completely unable to reveal his own identity. This sense of alienation and isolation is revealed again and again in much contemporary

American fiction, Neil Klugman, a Jew, has this to say in Roth's Goodbye. Columbus>

Suddenly, I wanted to set down my suit case and pick up a rock and heave it right through the glass, but of course I didn't, I simply looked at myself in the mirror the light made of the window, I was only that substance, I thought, those limbs, that face that I saw in front of me, I looked, but the outside of me gave up little information about the inside of me,3

The relationship between the three passages is clear.

Each depicts a protagonist who has a sense of invisibility about how he sees himself, how others see him, or both of these.

2 Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuekoo's Nest, p. 3, ^Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus, pp. 96-7 . 107

I would be hopelessly naive and idealistic, however, if I even attempted to equate the black experience with all types of oppression. However,

I do not feel that we can ignore the many similarities*

And I do not feel that I am incorrect in asserting that enough similarities exist to enable the white student to relate to the unique oppression of the black or the Jew, However, there clearly are many differences that need to be pointed out. Grier and

Cobbs point to some of the reasons for the differences in the black experiencei

For the black man in this country, it is not so much a matter of acquiring manhood as it is a struggle to feel it his own. Whereas the white man regards his manhood as an ordained right, the black man is engaged in a neverending battle for its possession. For the black man, attaining any portion of manhood is an active process. He must penetrate barriers and overcome opposition in order to resume a masculine posture. For the inner psychological obstacles to manhood are never so formidable as the impediments woven into American society. By contrast, for a white man in this country, the rudiments of manhood are settled at birth by the possession of a penis and a white skin. This biological affirmation of masculinity and identity as master is enough to insure that, whatever his individual limitations, 108

this society will not systematically . erect abstructions to his achievement.

I have attempted to point out throughout this project that unseen subtleties that I have often referred to as a type of technocratic expertise control all of our lives to one degree or another. It strikes me, however, that the black man in this society, more than other men, is shaped by more powerful external forces than the typical white American. There are unwritten rules which regulate black lives far more than the lives of white men. There are many reasons for this unfortunate condition. Slavery made the black man a psychologically emasculated and totally dependent being. The effects of slavery are very apparent today. Grier and Cobbs point out that

Times and conditions have changed, but black men continue to exhibit the inhibitions and psychopathology that had their genesis in the slave experience. It would seem that for masculine growth and development the psychological conditions have not changed very much. Better jobs

^William Grier and Price Cobb, "Black Manhood," in Ronald Gross and Paul Osterman, ed., Individualism: Man in Modern Society, (New Yorks Dell Publishing Co., 1971)9 pp« 105-6 , 109

are available, housing is improving, and all the external signs of progress can be seen, but the American heritage of racism will still not allow the black man to feel himself master in his own l a n d # 5

The notion that the black family is a matriarchy is

not unfoundeds The black man is stripped of his

authority in the home by forces outside of that

homes Again, this tradition can be traced to slavery.

The slave mother, Grier and Cobbs point out, had to

blunt her son's sense of aggression for the boy's preservation*

The black mother continues this heritage from slavery and simultaneously reflects the world she knows. Even today the black man can not become too aggressive without hazard to himself,6

In general, our society asks all men not to

become too assertive or too aggressive. For the black man this demand Is more pronounced. This social plight will be examined in more depth when I turn to Wright and Ellison.

^Ibid.. t>« 107s

6Ibid.. p , 105. 110

I feel that it is important to include black

literature in the secondary English curriculum in

all schools— white, black or mixed. Typically the

white student does too much intellectualizing about the problems of discrimination that the black faces.

Racial harmony can not be attained without an

acceptance and appreciation for cultural differences.

It strikes me that a comprehensive reading program that includes multi-ethnic materials is imperative

to this end. Certainly such a reading program would

lead to inter-group understanding attainable in no

other way. One can not deny the impact of fiction

as an influential social force. The work of Dickens,

Sinclair, and Stowe all support this contention.

School curriculums that include materials which accurately reflect the contributions of the various

ethnic groups represented in American society will do much to reduce the human relations gap between white and non-white. This in itself may very well help to eliminate oppression when our students are in control of the adult world. The inclusion of black literature

(and I do not mean a token poem or two in an anthology) will help the white student to develop an appreciation for the differences in a heterogeneous culture. It will, in turn, help the black students to relate to and feel I l l

a part of our curriculum* Most significantly* for

my purposes* it will enable the student to examine

a wider variety of protagonists facing an identity

crisis. Jesse Perry suggest that "pei*haps more tragic

than the Negro student who cannot find an acceptable

self image in his school literature is the white

student who is deprived of a fully rounded education

in literature*" These are clearly very important

reasons for the inclusion of black literature in

our curriculum. I should now like to turn to some

specific novels depicting the minority experience

for the purpose of examining the protagonist who, like

protagonists examined in earlier chapters, is

oppressed in his society and who struggles to find

a place for himself in that society. I believe that Richard Wright's Native Son is an appropriate novel

with whieh to begin my discussion.

Native Son is a very simple, violent and didactic novel that attempts to give us the flavor of the

social plight of the many black men of whom Bigger

Thomas is offered as an exemplum. One could argue,

as many critics have, that Native Son exhibits nothing

7 Jesse Perry, "Black Literature and English Curriculum," The English Journal. LX (November 1971), p. 106lo 112 other than a socially discarnate and demoniac wrath. The novel's didacticism is one of the reasons that I have decided to inelude it. Admittedly, t 0 Wright's violent murder scene and its aftermath are quite artificial; and, at best, serve as a backdrop for Wright's obsession with soeial humiliation as the ultimate suffering, the ultimate indignity.

He sees the world through eyes that seem to be distorted by hate. Bigger Thomas is not a character— he is the black man. Wright asks us to

Multiply Bigger Thomas twelve million times, allowing for environmental and tempermental variations, and for those Negroes who are completely under the influence of the church, and you have the psychology of the Negro people. But once you see them as a whole, once your eyes leave the individual and encompass the mass, a new quality comes into the picture. Taken collectively, they are not simply twelve million people; in reality they constitute a separate nation, stunted, stripped, and held captive within this nation, devoid of political, social, economic, and property rights.»

Q Richard Wright. Native Son. (New Yorks Harper, Row Publishers, 19^0), p. 364-. 113

Paradoxically, Wright asks us to do exactly what he fails to do— to look away from the individual and encompass the mass. Wright fails to look into the inner, private world of Bigger Thomas because of his obsession with the public world in which Bigger exists.

Like Golding in his Lord of the Flies. Wright does not give us a real character, but a character type.

Nevertheless, the novel gives us a vivid picture of the oppressed world of the alienated black man. It is this world of oppression, alienation and hate that we want our students to examine. The double jeopardy of the black man in his quest for identity is vividly portrayed in the novel. It demonstrates how being black compounds the oppression of the already oppressed individual. The novel asserts the intense desire for a sense of identity— even if it can only be realized through murder. There is no room for approximation in the world of Bigger Thomas. Wright envisages the human community as though it were split into two camps, the one black and the other white.

Glicksberg points out that Wrights' hate was so intense that he seems to be "holding a loaded pistol at the head of the white world while he muttered between clenched teethi 'Either you grant us equal rights as human beings or else this is what will q happen.'"7 Wright makes it very clear that Bigger Thomas is a man who wants to establish a sense of identity.

Like Ellison's protagonist, Bigger seems to be crying,

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was."*1-0 Wright believes that the greatest tragedy of mankind lies in the inability of the individual to find satisfactory fellowship in the group. Clearly satisfactory is the key word here. The closest Bigger comes to group fellowship occurs after two violent murders. From the outset of the story of Bigger

Thomas, the reader sees a proud and defiant black man searching up a one way street for a sense of who he is and what his life means. Wright makes Bigger's sense of frustration very clear, and through it he reveals a motive for the violence!

Vera went behind ''he curtain and Bigger hears her try. ^ to comfort his mother. He shut their voices out of

^Glicksberg, Charles I., "Negro Fiction in America The South Atlantic Quarterly, XL (October 1946), p. 482 •^Ellison, Invisible Man, p. 19. 115

his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reservet he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough

Wright's philosophy is one of social and environmental responsibility. Bigger became what he was, not because he was free to choose his course of action, but because circumstances over which he had no control had driven him to murder. Wright tells the reader that Bigger Thomas murdered Mary Dalton because the white would give him no alternative.

Yes, he could take the job at Dalton's and be miserable, or he could refuse it and starve. It maddened him to think that he didn't have a wider choice of action..•• with his hands deep in his pockets, another cigarette slanting across his chin, he brooded and watched the men at work across

^"Wright, Native Son, pp. 13-14-. 116

the street. They were pasting a huge colored poster to a sign board. The poster showed a white face.^-2

It strikes me that the most ironic fact of the story is that although the murder was an accident, it need not have been. Bigger hated the white world because, as Wright implies, he had no choice. He hated enough to murder without provocation. Ford asserts that "he felt that he had been cheated out of everything good in life that he had wanted and that white people— all white people— were responsible for the unhappy predicament."^

With this in mind, then, it is not surprising that the first time that Bigger begins to feel a strong sense of who he is and what his life means occurs after the murder*

He had murdered and had e^eated a new life for himself. It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him. Yes; he could sit

•*-2Ibid.. p. 16.

•^Nick Aaron Ford, "The Ordeal of Richard Wright," in Donald B. Gibson, ed., Five Blaek Writers, (New York* New York University Press, 1970), p. 28. here calmly and eat and not be concerned about what his family thought or did. He had a natural wall from behind which he coulu look at them. His crime was an anchor weighing him safely in time....It was no longer a matter of dumb wonder as to what would happen to him and his black skin; he knew now. The hidden meaning of his life-a meaning which others did not see and which he had always tried to hide-had spilled out. No; it was no accident, and he would never say it was. There was in him a kind of terrified pride in feeling and thinking that someday he would be able to say publicly that he had done it. It was as though he had an obscure but deep debt to fulfill to himself in accepting the deed,-*-4-

The dichotomy depicted in the first two books is real, and clearly it suggests that Wright's vision

is a bleak one, indeed. The black world (Bigger) and the white world (Mary) interact in the story and each is destroyed. Each destroys the other out of fear for his own life. Bigger is hunted and chased like an animal and ultimately incarcerated to await an inevitable death. Merkle asserts that

If this is Wright's vision of our society's future it is a bleak one, indeed. Instead of the light at the end of the corridor, we today see only the light of the first flames. The skywriters urging

^Wright, Native Son, p. 101. 118

at the beginning of Native Son to use 'Speed Gasoline* becomes Wright's practical urging to the black guerillas of the future.15

Clearly the story is calculated to show the black man as being brutalized and depraved beyond ordinary humanity. However, I do not feel that Wright's vision is as bleak as the dichotomy in the first two books seems to suggest. Book Three is clearly the weakest artistically because of its didacticism.

However, the book seems to offer a somev/hat optimistic vision as to the dilemma caused by the distinct

dichotomy of the earlier books. The incarcerated

Bigger refuses the solace of varied social forces.

Max, the lawyer, offers him communism, his mother's minister offers him religion, and his friends offer him blackness. He seems to reject, or transcend these, and, like Camus' Mersault or Malamud's Bok,

Bigger moves toward the concept of self and individual realization. Paradoxically, Bigger discovers freedom behind the bars of the Cook County Jail. Merkle points out that

1*5 ^Donald R. Merkle, "The Furnace and the Toweri A New Look at the Symbol in Native Son. ** The English Journal. LX (September 1971), p. 739. 119

This existential discovery by Bigger gives him a sense of peace and a feeling that finally he is not in an alien world. His world vision has changed and he sees himself in a clear perspective and relationship. And although he can not express this in words, he feels it and that is enough. And it is this realization that Wright suggests as the solutions not black nor white, hot or cold, but each person coming to grips with his world on the basis of his needs and his experience alone,p which ...... choice...... in the first

This novel affords our students an examination of a man who is able to find a sense of identity in spite of extremely overwhelming forces. Clearly, in Bigger's case, the means are not as important as the end. He was brutalized and depraved by a world that had emasculated him. He stuck out against this world in the only way that he knew how. He was treated like an animal and obviously was forced to act like one. But the important message for our students is that he learned from this experience and the Bigger Thomas that we see at the end of the novel sums it up bests

l6Ibid., p. 739. "I ain't trying to forgive nobody and I ain't asking nobody to forgive me. I ain't going to cry* They wouldn't let me live and I killed. Maybe it ain't fair to kill* and I reckon I didn't want to kill* But when I think of why all the killing was, I began to feel what I wanted, what I am....I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em.... It's the truth, Mr. Max. I can say it now, 'cause I'm going to die. I know what I'm saying real good and I know how it sounds. But I'm all right. I feel all right when I look at it that way."1 '

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an entirely different type of novel. It deals, most assuredly, with the black experience, and Ellison is able to immerse his readers into all the concrete materialities of Negro life. The reader hears the very buzz and hum of Harlem. Ellison has an extraordinary acute observation of the manners, values and idioms that comprise the black experience in a small southern community and in the large city. Ellison is quite different from Wright and other leading black novelists

He seems to be more concerned with the aesthetic responsibility of the artist rather than the social responsibilities of the black writer. He is, therefore speaking as an artist to a universal audience. For

"^Wright, Native Son, pp. 391-92. 121

this reason he has been criticized by the black militant# And for this reason all readers relate to his protagonist, a southern Negro, who is in

Ellison's rendering, profoundly all of us. There are, to be sure, many social implications in the novelj but essentially it is an initiation story— and a good one at that# It follows more closely in the tradition of Melville, Joyce, Faulkner and Salinger than it does Wright and Baldwin# Ellison's hero must escape from the illusions and limitations of his environment in order to find himself# He has to penetrate the illusions built around the fact that he is black# He must encounter variations of deception which attempt to bind him to the image that as a black man in

America he does not exist in relation to the rest of the world. Although this is the substance of the book, the hero has actually found his identity before 1 fi the book opens with "I am an invisible man#” His goal in telling us his story is to clarify for himself his reasons for his invisibility# Ellison told his story because the nature of his intellect rendered his passive hibernation impossible! "A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action#

1 Q Ellison, Invisible Man# p# 7 19Ibid.. p. 1 6 . Ellison's protagonist regrets his invisibility and promises to escape from his "hole.” Herein lies the big difference between this protagonist and

Bigger Thomas. Marcus Klein explains this difference!

In fact, the only way in which he might exist is in an enormous act of vengeance, a mechanism which Bigger Thomas had discovered before him. But the world is nothing so simple for him as it was for Bigger. Simple murder won't do, and anyway he sees the contradiction in vengeance. He accomplishes revenge and existence only at a remove, in a nightmare underground....And he is thrust into a nightmare mot, despite the fact that Ellison has said it, because the frustration of identity is peculiarly the American theme. He is condemned first of all because he is black. The novel is glued to the fact...20

Ellison is obviously vitally concerned with the question of how Negroes confront their destiny.

Concerning this problem, Ellison says that,

In the South of Wright’s childhood there were three general ways: they would accept the role created for them by the whites...; they could repress their dislike of Jimcrow social relations while striving for a middle way of respectability...;

20Marcus Klein, "Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man", pp. 88-9. Gibson, ed., Five Black Writers. 123

or they could reject the situation, adopt a criminal attitude, and carry on an unceasing psychological scrimmage with the whites, which after flared forth into physical violence.2

The Negro, then, must shed his identity to find his skin, and he can only do so in painful and successive stages. The only difference between the South of

Wright's and Ellison's experiences, Hassan asserts,

"may be that in the latter acceptance of the Jimcrow mask has become increasingly difficult, and 'the unceasing psychological scrimmage' with society has grown to be a necessity which white and black feel alike. But the criminal attitude is merely the oo beginning of a road that has no end."

Perhaps more clearly than any of the novelists that I have examined, Ralph Ellison focuses upon the issue of freedom and consciousness not simply as a social problem, but a psychological and philosophical one as well. Ellison shows that for all Americans, not just the black American, invisibility and absurdity are significant factors in the lives of all f *

2^Ralph Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues," in Paul Bixler, ed., The Antioch Review Anthology (New York, 1953)* P. 267. 22 Hassan, Radical Innocence, p. 169. m individuals. The discovery of the intimidating aspects of life puts one in a position of defining himself with greater awareness. Obviously there are many obstacles that the protagonist must contend with before he can realize his individuality, even if it means invisibility.

The obstacles are presented in a picaresque manner as Ellison's protagonist becomes initiated into invisibility. Ellison's unnamed hero goes full circle from the state of acceptance, to humiliation, to rebellion, and ultimately he returns to qualified acceptance. The initiation theme is made clear from the beginning of the novel. The protagonist, almost ritualistically, in a cruel and degrading ceremony sponsored by a group of whites in the small southern town where he lives is forced to fight half-naked and blindfolded with other Negro boys. From this group of white community leaders he takes his definition.

He prostitutes his personal pride by submitting to degradation with expectations of reward. He is convinced that whatever he gets from life will come from the whites, and he receives a scholarship to a

Southern Negro college which is supported by Northern white men, who are no different in effect from the

Southern whites. Both groups believe themselves 125

to be endowed with a superiority that enables them

to administer the lives of the child-like Negro.

Bryant points out that "the extent of his servility

to the white man's values is suggested in the sense

of shame he feels for those Negroes who are oblivious

to white respectibility, who fall short of the

white man's ideals of social behavior and morality.

The episode that the protagonist experiences with

the wealthy white trustee and the incestuous Jim

Trueblood demonstrates this sense of servility.

Humiliation comes when the protagonist is

forcibly dismissed from the college and sent to

New York. He leaves the world of the Southern black with its rule of servility and its goal of becoming a black white man. He moves from humiliation to rebellion by becoming a member of another circumscribed world, the "Brotherhood"— a communistic oriented monolith run by a Brother Jack. He accepts his position in this world, but once again moves from acceptance, to humiliation, to rebellion. Temporarily, the protagonist enjoys his new-found freedom in the

"Brotherhood." Like the Southern white world, however, the "Brotherhood" has no room for diversity.

He recognizes that he can find no individual satisfaction

23 Bryant, The Open Decision, p. 2?8. 126

in the organization. He leaves the brotherhood,

once again humiliated, when he discovers that the group is sacrificing the black people of Harlem for its larger plans.

Unable to find a sense of individual spontaneity in either world, the narrator eludes three white men during a riot and escapes from this "prison" into a manhole. He discovers that he has to leave the world and turn completely away from the past in order to achieve greater awareness. This is both where the novel ends and where it begins. From his hole, the narrator observes that those caught in a system do not see each other as individuals. Rather, they see one another in the manner that a technocratic society has conditioned them to see. As the invisible man prepares to leave his hole, he gives us a more credible reason for doing so#

"Could it be that we're all invisible men? That white men could blind themselves to their own invisibility, but black men could not? And he settles on this point with a howl, a sense of triumph as well as a sense of terror, 'who knows but that on the lower frequencies I speak for you.'"2^

ok Barbara Christian, "Ralph Ellison: A Critical Study," in Addison Gayle, Jr., ed«, Black Expression (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969), p. 365. Like Bigger Thomas and Yakov Bok, the invisible man finds some meaning for his own existence in a prison. He has become conscious of his invisibility and having done so he can no longer justify meekly adhearing to the mistaken notions of others. He now must go his own way. He no longer rebels; he accept

He is not attempting to force another system on the world. He is about to reenter the world realizing that the only to remain free is to give his own meaning to the world, not that imposed by others.

He has thus arrived at a conception of individualism that transcends the various worlds that he tried to make himself a part of. The protagonist himself describes it besti

There is, by the v/ay, an area in which a man’s feelings are more rational than his mind, and it is precisely in that area that his v/ill is pulled in several directions at the same time. You might sneer at this, but I know now. I was pulled this v/ay and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own, I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. Thus I have come a long way and returned 128

and boomeranged a long way from the point in society toward which I originally aspired*23

This is not just an oppressed black man speaking about

the black experience* Rather it is a black man

speaking a truth that is applicable to all modern

Americans* Ellison's protagonist defends hibernation

as a covert preparation for some subsequent action*

Nevertheless, he has made a very real discovery about himself* He is invisible— no more or less invisible

than the man in suburbia who is forced to live a

life style that is not his own* The protagonist is

seeking a new way of entering reality. He has learned a whole new way of looking at reality and his relation to it* However, he has yet to discover a way of being

in reality* Tony Tanner points out that

What the narrator has to 'learn is that there are bound to be plans, but that any one plan you get involved in may well involve some falsification or constriction of your essential self. He drops out of all plans for a while to draw up his own. But once drawn up that too has to be left behind, as it were* The highest aspiration would seem to be not to get trapped in any one plan, while recognizing that to achieve

2

any identity is to be involved in plans. One could envisage for the narrator a continuing life of moving in and out of plans; like the rest of us oscillating between chaos and pattern but much more aware of it than most. In that awareness lies a measure of his freedom.2®

It strikes me that Tanner reveals a real challenge that Ellison offers today's educators. Are we not to help a student make a variety of plans for living? This may be a very important part of the contemporary student-centered English classroom. We must not only encourage our students to make a plan; we must encourage them to constantly alter and revise their plans.

What could be a better means of so doing than examining a variety of plans of others and adopting them to your own. Certainly, this is one of the major goals that I have emphasized in this project. I believe that one can get a better sense of his own plans if he examines a variety of plans of fictional protagonists. Perhaps

Ellison's ultimate message to our students is that we do not only write our own plan book, a synonym for life style, but that we constantly change it„ Ellison demonstrates this point even in his style of writing.

There is quite a distinction betv/een Ellison's style

Tanner, City of Words, p. 6l. 130 as the narrator moved from the South to the North and ultimately to a private hole in the ground. At first the style is naturalistic, then expressionistic, and finally surrealistic. Tanner points out that "as the hero manages to extract himself from a series of fixed environments, so the author manifests a comparable 27 suppleness by avoiding getting trapped into one style. 1 The discussion of plans or life styles with students is a difficult end for the English teacher to achieve, particularly in a class that is ethnically heterogeneous. The class atmosphere must be open and the students must be willing to share what really bothers them. Earlier I suggested that values sheets and role-playing activities may be helpful. Barbara

Stanford refers to a "Secret Sharing Game" in a recent

O Q English Journal article. I believe that this activity affords a lot of promise for the English teacher who believes in a democratic classroom. The game strikes me as an effective way of showing students how many problems they share with their classmates, Stanford suggests that each student be supplied with identical sheets of paper and instructed to write about a personal

^yIbid.. p. 62. pQ Barbara Dodds Stanford, "Affective Aspects of Black Literature," The English Journal. LIX (March 1970), P. 373. 131 problem. The papers are then exchanged, and each student is to read the paper that he receives as if it were his own problem. Stanford suggests that usually students see that most people, black or white, have basically the same problems. It seems to me that this may be an effective means for "opening a class up" to prepare them to discuss seriously the problems of life style and identity.

Thematically, Malamud's The Fixer is very closely related to The Assistant, which was discussed in Chapter

Two. By the same token, this novel is related to

Native Son and Invisible Man. It is clearly a novel depicting the agony of the minority experience. The resemblance between the Jewish and black experience as portrayed by Wright, Ellison and Malamud is, indeed, striking in many ways. The Fixer was written in 1966 .

It is historic fiction focusing on a historical incident in pre-revolution Russia. This, however, does not date the novel. Yakov Bok, a Russian Jew, is confronted with a genuine contemporary crisis. Perhaps more vividly than any novel that I have discussed, The Fixer reveals a society governed by necessity and apparatus. It # clearly is not a stretch of the imagination to say that Malamud's world in The Fixer is an allegorical representation of the modern American technocratic 132 state * It parallels Native Son and Invisible Man in many ways. In each novel the protagonist is stifled by an oppressive society. In each case, the protagonist is the victim of a racist world. And, in each case, the protagonist is able to discover some meaning in his life in either a real or metaphorical prison,

Yakov Bok and Bigger Thomas are alike in many ways.

Bok was born in anti-semitic Russia and forced to live in Jewish shtetls. Like Bigger, Bok was bitterly resentful of the condition into which he was born.

He felt that he had been cheated from the start— a discovery that Ellison's protagonist must make for himself. Bok senses himself being born into a metaphorical prison and dreams of escape. Ironically, as with Bigger, the escape leads him to a real prison.

Bigger accepts employment in the wealthy white world, and Bok, like the other two protagonists, finds himself more entrapped. Bok is accused falsely of a ritualistic murder of a Russian. Bigger is accused of a ritualistic murder of a white that he actually committed. At first

Yakov reacts to his arrest as though it were the result of the accident of his birth. Like Bigger with his blackness, Bok felt that being a Jew was an everlasting curse»

/ ♦ He tried to comprehend what was happening and explain it to himself. After all, he was a rational being, and a man must try reason. Yet the more he reasoned, the less he understood. The familiar had become evil. V/hat happened next was weighted with peril. That he was a Jew, willing or unwilling, was not enough to explain his fate. Remembering his life filled him with hatred for the way things went and were going0 I'm a fixer, but all my life I've broken more than I fix. What would they accuse him of next. How could a man defend himself against such terrible hints, insinuations, accusations, if no one was willing to believe hin,29

It becomes quite clear to Yakov that there are two limitations impeding any hope that we may have for freedom. Jerry Bryant describes the two limitationsi

.0.there are two limitations here: necessity (he is Yakov Bok, Jev;) and society (Russian society controls Jews). Yakov has not yet clearly distinguished between the two kinds of limitation, regarding them both as inescapable absolutes. And when he thinks of freedom, in this context, he means v/hat other of Malamud's escapees mean by it, the power to change his condition. The last sign of that power is suicide,

^Bernard Malamud, The Fixer. (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1966), pp. 89-90. 13^

and Yakov reasons that if he were to commit suicide he would relieve himself of his suffering and demonstrate that there is always 'one last choice0' If being a Jew is a curse, however, which one can escape only through suicide, then life is a curse and suicide a rejection of it,30

It is quite conceivable that Bok's statement of his condition could have been uttered by Ellison's protagonist or Bigger Thomas, And, certainly, the futility expressed in Bryants' comment could describe the condition of all three of the protagonists.

There is another very important parallel in the three novels. Each protagonist affirms his condition while being either literally or metaphorically incarcerated. In prison, Bigger Thomas discovers a sense of peace and a feeling that he is not in an alien world. He now sees himself in clear perspective.

He is finally able to come to grips with his world on the basis of his needs and experiences, Ellison's protagonist discovers that he is in an alien world and that he is, in fact, invisible. Nevertheless, he too sees himself in clear perspective. By not committing suicide, Bok, too, affirms his condition. He sees himself as a martyr for all Russian Jews;

30 Bryant, The Open Decision, p. 337* 135 he now affirms his race, and he is no longer sickened by his Jewish destiny. Like Frank Alpine in

The Assistant, this conversion occurs when self-pity stops. Like Alpine, he discovers that it is not a curse to be a Jew: rather it is a curse to be alive because living entails suffering. When he accepts this natural condition he becomes a man with a sense of identity. Thus like Bigger Thomas and Ellison's protagonist, he has found for himself a new life in the bleakest possible circumstance.

Yakov decides to fight by enduring, thinking, and protesting his innocence. This is a type of freedom and it is the possession of this type of freedom that helps define the man. It helps to define

Ellison's hero. All three protagonists seem to reach the conclusion that we can not escape our condition.

An acceptance leads to an affirmation which, in turn, leads to a profound sense of self in all three characters.

I am not suggesting that these three novels be taught together, although they certainly would compliment one another. Each novel, however, helps to further our students' understanding as to the importance of acquiring a genuine sense of self. It strikes me that an interesting activity in relation to any one / *

136

or any combination of the three novels might be the

inclusion of the following poem by Jane Stembridge.^

Jail

I think this portion of the sky is not enough to praiseo

Miss Stembridge, a civil right activist, had this to say about "Jail":

'Jail' is about anger. Because you're locked up. Instead of the whole big total October Delta blue sky, you got a little square in it. And that square's got black lines across it. That's what you got one day when you wanted everything, the whole sky, and everybody out dancing together a new kind of dance under that whole sky....

One day you wanted life and freedom for yourself and for everybody walking around. You broke the law.0.»

31 Jane Stembridge, "Jail," in Stephen Duning, Elsie Katterjahn, and Olive Niles, ed,, Thrust (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresura and Company, 1969), p. 253* 137

So there you are. It's October. The Delta sky is blue. You want it. You want to see all of it. But, no, you just got this square and this square's got those big ugly lines across it. / 0

In Chapter One I suggested that the contemporary

English teacher is going to have to be a poser of problems placing his students in a problem-solving situation. This poem, I believe, could do just that.

I would suggest that the teacher give the poem to her students after they have read the novel, or novels, as the case may be. The class could be divided into groups and asked the following questions:

1. How would Bigger Thomas, the invisible man and Yakov Bok react to the poem?

2. Is the poem consistent with the theme or themes of the novelists?

3. How would the three protagonists react to Miss Stembridge's comment about the poem?

This is, indeed, a challenging yet worthwhile activity for the student. Although I have not had the opportunity to try it, I believe that the students would initially say that the poem does, indeed, reflect the feelings of Bok, Bigger, or the invisible man.

After more soul-searching, however, I believe that they will discover that in each case that portion of the sky alotted to the protagonists provides them with

a great deal to praise, indeed. This assumption is particulary clear with Bok and Bigger# For the

invisible man, I should hope that the students would see that it is enough to praise temporarily. However, it is not enough ultimately# He desires, as was

established earlier, to leave his state of "hibernation.

This type of activity could very well lead to an inductive discussion of the novels# The discussion will enable the students to draw their own conclusions and attempt to relate the novel to their own lives#

Novels of this type are close to our students' needs.

They demonstrate some profound truth about life# I can not help but believe that the inductive approach to literature that probes the problems of man in an oppressive society will help our students become more vital and more mature adults# The novels that are most worthwhile are the ones that at the end of the reading and study will leave behind a sense of growth and achievement# George Eliot, Stephen Crane, and

Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, can accomplish this end in the classroom# However, the means to that end will prove to be far more tedious than presenting our students with novels that examine the world in which they live# Our students will relate 139 to the contemporary protagonists because these characters are not only fighting a familiar battle, but are fighting on a familiar battle ground.

f CHAPTER V

The themes of alienation and social oppression

are, indeed, a part of the everyday lives of our

students. They are readily apparent in contemporary

music, film, and poetry. The English teacher should

by all means make these valuable resources a part of

his curriculum. In a student-centered classroom the

students should be given the opportunity for making

some curricular decisions. If given this opportunity,

I have little doubt that the student will turn to

the music that he hears, the films that he sees,

and perhaps, to the poetry that he reads.

I have spent considerable time discussing the role

of the contemporary American novel as an agent for

helping our students recognize some of the undesirable

elements that are prevalent in our society. I have

also implied that an examination of these novels may very well prove instrumental in assisting our students to develop a style of life wherein they can function as individuals in a society that, because of its

sophistication, has a tendency to deny that privilege to the individual.

140 141

I do not mean to imply by the position of this chapter in this project that the students should first examine the novel and then turn to music, the films, and poetry. Rather, the material that is presented in this chapter should be integrated with the various novels that I have suggested. Indeed, many of the materials that are presented in this chapter can be examined as an end in themselves. However, I believe that the real value that the material affords the

English teacher is motivational. A few well-chosen songs, poems, and films can be examined as a means of getting ovir students to examine a novel or a group of novels. Frequently this material can be used during the actual examination of a novel to emphasize the relevance that the novel has to our students' lives.

This chapter, then, should be read 'as a potpourri of materials and activities that is closely related to the actual examination of the novel. I have attempted to suggest some activities that will involve the student, and I have attempted to suggest an appropriate time to use some of the materials.

The film can and should have an important place in the English classroom. Many contemporary films are directly concerned with the theme that I have concerned myself with in this project. Many of the novels that I 142

have discussed previously have been made into films.

The Fixer, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Rabbit, Run.

Goodbye. Columbus, and Lord of the Flies are just a

few examples of many good contemporary novels that have been adapted into good films. These films would

certainly prove to be invaluable to the teacher who wants to make the novels meaningful and relevant.

Many other films with original screenplay could prove to be quite useful to the English teacher who is concerned with helping his students make a comfortable adjustment into the adult world. The Last Picture Show,

Easy Rider, and The Graduate are representative of

films that show man struggling against an oppressive

society. The Graduate and Easy Rider are two films that can be a very important part of the English curriculum. Each film portrays the young protagonist struggling to find a meaningful place for himself in the adult world. The protagonist of The Graduate engages in his battle within acceptable cultural boundaries.

The protagonists in Easy Rider reject culturally acceptable boundaries, and their quest is a clear representation of a counter-culture. I have chosen to discuss these films because I believe the contrast between culture and counter-culture is extremely * important. It is a contrast that we have seen in 143

the examination of the novel* Rabbit, Run and

The Assistant show the protagonist seeking a

meaningful life style within culturally acceptable

confines* and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which

is soon to be adapted for film) tends to emphasize the counter-culture* The Graduate and Easy Rider

are representative of the language and the world of

today's youth. Easy Rider is a portrayal of an

important element of society that many of us choose

to ignore. We are making a serious mistake* however,

if we do not examine the counter-culture and its

heroes that are so important to our students.

Woof's initial song in the rock-musical Hair demonstrates

the point that I am trying to make. This introductory

song on sexual taboos may very well shock many of us.

The song asks a very important question, a question

our students in their clamour for revelvance are

asking us— why is society afraid to talk about what is being done? Perhaps the best way to bridge the gap between established culture and youthful counter-culture

is to address ourselves to this very question. Swift

clearly points to the importance of the inclusion

of the "youth movement" in our curriculum: 144

Yet not only linguisitic hypocricy is attacked, in Hair, so also is hypocricy in war,..while extolling peace, scientific progress.,.while increasing polution; love...without charity; democracy...with no clear understanding of personal freedom; escape,..without satisfaction; and livingooe without meaningo This last is certainly the most anguishing problem in an age when loneliness, emptiness, and fear for our very existence engulf us with the most., painful emotions flesh can be heir to.

Easy Rider is a mystical allegory of the quest for complete individual freedoms The two protagonists,

Wyatt and Billy, are long-haired, one of them bearded, who wear clothes which, like their hair, at once authenticize their dedication to freedom. After a successful sale of heroin that the two have purchased in Mexico, they begin their allegorical motorcycle

journey from California to near New Orleans where their trip is suddenly and violently cut off. The trip of Wyatt and Billy from West to East is a reversal of the "westering" motif. The implication, of course, is that there is no longer a place for the rugged individualo He moved as far as he could, and, blocked by the Pacific Ocean, developed a technocratic society

■'■Jonathan Swift, "'Don’t Put it Down! * A Teacher's Session with Hair,*" The English Journal, LX (May 1971), P 8 627 8 145 which has made complete individualism an unrealizable goal. After the pair is arrested in a small southern town they meet George, an alcoholic ACLU lawyer, who / 4 is entranced by the freedom of the two riders. George succeeds in getting the two released and joins them in their journey. George wears an old football helmet and a sweater from "Ole Miss." This costume, however, an outward symbol of social respectability and oppression, is not enough protection. The arrival of the three in New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras is the climax of the film. Lawrence points out that,

At this point the allegory is both a statement and a prediction. The historic quest for freedom has reversed so that America's contemporary quest is shown to be no longer toward the individual freedom symbolized by the West, but is revealed as a trip backwards tov/ard the values symbolized by New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, as a statement of ultimate hedonism, is the epitome of decadence, concupiscence, and, finally, of self-destruction. The trip to Mardi Gras symbolizes the tv/entieth century's stifling of individual freedom and the resultant search for something to replace lost freedom. The direction this quest is taking, the allegory states, is tov/ard self-indulgence and self-destruction.2

2 Joe B. Lawrence, "The Allegory of Easy Rider." The English Journal, LX (May 1971), p. 627. 146

The two men resume their journey after an

"acid trip" in New Orleans, but are shot down violently on a deserted road not far from New Orleans.

Symbolically, the message is clear. Modern America is out to destroy individual freedom and that which is different from itself. The film, however, does somewhat artificially protect the counter-culture from adverse judgment, and Wyatt and Billy become romantic characters epitomizing contemporary heroic descent. Although somewhat artificial and idealistic, the film has a message that we can not afford to ignore#

Ben Braddock, the protagonist of The Graduate, is likewise in search of himself. However, the backdrop is not an idyllic postcard American landscape that in reality no longer exists, as in Easy Rider; rather it is the real world of upper middle class suburbia.

The Graduate deals with typical establishment "hangups" and the generation gap. The movie begins with Ben returning home after graduating from college with honors. Immediately we see that his parents treat him as a commodity rather then as a human being.

The parents and their social circle are eager to find out how Ben plans to "make his money." Ben doesn't know. He feels that he needs time to discover who

Ben Braddock is, and resents being treated as a 14? commodity. Ben is bored with his world and resents the empty and affected lives of his parents and their friends* This sense of boredom is underscored by the sexual relationship that Ben has with his parents' best friend, Mrs* Robinson* The boredom is made very real in the hotel room quarrel between Ben and

Mrs* Robinson where the mood shifts effortlessly from bored sex to Ben's defiance to Ben's acquiescence to bored sex* The emptiness of Mrs. Robinson's life is made very real here, and Ben knows that he wants no part of it* Even sexually, the relationship is meaningless. The film’s mood is quite cynical, and is, indeed, a smug, and not a compassionate, account of the modern adult world. Ben finally asserts himself when he interrupts the hastily planned marriage of

Mrs. Robinson's daughter. Ben becomes the romantic hero. He defies his parents' world, and the last scene shows him leaving it, ironically in a shiny new sports car-his graduation present f^om his parents.

Ben, like Holden Caulfield, becomes quite an important hero for today's youth. Perhaps more than Easy Rider,

The Graduate affords our students a good look at themselves. The problems that Ben confronts may very well be the problems of our students. f 9

148

Perhaps the theme song of The Graduate expresses

its mood better than one could describe it. It also

serves as a neat transition to the inclusion of music

and poetry in the English classroom. Paul Simon's "Sounds of Silence" can, indeed, be treated as both.

This song, like many others, may help to explain why

today's students are so much more responsive to poetry

than students of a decade ago. Many of today’s

lyricists are poets in their own right. Without the music such lyrics often stand on their own as a very

successful poem that speaks directly to our students.

"Sounds of Silence" is, indeed, representative of this

trend in contemporary music.3

SOUNDS OP SILENCE

Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again# Because a vision softly creeping— Left its seeds while I was sleeping, And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains— within the sounds of silence. In restless dreams I walk alone, Narrow streets of cobblestones, "Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp, When my eyes were stabbed by the flash Of a neon light, that split the night, And touched the sounds of silence.

3 Paul Simon, "Sounds of Silence," Simon and Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence. Eclectic Music Company, 1965® And in the naked light I saw, Ten thousand people maybe more. People talking v/ithout speaking, People hearing without listening— People writing songs that voices never share And no one dare— disturb The sounds of silence. "Fools!" said I "You do not know Silence like a cancer grows." Hear my words that I might teach you, Take my arm that I might reach you. But my words like silent raindrops fall, And echoed in the walls of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made. And the sign flashed out in warning In the words that it was forming And the signs said "The words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls and tenement halls. And whisper’d in the Sounds of Silence .

The above lyrics clearly reflect the v/orld of

Ben Braddock, Holden Caulfield and Harry Angstrom, among other contemporary protagonists. The state of mind reflected in both the lyrics and the music of this

Paul Simon song is a very melancholy and thoughtful one. The theme is clearly that of lack of communication and the despair that ultimately results. Certainly the central feeling is one of hopelessness. A song like this one, or perhaps the theme song from Midnight Cowboy could introduce such novels as Rabbit. Run, and The

Catcher in the Rye, since the themes of despair, loneliness and lack of communicatipn are so closely 150 related. Without belaboring the point, I might also suggest that there are a lot of poetic elements in the lyrics of "Sounds of Silence" that the student could t 9 discover. The title is a paradox, A vision occurs in the first stanza. Tone is important, as are the uses of oxymoron (silent echo) and simile (silence like a cancer grows). Symbolic images are also very important.

The neon god imaginatively depicts the theme that man, through his technological advancement, has caused a lack of communication between humans. The "prophets" image may very well be past humanitarians who warned us of what was to come but who were ignored,

Lucille Clifton's poem "in the inner city" relates very nicely to "Sounds of Silence"!^

in the inner city or like we call it home we think a lot about uptown and the silent nights and the houses straight as dead men and the pastel lights and we hang on to our no place happy to be alive and in the inner city or like we call it home. Ll Lucille Clifton, "in the inner city," in Sylvan Barnet, Morton Berman and William Burto, An Introduction to Literature (Bostom Little, Brown and Company, 1971), p, 532, In this poem we hear a distinctive and meditative voice. It is a poem of acceptance. The poet accepts the inner city "or/like we call it/home" because it is the best of no alternatives. The tone of acceptance, however, is undermined by a tone of bitterness and futility— the futility of "silent nights" and the houses that are "straight as/dead men0" Once again we see man in a position, like Bigger Thomas and others, from which he can not escape. The "pastel lights" suggest an ineffective and artificial means of improving one's condition. The lights are related to the lights with which Ellison's invisible man covers his hole. Any hope is eradicated in the next line as the poet hangs "to our no place" happy for only one thing-"to be alive."

John Updike's poem "Youth's Progress" is a poem that could very effectively be used to introduce our students to the plight of several of the contemporary adolescent protagonists that I discussed in Chapter III.

Its relationship to Holden Caulfield, Harry Angstrom, and Ben Braddock is striking.-*

^John Updike, "Youth's Progress," in Barnet, et. al ed., An Introduction to Literature, p. 4-08. 152

/ YOUTH'S PROGRESS

Dick Schneider of Wisconsin*..was elected "Greek God" for an inter-fraternity ball. -Life

When I was born, my mother taped my ears so they lay flat. When I had aged ten years, my teeth were firmly braced and much improved. Two years went by; my tonsils were removed.

At fourteen, I began to comb my hair a fancy way though nothing much was there, I shaved my upper lip— next year my chin. At seventeen, the freckles left my skin.

Just turned nineteen, a nicely molded lad, I said goodbye to Sis and Motherj Dad drove me to Wisconsin and set me loose. At twenty-one, I was elected Zeus.

This poem could serve as a very appropriate lead to a discussion of Holden Caulfield or, better yet,

Neil Klugman and Ben Braddock. The title of the poem suggests the reason for the poem's three-part division.

The first stanza deals with childhood, the second with adolescence, and the third with maturity, I think that the important thing to note in this poem is the speaker’s attitude towards himself and the poet's attitude towards the speaker. The speaker accepts all that is being done for him, and his casual acceptance of his being elected "Zeus" suggests that he expected that he was being groomed for such an award. The irony in the poem lies in the acceptance of meaninglessness by the speaker. The tone, or the poet's attitude

towards the speaker, is quite different. Updike

clearly recognizes that like Holden Caulfield and

Ben Braddock, the youth is regarded by his parents as

a commodity. The emphasis is completely on physical

development, which, of course, implies that the

mental and emotional aspects were neglected, leaving

the shell of a man with nothing to look toward. His

life, the poet implies, will be empty and, at best,

he will, like Harry Angstrom, remember his one

moment of success— "I was elected Zeus." This

individual, like Angstrom and Tommy Wilhelm before

him, will be forced to lead a meaningless and empty

existence, clinging only to the past. He will not,

like Ben Braddock and Holden Caulfield, rebel or

even attempt to find a sense of identity for himself. Another Updike poem that would perhaps be even more helpful is his "Ex-Basketball Player."^ f»

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot, Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off Before it has a chance to go two blocks, At Colonel McClomsky Plaza, Berth's Garage

John Updike,"'Ex-Basketball Player,'in Virginia Busha "Poetry in the Classroomt "Ex-Basketball Player, English Journal, LIX (May 1970), pp. 643-4. 15^ Is on the corner facing west, and there, Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps— Five on a side, the old bubble-head style, Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low. One's nostrils are two S's, and his eyes An E and 0. And one is squat, without A head at all— more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards. He was goodi in fact, the best. In '^6 He bucketed three hundred and ninety points, A county record still. The ball loved Flick, I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas, Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while, As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube, But most of us remember anyway. His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench. It makes no difference to the lug wrench though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae's luncheonette. Grease-gray kind of coiled, he plays pinball, Smokes thin cigars, and nurses lemon phosphates. Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

This is a relevant poem that will appeal to both

teacher and student. As teachers we have all known this type of youth who never fulfills his potential after he leaves the secondary school. Likewise, the

student will be familiar with such people from their

own experiences. One of the things that makes this poem particularly helpful for my purposes is that in

Flick Webb the author has compressed his protagonist 155

In his novel Rabbit, Run, Harry Angstrom. Thus, the poem could serve as an excellent lead into that novel as well as such other novels as The Catcher in the Rye, and Goodbye. Columbus. It is a poem that requires close textual examination to uncover the fate of Flick Webb- why did he fail? and who is responsible? The student will want to know why Flick Webb failed, and the teacher will want to know where he failed Flick.

I believe that the textual analysis should be inductive. The student should be allowed to make the discoveries as to the nature of Flick Webb. I wish to thank Professor Jane Stewart of Ohio State University who suggested a strategy for presenting this poem inductively that works very well. I have tried this method, as have some of my student teachers, and we have been successful. The teacher should give a copy of the poem to each of his students. Each copy should be covered by a blank piece of paper and the student should be instructed not to remove the paper and look at the poem. The title should be left off the poem for reasons that will become clear later. The students are then instructed to slide the cover paper down until the first line is revealed. The class is then asked to respond to "Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot."

Ask them what they see, what they feel that the poem will be about. This line by line strategy is continued r 9

156

until the entire poem is revealed. This activity has

several advantages over other more traditional means

of presenting a poem. It enables the students to recognize the importance of examining and considering

each word and each image in a poem if they are to really understand "how" a poem means. It also gives the students a chance to react independently and to form

their own theories as to what Updike is doing. Most

students, for example, will detect the tone of the poem early if they pay close attention to such details

as "cut off," "Before it has a chance to go," "facing

West," "Berth's garage," and "Flick Webb." The lesson becomes a real puzzle or problem for the student to

solve inductively. The scope and intensity of the poem will increase with such in-depth probing on the part of the student. It may take some time, but I believe that it is time well spent. And it would certainly be time well spent if one were using the poem as a lead into Rabbit, Run? for example.

Cat Stevens* poem-song, "Father to Son," is another vehicle that could help the teacher explore the problems the adolescent has as he is being forced to enter the plastic and unreal world of his parents. The father

in this dialogue is attempting, as in "Youth's Progress," to mold his son to be like himself. Unlike the son 157

in "Youth's Progress," the son in Stevens' lyrics

wants to leave because he knows he can not communicate

with his father, "From the moment I could talk I was

ordered to listen, now there's a way and I know that I

have to go," Stevens' lyrics could clearly introduce

the student to the problems of Holden Caulfield or

Ben Braddock, The student would relate closely to this. Chances are that they are quite familiar with

and fond of Cat Stevens, and chances are that they have

experienced a similar situation in their own lives,?

FATHER AND SON

Fatheri It's not time to make a change, just relax take it easy, you're still young that's your fault there's so much you have to know. Find a girl settle down. If you want you can marry, look at me, I am old but I'm happy, I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy to be calm when you've found something going on, but take your time, think a lot, why think of everything you've got, for yo^i will still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not.

Son* How can I try to explain, 'eause when I do he turns away again. It's always been the same same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen, now there's a way and I know that I have to go. Away, I know, I have to go.

?Cat Stevens, "Father and Son," in Cat Stevens, . Tea for the Tillerman, (London, Irving Music, Inc,, 1970), 158

Father* It's not time to make a change, just sit down take it slowly, you're still young that's your fault there's so much you have to go through. Find a girl settle down if you want you can marry, look at me I am old but I'm happy0

Son: Away away away, I know I have to make this decision alone— no.

Father: Stay stay stay, why must you go and make this decision alone?

Son: All the times that I've cried keeping all the things I knew inside it's hard, but it's harder to ignore it. If they were right I'd agree but it’s them they know not me now there's a way, and I know that I have to go away, I know I have to go.

Another poem that could prove to be useful in introducing students to the novel that describes the emptiness of modern man's life would be Philip Booth's O "Was a Man."

Was a Man

Was a man, was a two- faced man, pretended he wasn't who he was, who, in a men's room, faced his hungover face in a mirror hung over the towel rack. The mirror was cracked. Shaving close in that looking glass, he nicked

Philip Booth, "Was a Man," in Donald Hall and Robert Pack, ed., New Poets of England and America (Clevelands The World Publishing Company, 1962), p. 190. 159

his throat, bled blue blood, grabbed a new towel to patch the wrong scratch, knocked off the mirror, almost intact, in final terror hung the wrong face back.

This poem could introduce our students to the void in the lives of Brenda’s parents in Goodbye, Columbus, to the world that Holden Caulfield came from, or to the world of Harry Angstrom's parents' and in-laws. The title, "Was a Man," suggests the poet's theme. The person in the poem represents the typical modern

American "blue blood" who is forced by society to be something he is not. Significantly, he sees his real face in a mirror that was cracked. Perhaps this recognition caused him to nick his artificial face that paradoxically he was shaving. He grabbed a new towel to patch the "wrong scratch," Presumably the real scratch is the crack in the mirror that is distorting his vision of his real self. It was probably not by accident that he knocked off the mirror. Booth is saying that he refused to accept or recognize this reflection. Now, facing himself, without the added misery of a mirror, he is almost intact. Now, without the mirror, he can perceive his artificial self without the alarming reflection provided by the cracked mirror. 160

In an ultimate act of terror he hung the wrong face

back. The wrong face is really the right face or his

true self— something he had grown accustomed to ignoring but that was made all too clear to him by

the mirror.

This is, to say the least, a tricky poem. It is

a poem, however, that could work very well in the

inductive approach to teaching. Another inductive activity that one could use with a poem such as this

one would be to give the student a copy of the poem

and read it aloud. Ask them to think about it. Then

direct the students to ask you questions about the

poem— questions that require only a yes or no response

from the teacher. The questions will obviously start at a very basic level and will gradually increase in

complexity as the students begin to synthesize the material. The value of this is that each student will be influenced by the questions of the other students.

As he is influenced and his interpretation is altered, he will formulate his own theory about the poem. This

is the real value of such an activity. It is not so

important that the students leave the class with the

interpretation as it is that they leave with a theory

about the poem that they have developed on their own

through the asking and synthesizing of questions. We 161 have thus presented the students with a problem and asked them to question it. And, perhaps, if we can teach our students to ask and synthesize good questions, we have taught them how to learn.

I believe that an interesting selection to use in conjunction with Booth's "Was a Man" could be

Lennon and McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby." The lyrics of this song emphasize more clearly the loneliness of modern man who can not be what he really is.9

Ah, look at all the lonely people! Ah, look at all the lonely people!

Eleanor Rigby picks up her rice in the church where her wedding has been Lives in a dream, Waits at the window wearing the face that she keeps in her jar by the door— Who is it for? All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near j Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when nobody's there— What does he care?

9 John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "Eleanor Rigby," in Barnet, et. al». ed., An Introduction to Literature, p. 385. 162

All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely people! Ah, look at all the lonely people!

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name, Nobody cameo

Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave# No one was saved.

All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong?

The theme of "Eleanor Rigby" is very closely related to that of Booth's "Was a Man." It is concerned with people who can not be themselves in an oppressive world, and, as a result, can not communicate with one another.

Instead of looking into a cracked mirror, Eleanor Rigby looks at the window "wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door." In other words, alone and inside,

Eleanor Rigby wears her real face. When she leaves her private world, she has to deposit her real identity

"in a jar by the door." Father McKenzie is a potential source of help for Eleanor Rigby, but he is busy "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear." No one comes to him and apparently he goes to no one. This 163 is emphasized by the fact that he darns his socks

"in the night when there's nobody there," Lack of communication is the tragedy not just in these lyrics, but in modern society. Eleanor Rigby could have helped Father McKenzie if she had gone to him (but she could not), and clearly he could have helped her.

Ironically, when these two lonely individuals confront one another, it is too late. Father McKenzie conducted her funeral service. As a result— "No one was saved." r I think that our students woulcl find this type of material very relevant to their own lives. It is important, however, that we allow them to discover the meanings that these materials have for them. It will help them begin to be able to articulate what it is about modern society that they do not like. It will also help to prepare them for examining the novels that I have discussed in earlier chapters. Ultimately, the whole process, if it is inductive and student-centered, will help enable our students to define the kind of life style that they want for themselves when they enter the adult world.

Two poems that could prove to be useful in introducing the student to the black experience are

"If We Must Die" by Claude McKay and "The Metamorphosis of Aunt Jemima" by William Childress< IF WE MUST DIE

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mark at our accursed lot. If we must die, 0 let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! 0 kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far out numbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

TEE METAMORPHOSIS OF AUNT JEMIMA

For years she smiled with her apron-white teeth, a honeydew grin warming the kitchens of whitefoiks' homes,

Her face was mellow brown because Black was not yet beautiful, and under a knotted kerchief her hair was frizzed and crisp and something kids marveled atu Sometimes, after a Steppin Fetchit movie. Aunt Jemima minded a hot stove, always smiling, so we might taste a simpler age.

But I grew up, had children and breakfasts of my own, and one day, the portrait on the box was not the same. The smile was thinner and colder. and the eyes frightened my pale offspring. Still I brought her home, for old habits die hard, and how better could I reward all her loyalty and kindness? 165

It's too late to help her now, of course, I only wish I could have foreseen the dark, congested face, the upraised hand, the first clenched against all the white tomorrows, the death of pancakes in America•

I find the Childress poem a particularly helpful poem to be used in conjunction with Ellison's Invisible

Man. The white mother in the poem is trying to understand the change in the modern black man. What the person remembers is quite different from what she sees. The Aunt Jemima cliche^figure conveys the change quite effectively. Ellison's narrator also sees this change. The "simpler age" could perhaps refer to his days in the Southern community where he was conditioned by the white world. At the end of the novel, the invisible man is clearly waiting to come out of his period of hibernation to institute "the death of pancakes in America."

Another worthwhile inductive approach could work well with "The Metamorphosis of Aunt Jemima." Once again each student should receive a copy of the poem and hear it read aloud. Then the class should be divided into small groups. Each group is to be directed to reach a group decision as to what the poem means. 166

After the groups have completed this assignment, they should share their interpretations with the entire class. Then the class can evaluate the various interpretations. This gives the students a chance to work out a problem together and, more significantly, a chance to present and defend their individual ideas.

The McKay poem is a violent protest poem that would work well with Wright's Native Son. The tone of

McKay's poem represents the feeling that Bigger Thomas is unable to put into words while he is awaiting his death in prison, "What I killed for must have been good!"10

Thus far in this potpourri of materials I have introduced materials that are particularly related to Chapters Three and Four-the adolescent and the black experience. Needless to say, there is a wealth of material available, and, at best, all that I can offer is a sampling of some that I believe to be particularly helpful. I have not, however, looked directly at the more general type of protagonist that I examined in Chapter Two— the underdog victim of social regimentation. Once again, I should like to suggest a few appropriate materials that would work

10Wright, Native Son, p. 392. 16?

well. "The Flower Lady" by Phil Ochs is an interesting

lyric with which to begin such a section since it

presents a rather general look at modern American . . 11 society.

Millionaires and paupers walk the lonely street Rich and poor companions of the restless feet Strangers in a foreign land strike a match with a tremblin' hand Learned too much to ever understand But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

Lovers quarrel, snarl away their happiness Kisses crumble in a web of loneliness It's written by the poison pen, voices break before they bend The door is slammed, it's over once again But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

Poets agonize, they cannot find the words The stone stares at the sculptor, asks are you absurd The painter paints his brushes black, through the canvas runs a crack The portrait of the pain never answers back But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

Soldiers disillusioned come home from the war Sarcastic students tell them not to fight no more And they argue through the night, black is black and white is white Walk away both knowing they are right Still nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

Phil Ochs, "The Flower Lady" in Robert Neyer, Thomas O'Brien, Thomas Sheehan, Patrick Collins and William Weber, ed., Discovery in Song (Paramus, New Jersey* Parlist Press, 1970), pp. 30-31. 168

Smoke dreams of escaping soul are drifting by Dull the pain of living as they slowly die Smiles change into a sneer, washed away by whiskey tears In the quicksand of their minds they disappear But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

Feeble aged people almost to their knees Complain about the present using memories Never found their pot of gold, wrinkled hands pound weary holes Each line screams out you're old, you're old, you're old But nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

And the flower lady hobbles home without a sale Tattered shred of petals leave a fading trail Not a pause to hold a rose, even she no longer knows The lamp goes out, the evening now is closed And nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady.

This song-poem can certainly be taught along with many of the traditionally great lyrics. This, and many songs of its caliber, suggests that the lyric voice in modern

America is, indeed, a dominant voice. Obviously this increased lyrical sophistication in contemporary music explains why our students are no longer unresponsive to poetry. It is a part of the lives of today's youth.

Phil Ochs is one of many artists who are representative of this new lyric voice. Graves and McBain point out that rock music

was perhaps crude and unpoetic in its infancy, but as the sixties progressed, lyrics of increasing sophistication and 169

skill appeared» Once more the lyric voice is flowering* The great creative energy of man's stubborn attempt to penetrate the meaning of his existence is surging forth in voices from the streets, voices that weave the sounds of the presents with the age-old question of man in relation to his loved one, his soeiety, and the cosmos#!2

It is the job of the teacher to bring the vitality of the new lyric poetry from the street to the literary world# It is a pleasant and worthwhile task, and it is certain to involve the student with the problems, and these are the problems that are reflected in the novels that I have discussed in earlier chapters. It has been a long time since we teachers have had such an opportunity.

We must take advantage of it# If the student is excited about Paul Simon and Phil Ochs, he will be excited by James Wright, Anne Sexton, R« S# Thomas,

Chad Walsh, and Philip Larkin# No longer does the teacher have to feel that he must bridge an artificial gap between the lyrical poem-song and "legitimate" poetry# With carefully selected material, there is no gap#

12 Barbara Graves and Donald McBain, Lyric Voices: Approaches to the Poetry of Contemporary Song (New York* John Wiley and Sons, Ino#, 1972), p# vii# 170

Phil Ochs' "The Flower Lady" portrays a contemporary scene from the heart of the city. The poet describes the panorama of our society-millionaires, paupers, lovers, and poets, soldiers and students, and the aged-all centered around a woman selling flowers. Ochs' builds his lyric around contrasting elements in our society. In stanza one the millionaire and the pauper are contrasted opposed. And although very different economically, Ochs' asserts that they share more in common. They are alone and dreaming a "restless dream."

They are both "strangers in a foreign land." The flov/er lady serves as a unifying symbol in the poem that describes alienation, misery and lack of identity.

Ochs cleverly compares their words and efforts to communicate to the simple message in a flower— a symbol of love that is being ignored. Lovers don't relate, poets and sculptors agonize, soldiers and students fight, and the aged look to the past because "nobody's buying flowers from the flower lady." And the flower lady "hobbles home without a sale." Something as simple as a flower (love) is completely overlooked, and Ochs suggest that therein lies the solution. Yakov Bok,

Frank Alpine and Mick Kelly all discovered love and, in turn, themselves. So too, implies Ochs, will the millionaire and the pauper if they buy flowers from the 171

flower lady to "pause and hold a rose."

Anne Sexton's "Man and Wife" is a contemporary

lyric poem that concerns itself with a similar problem.

If students respond to Ochs' poem-song, they will 13 certainly relate to Sexton's poemi J

We are not lovers. We do not even know each other. We look alike but we have nothing to say. We are like pigeons... that pair who came to the suburbs by mistake, forsaking Boston where they bumped their small heads against a blind wall, having worn out the fruit stalls in the North End, the amethyst windows of Louisburg Square, the seats on the Common And the traffic that kept stamping and stamping.

Now there is green rain for everyone as common as eyewash. Now they are together Like strangers in a two-seater outhouse, eating and squatting together. They have teeth and knees but they do not speak. A soldier is forced to stay with a soldier because they share the same dirt and the same blows.

They are exiles soiled by the same sweat and the drunkard's dream. As it is they can only hang on, their red claws wound like bracelets around the same limb.

13 ^Anne Sexton, "Man and Wife," in A. Poulin, Jr., ed., Contemporary American Poetry (New Yorkt Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1971), pp. 300-301. 172

Even their song is not a sure thing. It is not a language; It is a kind of breathing. They are two asthmatics whose breath sobs in and out through a small fuzzy pipe.

Like them we neither talk nor clear our throats. Oh darling, we gasp in unison beside our window pane, drunk on the drunkard's dream. Like them we can only hang on.

But they would pierce our heart if they could only fly the distance.

Sexton offers a very caustic account of a man

and wife, living a materially comfortable life in the

suburbs, who can not communicate with each other. They

live on a "drunkard's dream" together, yet, at the

same time, are very far apart. The poet's imagery is

grotesque and serves to emphasize the futility of the

situation. She compares the lovers to two misplaced pigeons who come to the suburbs by accident. All the lovers can do is "hang on," as the pigeons with their

"red claws wound like bracelets/around the same limb."

Like Eleanor Rigby, they gasp before their window pane.

And, although they are gasping together, they are every bit as lonely as Eleanor Rigby. The empty, artificial life in suburbia is dramatically portrayed by the poet, who describes the man and wife together "like two strangers 173 squatting in a two-seater outhouse." To Ochs, the flower lady at least exists in the city. Apparently, she does not come to the plastic suburban world.

The man and wife can never buy flowers from the flower lady. At best, they can "sweat on the drunkards* dream."

This is a dramatic portrayal of the world of Goodbye,

Columbus, Rabbit, Run or even The Catcher in the Rye.

Like Bok, Alpine and many others, this couple is going to have to forfeit their material concerns and self-pity and recognize the worth of their fellow man if they are ever to relate. This is what Sexton, Malamud and Roth suggest love is all about. Perhaps we get so involved with the ritual of living our own lives that we have no room or time for the lives of others. A. A, Fox certainly seems to think so, if one may judge from the following poem«

Ritual A. A. Fox

The majority of life is preliminaries to living.

As a dog winds himself up before lying down to sleep (as if this ritual confirmed the choice of bed), so the pitcher jams his gray handkerchief more securely into his hip pocket, resets his sweaty cap on his forehead, picks up his rosin bag, drops it, rubs his forehead twice (once with each elbow) smooths the mound with the ball of his right foot— 1 7 ^ and then— raising his leg (like a dog)— winds up.

The single girl readying herself for a date shampoos, sets, shaves, bathes, powders, annoints, girds, combs, sprays, scents— and otherwise gilds the wallflower.

Communion too is full of such misguided gilded: countless white clothes are ironed, folded, smoothed, refolded, borne away on polished salvers: spotless goblets are wiped and rewiped. And so the Mystery is obscured in motion.

Is it ritual makes things happen? Does the funeral kill the corpse?

The poem speaks for itself. Modern America is so "hung up” on artificiality and facade that any meaningful relationship is pushed far to the background. It took Neil Klugman and Ben Braddock a long time to discover the difference between "the funeral and the corpse." It is a difference that we want our student to discover. Fox is clearly describing the distorted value system of our contemporary world. Through literature we can, perhaps, help our students see through the facade.

It is rather difficult to do more than offer a small sampling of the many poems, films, and song lyrics that the teacher can use to relate to the novels that I have discussed in the previous chapters. If nothing else, I hope that I have succeeded in pointing toward a virtual gold mine of available material. Clearly, the materials are not difficult to find. However, the presentation of the materials is crucial. It is the teacher's task to put order into the chaos of contemporary and relevant materials. Many of them can very well be used for their own worth, which, more often than not is very great, indeed. Also, they can be used as a means to the ultimate end that I hope has been made implicit throughout this project.

Presumably these suggestions may provide teachers with some ideas as to materials and methods which they can use to get the students concerned about and interested in the contemporary novels that I have included. This is my central purpose in writing this chapter. If we can motivate the interest of students and perhaps give them some valuable insight into the contemporary adult world with these materials, our task will be much easier. In turn, we will be more successful in helping our students use literature as a means of dealing with and altering their perceptions of life and getting them to think about values. Clearly, the imagined images of literature can set up backboards against which our students can bounce their own consciousnesses. As I have asserted earlier, personal values and literature are very closely related. Literature is at the same time a message about life and a feeling toward life-so are values. Ideally, the reading patterns of the 176 adolescent generate not only an interest in literature, but also a contribution to that world view that is uniquely a part of us all-that world view which helps man discern an appropriate life style for himself.

r 9 SUMMARY

We must emphasize how we shall teach and how our students shall learn as well as what we teach and what our students shall learn. I have emphasized that an inductive approach to fiction and related materials should be consistently employed in the secondary

English classroom. Our students must be given opportunity to formulate their own questions and conclusions. I have suggested that the materials should essentially be contemporary and relevant to our students' lives, and that an appropriate theme to dwell upon could very well be man fighting for a sense of identity in a modern society. It goes without saying that this is, indeed, perhaps our most important social problem. Much contemporary fiction, film, poetry and music concerns itself with this very problem. I suggest that we use these materials because

I believe that the English teachers' ultimate task is to prepare his students for the adult world. The formative years of adolescence are crucial. These are the years when young people begin to question the values of their parents and their society. These are the years when young people begin to articulate and define the

177

( 178 style of life that they wish to be theirs when they enter the adult world.

I have written under the assumption that reading is experiencing, and that young readers of fiction begin to make judgments and attach values to literature as they do to real life situation. I have suggested that an extensive evaluation and ultimate acceptance, modification, or rejection of the values of fictional protagonists will help our students begin to develop their own value systems. The material that we choose and that we allow our students to choose should promote thoughtful value judgments. If we admire or dislike a fictional character, it is largely because he represents values of which we approve or disapprove.

It is our task to help our students learn how to react to the values of a protagonist on the intellectual as well as the emotional level. For example, emotionally the student may very well be appalled by the brutal murder that Bigger Thomas commits. They might be disenchanted with the rough verbal and physical behavior of Randall McMurphy. However, with increased sophistication, they may very well appreciate the motive for Bigger*s murder and for McMurphy*s unusual behavior.

I firmly believe that the English classroom is an important place in which to begin to realize the distorted 179 value system of modern America so that the concept of individualism may be recognized as the most important element for successful adulthood. In this society which deemphasizes the worth of the individual, organization and bureaucracy reign supreme. No longer can the individual express his individuality without being classified as an eccentric, an anarchist or a member of a counter-culture. I do not mean to suggest that the English class is the only place wherein such goals can be achieved. However, it is an important starting point. It is a place where we can get our student to question the expertise that subtly controls the lives of individuals in a technocratic society.

It is quite obvious that increasing technocracy and burgeoning bureaucracy impede the youth of today who genuinely wish to find a place'.for the individual in a nation where rapid change has become a way of life. This ideal can never be reached until the real worth of the individual has been realized. The materials that we expose our students to must emphasize this ideal. More important, however, the manner in which the materials are presented must demonstrate this ideal.

We must encourage our students to react and question as individuals. Once they can do this, they will be much better equipped to live a meaningful life in the 180 face of oppression. I can not emphasize the point enough that once a student has learned to ask meaningful and relevant questions; he has not only learned how to learn, he has learned how to live.

Like many contemporary fictional protagonists, our youth are small and powerless in modern society.

Yet their music, their dress, and their skepticism suggest that they are willing to confront this society.

In this respect they resemble many of the anti-heroes of contemporary fiction. Most of our students are rational; but they are bewildered by the irrational society that surrounds them— a society where logic, order and common sense are no longer present. The students want something to believe in. We can give them this something. We can show our students protagonists who successfully manage to find a sense of identity in a modern society. Indeed, the price is often high; but it is unquestionably well worth the investment. Our students still have a chance to resist since they have not yet been completely absorbed by bureaucracy and technocracy. We must capitalize on this chance. At present, I believe that secondary education is ignoring this opportunity. Through necessary curriculum changes, the secondary English teacher has the potential to ignite the spark that will 181 give his students the enduring sense of the real value of the individual.

Through thoughtful consideration of the contemporary protagonist, we can encourage our students to arm themselves in preparation for their own battle. The contemporary novels shows men of all ages, ethnic groups, and economic conditions victimized. Most offer solutions to the plight. Many of the alternatives are not pleasant; but they are, indeed, more pleasant then complete submission to blatant dehumanization. I believe that we owe such an examination of values to our students— morally and pedagogically. We must not allow our students to leave the secondary school unprepared for a society that is eager to strip them of their own identities. If we equip our students with the proper tools, a value system synthesized from the examination of the values of many contemporary protagonists, they may be able to function in a oppressive and utilitarium society, and, at the same time, transcend it. This is a heavy demand on the English teacher, but he must face it. I do not feel that I am asking for the impossible. I have suggested that the contemporary 9 novel is an invaluable means to this end. However, most of us must change our classroom strategies. To teach the contemporary novel in a traditional exposition or 182 recitation atmosphere would be self-defeating. Our strategy must be inductive, flexible and student-centered.

I have suggested many activities that may start the teacher towards creating an inductive strategy in her classroom. The students must be allowed to make

judgments and discoveries. As the novels are being discussed, value systems will be discussed. We must direct the students to discover these values and not simply lead them toward a passive examination of them.

We can, at best, expose the students to the material.

It is up to the students to make the material relevant and viable in their own value systems. The students, therefore, must be encouraged to questions and discover.

These novels have a lot to say to our students as future participants in modern American society. I am not suggesting that such examinations will automatically change the nature of our students. I am suggesting, however, that a careful examination of contemporary protagonists may well help the students develop a wider and deeper frame of reference which he needs to appraise himself and his society. Clearly, much good modern fiction demands that we project ourselves into the predicament of its victims. Hassan asserts that 183

Cunningly introspective, the modern novel redefines the identity of its central character and redirects his energies toward the virtues that are a good deal more personal than social. To become someone, to know who or what one is, to reach finally another human being with love, and to do so in terms that society may censure, this is the passionate, bitter concern of the modern anti-hero

Hassan clearly depicts the "passionate and bitter concern" of today's youth. This type of protagonist will be quite familiar to our students. They see him at the cinema and they hear him on records. The fact that these anti-heroes have become romantic heroes of the youth of today suggests the important place that they hold in the fantasies of youth. Our students will relate to the anti-hero, and they will have a lot to say about him. It is our primary task to give them this opportunity. To be sure, our students have already begun to articulate questions about the typical anti-hero.

Through a thoughtful examination of some of the protagonists of the contemporary American novel, the students may very well be able to formulate a value system whereby he can function admirably and with a sense of self in our complex society. Our classroom

^Hassan, Radical Innocence. p0 22, must provide the arena for the formulation of values.

The "new" English classroom should be a place where students are given practice in discussing, questioning f 9 analyzing, and testing values with other students and the teacher. The teacher's role must become less dominant if our goal is to help our students realize who they are, where they are going, and what they are going to do once they get there. We must show the learner how to be self-sufficient in our classroom so he can be self-sufficient when he leaves our classroom BIBLIOGRAPHY

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