Interviewing Sylvia Plath

Objectives:

- to use role play to consider authorial intent

- to compare two Plath poems: "Daddy" and "Mushrooms" 

Pre-Assessment: 

1. A lot of Plath criticism tends to focus on her untimely death, and how her poetry does or does not foreshadow that. I think of "Mushrooms" as a great example of how her poetry defines her humanity; she is more than just her death. Having read "Daddy" last class, and "Mushrooms" at the beginning of this class, what strikes you as the largest differences between them?

2. How do you think Plath perceived these poems as a reflection of herself?

3. As a literary critic, how do you see these poems reflecting her?

Instructions:

1. Assign everyone in pairs. 

2. Decide which poem you will be discussing. 

3. Decide which one will be the interviewer, and which will be Plath.

4. Interviewer: take 15-20 minutes to brainstorm questions; remember, you are trying to determine why Plath made particular choices in her writing. 

     a. Word choices?

     b. Images?

     c. Rhythm and metre?

     d. (etc)

5. Plath role-player: take 15-20 minutes to re-read the poem several times, and consider what it would be like to write the poem.

6. Spend 5-10 minutes exchanging questions and answers.

7. Swap roles. 

Post Assessment:

What was it like to think like Sylvia Plath? 

How is thinking like the author different from thinking like a critic?

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Summary: 

I've been thinking about using more role-playing activities in my classes lately, because of the way that these activities can draw out more kinesthetic learners; they learn by doing, so in acting the role of critic (say, as an interviewer), they are more likely to get a feel for how to be a critic. The other advantage of role-playing is that it mixes things up: class isn't just group work and lecture (or some combination thereof), but there are also different activities to keep things interesting.