Dave and I traveled today by cab about 20 minutes south of Pristina, where we found a village, Gračanica, home of the 14th-century Orthodox Christian monastery commissioned by Serbian King Milutin in 1321. It still offers services twice daily and houses an order of orthodox nuns.
Today, Dave and I took advantage of the nice weather and visited a few more sites in Prishtinë. He describes our adventure well: http://davidmctierinkosovo.com/2012/04/22/dragodan-qendra/. The pictures below are ones he took of yours truly during our outing.
The NEWBORN sculpture and the cafe where we had dessert are near the futbol stadium.
See the class featured on The American Corner facebook page.
**Click on the first picture to scroll through the gallery images in a larger, “slideshow” format.
**Click on the first picture to scroll through the gallery images in a larger, “slideshow” format.
Cover of Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying
Returning to our discussion of Gaines’ Lesson, I said that, even as they prepare the final version of their Salesman papers, they would need to draw on their journaling to begin planning their essays on Gaines’ novel. To help them begin this process, I passed out their assignment sheet, which featured the following subjects as possible focuses for their essays:
I then suggested that we spend our last hour talking about approaches to one or two of these overlapping subjects, focusing particularly on chapters 20-31, the ones we had not discussed. By common consent, we began with “Grant: the man and the teacher.” Reminding students that we saw a new Grant emerging at the end of our last session, I asked what evidence they saw of Grant’s effective teaching. Kadrije mentioned the radio that Grant bought for Jefferson and his defense of this purchase in a confrontation with Reverend Ambrose, who calls it a “sin box” (181). “So how can we consider a radio a teaching device?” I asked Kadrije. She responded by reading key quotes from Grant’s defense: “I found a way to reach him for the first time….He wants something of his own before he dies….The only thing that keeps him from thinking he is not a hog is that radio” (182, 183).
After commending Kadrije on her insights and evidence, I asked if anyone else could uncover some effective teaching that emerges, rather ironically, from his conflict with Reverend Ambrose. “You recall,” I said, “that Ambrose wants Grant to teach Jefferson to pray, to kneel; Grant refuses, saying that he has tried to teach him to stand. But what kinds of teachings does Grant share with Jefferson in the meetings that follow?” Edita answered, referring to Grant’s lesson about heroism, his teaching Jefferson to be a hero; she then read some key quotes from the lesson: “A hero does for…people he loves because he knows it would make their lives better….You could give something to Emma, to me, to those children in the quarter” (191). “Can you tell me what Grant has to say about Mr. Farrell’s slingshots?” I asked her. “It’s a metaphor,” Edita explained; “Farrell turns rough wood into a beautiful slingshot handle; he wants Jefferson to “decide to become something else” (193). “And what irony does this lesson have, given Grant’s recent fight with the Reverend?” “Grant speaks like a pastor, teaching about love,” Edita answered. “And what does Grant tell Jefferson as they walk around the day-room, Jefferson in shackles?” Edita answered with another quotation from Grant: “I think it’s God that makes people care for people” (223). Naturally, I had lots of praise for Edita, too.
Delighted by these insights, I asked the class what other brilliant teaching idea Grant has just before he begins this ‘sermon’ about love. Several answered with “the pencil and diary.” I then asked how this teaching strategy works, and how it relates to the “liberty and literacy” subject on their assignment sheet. “What do we learn about Jefferson from his journaling, besides the obvious fact that he had minimal literacy skills? What does he write about?” These questions led to an array of answers: Jefferson’s dream about the execution, his feeling that God “just work for wite folks” (227), his gratitude to his teacher, his tearful response to the children who bring him pecans and kisses and marbles, the kisses he gives to Emma at her last visit, his admission that he “been shakin an shakin but im gon stay strong” (233). I then asked what they would call a person who admits his fears but faces them, a person who can show tenderness to children, compassion for his godmother, and gratitude to the man who made him “think im somebody” (232). Several answered instantly: “a man.” “Yes,” I responded, “so what does Gaines suggest here about the power of writing? Jefferson still wears chains, he still will die, but what has he achieved?” “Freedom,” Fidan said. “He has escaped the ‘hog’ identity.”
Thanking the class for their thoughtful responses, I encouraged them, as they began to draft on their chosen subject, to think about blending a critical theory or theories with their analysis. For example, I noted that the subject of Jefferson as well as the first two subjects focus on racism and the justice system and on the relationship of literacy to liberty; therefore, these subjects might invite a Marxist reading of the novel, arguing that the injustices of capitalism appear in the arrogance of the ruling class and in their oppression of the proletariat or working class. On the other hand, I said that if they chose to write about Grant, they could take a deconstructive approach, arguing that Grant’s transformation and its effects on Jefferson and the deputy Paul undercut the Marxist critique, showing that capitalist injustices can, eventually, be overcome. Further, I suggested that a paper on Vivian and the other women in the novel would invite a feminist reading, stressing the failed attempts to silence women, and a paper on Grant and Reverend Ambrose could take a psychoanalytic approach, tracing the conflict between the agnostic and the man of faith as a clash between a ‘son’ and a surrogate father/authority figure.
Cover of Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying
As the students entered for the next session, I directed their attention to the board, where I had written “New Criticism,” “New Historicism,” and “Deconstruction,” as well as the names of important theorists associated with these critical approaches to literature. In applying these critical theories to Gaines’ novel, I explained, we would abandon neither feminist nor Marxist approaches, as the novel provides plenty of examples of extremely strong women and of economic inequities that reflect the Marxist critique of capitalism. But these additional critical tools, I assured the class, would enrich their understanding of Gaines’ Lesson by complementing feminist and Marxist perspectives and by providing a fuller sketch of critical thought in the twentieth century. These varied perspectives, I said, would also help us to see the connections between our theme on “Marriage, Family, and the American Dream” and our theme on “Justice and Injustice.”
Aristotelian Communication Triangle (Source: The Basics of Effective Technical Communication)
Pointing to the Aristotelian communication triangle I had written on the board, I encouraged students to think of New Criticism as focused on the literary work itself, the center of that triangle. Often associated with its Southern practitioners, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, New Criticism, I explained, dominated American critical thought at mid-century for over three decades. Rejecting critical approaches unduly focused on the writer’s intentions (one corner of Aristotle’s triangle), the reader’s responses (another corner), or literary history (another corner), the New Critics, I further explained, insisted on an “objective” reading of a work, a “close reading” that savors the ironies and ambiguities of a given poem or fiction but finds and defends the “organic” unity of its imagery and structure. We would practice this New Critical approach, I said, as they shared their thoughts on the study questions I provided.
Continuing my sketch of critical currents, I explained that by the 1980, influenced by French theorist Michel Foucault and his concern with the “discourse of an era,” scholars such as Louis Althusser declared themselves New Historicists, critics who employed New Critical close-reading strategies but extended their analysis beyond the work itself to the cultural practices that shape a given work and define its “situatedness.” To reinforce this dual focus of New Historicism, I pointed again to the triangle, to the work in the center and to the “situation” at the ‘real-world’ corner. We would practice New Historicism, I said, when we discuss the character Grant, who, like the author, grew up in a Louisiana share-cropping culture in the 1930s; who, like the author, attended elementary school in a one-room plantation church; who earned a university degree in California, just as the author did; who returned to Louisiana, just as the author did, because of the irresistible pull of this very real place he is “unable to leave” (102), and because of his outrage over the racial injustices that defined it in the 1940s, the historical setting of the novel, two decades before the emergence of Dr. King and the civil rights movement.
Concurrent with the New Historicists, I continued, the Deconstruction critics emerged, following the thought of Russian dialogic theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and French theorist Jacques Derrida. Also deploying New Critical close-reading strategies, these critics reached decidedly un-New Critical conclusions about literature, arguing that no work possesses unity, either as a free-standing work or as a reflection of its cultural situation. Instead, I explained, Deconstruction critics argue that every “text” contains a line of interpretation that undercuts another reading, so that no fixed meaning can ever be discovered. While New Critics talk about ambiguities worked out via art into a unified meaning, I clarified, Deconstruction critics argue that the flux of a text, like the flux of life, can never be fixed, never settled beyond dispute. We would see this flux, I said, in trying to assess Grant’s teaching, his resistance to authority figures, and his relationship with Vivian.
A Lesson Before Dying
Having completed this description of critical trends and their relationship to Gaines’ novel, I divided the students into three groups, assigned each group five of the study questions I had asked them to consider as they read, and then asked them to collaborate on answers, grounded in evidence from the novel, that they would share with the whole class. I explained that they had 20 minutes to do their work, after which each group would have 15 minutes to report their findings to the other two groups. Though the students had already experienced peer-response groups, they had never worked together on an interpretive problem. Nevertheless, the pressure of the time limit seemed to distract them from anxieties over this charge to construct meaning communally; as they got to work, I roved, listening to their tentative answers, watching them scramble for evidence.
After 20 minutes, I interrupted them, telling them that they need not worry if they had not finished their task, that we would go ahead and see what each group had discovered. I then called for a report from group one, reminding them that we wanted evidence, including page numbers, not just general answers, to the questions below:
1. How does the defense attorney’s case affect your feelings for Jefferson (pages 7-8)?
2. How do you explain Grant’s anger—as a black man and as a teacher—when Miss Emma’s face (12) and Tante Lou’s words (13-14) urge him to talk to Henri about visiting Jefferson?
3. How do Grant’s feelings for Vivian and for the town (29) explain his reluctance to intervene in Jefferson’s case?
4. Describe Grant’s teaching and disciplining methods. Do they seem effective? Explain. How do Grant’s situation and the students’ lives influence and explain Grant’s harshness (29)?
5. What similarity do you see between the attorney’s defense of Jefferson (chapter 1) and the way Mr. Pichot and Sheriff Guidry treat Grant (chapter 6)?
Group 1: New Historicists at Work
Group one began by responding to #1 and #5 together, saying that they felt great sympathy for Jefferson and Grant. When I asked for their evidence, they referred to page eight, where Jefferson must endure the remarks of his attorney, who ‘defends’ him in front of the all-white jury by calling him a “hog,” not a man, a beast capable in his panic of looting the liquor store cash drawer, but incapable of thought and therefore incapable of planning the murder of the store owner. They reported sympathy, too, for Grant, a black man with a university education, who must endure the arrogance of Sheriff Guidry and Henri Pichot, powerful white men who keep him waiting for hours when he comes to ask permission to visit Jefferson in jail. “But what difference do you see between Jefferson and Grant in the way they deal with the insults?” I asked. Laureta, a member of group one, quickly observed that Jefferson keeps his head down and remains silent, but Grant reports that he has waited “two-and-a-half hours” and offers no smile, knowing that the white men expect a smile and a “not long” in response to their question, “Been waiting long?” (47) “Did you notice Grant’s verbs?” I asked her. Laureta then pointed to his saying “doesn’t” instead of the ungrammatical “don’t,” revealing his defiance of these white men, who expect Grant to show his subservience by using dialect (48).
Some of this sympathy and admiration for Grant melted away, however, when the group responded to questions 2-4. They reported understanding Grant’s anger when his Tante Lou demands that he visit Jefferson in jail, that he teach Jefferson to feel like a man, not a hog, before he dies in the electric chair, but they argued that Grant shows too little respect for Miss Emma, Jefferson’s godmother, when he tells her that he can’t make Jefferson a man, that he can only “keep others from ending up like this” (14). They also reported understanding why Grant would want to move with Vivian to someplace where he could feel alive, less stifled (29), but they had no respect at all for his use of foul language and his whining tone, especially when he says, “I’m supposed to make him a man. Who am I? God?” (31). They said, too, that they understood why Grant would be frustrated with his one-room school and inattentive students, but they roundly condemned Grant’s cruelty to his students, releasing his own stress by shouting in their faces and hitting them with a ruler for lapses in concentration, for writing crooked sentences on the board and for playing with bugs (35-41).
Congratulating this group on their excellent work, I called on group two. Apologizing for coaxing the first group into answering their question on Grant’s use of language to assert manhood, I asked for their comments on questions 7-10:
6. How does Grant use language to assert his manhood in chapter 6?
7. At the top of page 62, Grant compares the “old men” laborers to the student woodchoppers. What do his thoughts reveal about his goals as a teacher? Why had his former teacher urged Grant to “run”?
8. Why does Grant believe his aunt is “stripping” him of “everything you sent me to school for”?
9. Give two reasons why Grant tells Jefferson that he will “lie” to Emma about Jefferson’s refusal to eat.
10. Why do Grant’s memories of Joe Louis and the old men’s talk of Jackie Robinson—both black sports heroes—make Grant think of Jefferson? What irony do you see in the achievement of these heroes?
Group 2: Deconstruction Critics at Work
This group commented first on #8-9, for their answers here, they said, return Grant to a more favorable light. To this point, they argued, Grant’s visits to Jefferson have confirmed his reasons for resisting this seemingly impossible job of persuading Jefferson of his manhood. When I asked, “How so?” they pointed to Jefferson’s sarcasm about his execution date, his eating from Emma’s food bag on all fours, like a “hog”; then Arlind read Grant’s passionate speech aloud:
Everything you sent me to school for, you’re stripping me of it….The humiliation I had to go through, going into that man’s kitchen. The hours I had to wait while they ate and drank and socialized before they would even see me. Now going up to that jail. To watch them put their dirty hands on that food. To search my body each time as if I’m some kind of criminal. Maybe today they’ll want to look into mouth, or my nostrils, or make me strip. Anything to humiliate me. All the things you wanted me to escape by going to school. Years ago, Professor Antione told me that if I stayed here, they were going to break me down to the nigger I was born to be. But he didn’t tell me that my aunt would help them do it. (79)
Gezim mentioned, too, that Grant really impressed him at the end of the next visit to the jail, when Grant tells the still-hostile Jefferson that he intends to lie to Emma about Jefferson’s refusal to eat her pralines because telling the truth, he tells Jefferson, “would kill her”; he also tells Jefferson that he plans to return so that the “white man” can’t “win” (84).
Everyone agreed that such language makes Grant seem much less whiny than he seemed at first, more combative, even daring. When I asked what they learned about Grant from his thoughts on the woodchoppers in #7 and the old men in #10, Dafina stressed Grant’s compassion for his students, many of whom would end up as woodchoppers (61), and his compassion for Jefferson in that “depressing cell uptown” while the old men at the bar can only talk about their boxing hero Joe Louis and their baseball hero Jackie Robinson (90). Praising these insightful answers, I asked them to consider how Grant’s compassion here would attract the interests of a New Historicist or Marxist critic, who would see Grant’s thoughts as a commentary on the rural South in the 1940s, when most black children really had no access to the American Dream, a time when even black heroes like Robinson and Louis could stir hope but do nothing to change the everyday reality of the plantation. “And what might a Deconstruction critic want to point out about the Grant we have seen so far?” I asked. Blerta responded by describing the two narratives on Grant, the cruel, selfish whiner and the bold, compassionate man.
Finally, with little time remaining, we turned to the third group for their report on these questions:
11. How do you explain the tension and anger between Grant and his Aunt, and between Grant and Reverend Ambrose?
12. What does Grant mean when he says he is “unable to accept what used to be my life, unable to leave it”?
13. This novel on racism and injustice is also a love story. How does Grant’s tenderness for Vivian affect your view of him? What effect might their love have on Grant’s ability to “teach” Jefferson to be a man?
14. At the end of chapter 18, Grant wants to give up on Jefferson, but Vivian insists that “something is changing” (141). What evidence do you see in chapters 16-18 that suggests that Grant and Jefferson are both changing?
15. In chapter 19, why does Gaines provide so much detail about the Christmas party, the play, and Ambrose’s prayer? What irony do you see in Grant’s prominence at this event as the director of the children’s play?
Group 3: New Critics at Work
When I asked if they saw any irony in Grant’s prominence in the town as Jefferson’s teacher (#11) and as the director of the annual Christmas play (#15), Ragip said that Grant’s apparent atheism makes him an outsider in a church-going community led by Reverend Ambrose, who humiliates Grant by praying publicly, before and after the play, for doubters like Grant who think they don’t need God. When I asked if this tension between belief and doubt explains the quote in #12 about Grant being “unable to accept what used to by me life,” Ragip agreed. “What about #13? Do you see the same Grant you saw earlier in his relationship with Vivian?” I asked. This question led to some blushing and looking down at desks, but Albana spoke up, saying she admired the tenderness she sees in Grant’s love-making with Vivian (108-109). “And Vivian believes in God,” Albana added, smiling; “Maybe she will change Grant’s mind on that topic.” “Do you see any irony in her dual roles as believer and as Grant’s lover?” I asked. “Remember that Vivian’s divorce has not been concluded yet, so this romantic scene also raises issues about adultery. Do any of you have concerns about her morality?” I prodded. Wisely, Albana said that “life gets complicated.”
“Do you think that Vivian has a point that “something is changing” in Grant, particularly in his relationship with Jefferson?” I prompted. Gezim responded with Grant’s comment that he “wasn’t so angry anymore” (125), reflecting Vivian’s influence; he also applauded Grant’s defense of Vivian after Jefferson crudely insults her: “That lady you spoke of, boy, cares about you” (130). “Does this flash of anger in defense of the woman who keeps Grant “coming here” have any impact on Jefferson?” I asked. Several voices spoke up, citing the “tears in those big reddened eyes” (130), a major crack in Jefferson’s wall of resistance.
With our time ending, I reminded the class that we would finish discussing Lesson next time and that they should write journal responses to two more of the remaining 13 study questions, all focusing on this transformation of Jefferson and Grant that we had already begun to see.
Ernest Gaines in church (Source: African American Literature Book Club)
This posting introduces Ernest Gaines’s 1993 novel A Lesson Before Dying, which I have been reading with my students. The two postings that follow highlight their responses to the novel.
Set in the share-cropping world of rural Louisiana in the late 1940s, this novel features the teacher-student relationship between Grant Wiggins, a thirty-five year old African American teacher, and Jefferson, a twenty-one year old, semi-literate African American on death row for a murder he did not commit.
Jefferson has, in fact, committed theft, as his attorney acknowledges at the murder trial, explaining to the all-white jury that his impoverished client panicked at the scene of the murder, looting the liquor store cash register as the murderers and their victim, the owner, lay dead at his feet. But surely, he reasoned, this black “boy” could not be smart enough to plan a robbery and murder: “Why, I would as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this” (8).
Initially, Grant resents and resists his new charge, thrust upon him by his Tante Lou, to go into the local jail and, over the few months before Jefferson’s execution, to persuade him to go to his death feeling like a man, not like a “hog.” How, Grant wonders, can anyone expect him to reverse the legacy of slavery, the three-hundred-year-old cultural conviction that black ‘boys’ need not expect education or justice, need not aspire to the American Dream.
Cover of Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying
In addition to tracing these interconnected themes of racism and justice, of literacy and liberty, this masterful novel also explores the relationship between Grant and Reverend Ambrose, the parish preacher, and between Grant and Vivian, a strong woman and committed teacher stuck in a bad marriage she seeks to end. Naturally, the old black preacher and the young black agnostic come into constant conflict, for Ambrose wants Grant to teach Jefferson to “kneel” before he dies; instead, once committed to the process, Grant insists that he will teach Jefferson to “stand.” Grant and Vivian also experience tension but of a much different sort, for their truly tender love story gets entangled with her Catholic faith and with a passionate cane-field conception that precedes her divorce. Yet the conflict with Ambrose and the tensions with Vivian open Grant’s eyes to the futility of his own anger, a transformation that softens his heart and strengthens his resolve to coax Jefferson to his feet. By the end, Jefferson walks to his death, having learned from Grant how to write his way to manhood; in turn, the student has taught his teacher the value of compassion, courage, and community.
Reflections on Kosovo 