Vesper Lynd Debate: Sympathetic characters, close-reading, debating

I love debating literature in my classes. One of the key things about assigning a debate is that you should never pick a topic for which you have a biased opinion: the topic for debate should have reasonable readings on either side that are supported by the text, the genre, or critical readings.

(I mention this because I was once made to debate in a university-level teaching course where the outcome they wanted us to come to was a compromise, and I was outraged: debates are not about compromise, debates are about seeing different sides of an issue; it's about picking a side and sticking to it, which is an essential skill of essay-writing. I was thoroughly displeased with this method of teaching debate to teachers, so I have redoubled my efforts to expound on the benefits of debating in class. Correctly. /Rant over).

The second important thing to note about this particular debate is that it's explicitly based off of a quotation from James Bond in Casino Royale, where he says, "[t]he bitch is dead" in reference to Vesper Lynd, who was previously his love interest, but lost that privilege with her death and his discovery that she was, in fact, a Russian spy.

I acknowledge that the word "bitch" carries a lot of cultural baggage with it: not only is it impolite in most places, it is also a problematically gendered insult. It is not a word you want to encounter with a group of students who are both new to university and new to you as a teacher. You really have to have a group of students with whom you've worked, who you know will be able to deal with the strength of the language maturely. You have to be able to acknowledge that the word "bitch" is not just there for the shock value: it expresses a deep sense of emotion and betrayal, which is totally incongruent with Bond's character. It is a line worth delving into.

And so we delve straight into the controversy:

The scene - in addition to the controversial language - forces the reader to come to terms with "cold" and "taciturn" Bond as actually being capable of feeling both love and betrayal, which suggests a depth to his performance of masculinity, as well as the breadth of his character. 

The first term of literature that I discuss with the students here is the idea of the sympathetic character: 

Importantly, I point out, their reading of the situation is all about which character you sympathize with more. We talk about how sympathy is generated for the characters. 

For Vesper, it all hangs on whether or not you trust that suicide note (we talk about epistolary elements in a different class). If you believe that she is acting on her love for Bond, you feel for her. 

On the other hand, if you read Bond's distress as genuine, and you distrust her suicide note (or feel it is flimsy, or what have you), you are likely to sympathize with Bond. I ask to what extent she can be blamed for the events of the novel, because at first glance, it's about Le Chiffre. However, you realize that from the beginning, she was behind the machinations which constantly put Bond in danger and undermined his ability to succeed at beating his antagonist. 

There are at least two opposing ways to read Vesper's complicity within the text; thus, determining whether or not she is a "bitch" is actually a great debate for the students. In this exercise, they must do a close reading of the text to flow the instances of her complicated character and make claims that she is either sympathetic or not (of course, we can't have a motion for debate that reads "This House Believes that Vesper is a bitch," because that would be unnecessarily inflammatory). By making their reading ultimately about sympathy, they not only learn a literary term and get to play around with it, they actually get to sink their literary teeth into a controversial topic.

At this point, I should note that if you've never read my blog before, I often have my students debate. Some years, they debate more often than others, but I always introduce the mechanism for formal debate early. 

(NB 1: I have had to debate in only two instances in a classroom setting: the one I mentioned above, and another in high school which left me desperately debating against fifteen others as my teammates failed to come up with any arguments. I was so emotionally overwhelmed afterwards that I skipped the next class - the only time I've ever done so - to cry in a washroom. My teacher never tried it again, and I learned that setting up the framework for debate feels awkwardly formal at first, but it sets up the necessary rules and directions so that no student has the utterly horrible experience that I did in grade twelve English class).

(NB 2: Now you're wondering why I use debate in my classroom because my classroom experiences were actually horrible. I was introduced to real debate in university, and I have since become a widely-recognized debate judge and coach as a result of nearly ten years with university and high school debate. Once I learned how to do it right, I fell in love :) ) 

As a reminder, I put the instructions up on a slide so that everyone is on the same page. I try to make the distribution of tasks as fair as possible within the groups, and I ask that if someone has debated before, that another group member volunteer. Incidentally, while I walk around the room listening to conversations, I am able to see who is participating in group work who may not otherwise participate in the larger group conversation. This gets them their participation grade.

I always have a vote at the end: the students who put a lot of thought into their work like to feel empowered by the vote of the rest of the class. Usually, it's not entirely fair because each team votes for themselves, but that's part of the fun of it for them. 

Write a comment if you have any questions about how to run a debate in your classroom! 

Death Be Not Proud: Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom model of teaching is really neat. I mostly use it when I have a lot of content I want to get through, or if I want to do something special which requires content.

Essentially, we can assign readings or other materials outside of the classroom so that you can do a hands-on activity in the classroom. I certainly did not come up with this myself; check out the following link for more information: http://www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/

In this example, I wanted to get some comprehensive concepts out of the way so that we could spend time doing a debate [My students' response to five minute memos: "more time for debate!"]

These questions are not brilliant. In fact, they would induce blunt force trauma with how subtle they aren't. But there is more to it than just the questions ...

Holy Sonnet 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Hey, folks!

Please answer the following questions to prepare for class tomorrow (they are pretty simple):

1)      Who is the speaker in the poem talking to? (What is the technical word for how the object of the poem is being expressed here? Hint: the word begins with a “p”)

2)      What does the following line mean? “From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be, /
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow”

3)      Which line of the sonnet sounds a heck of a lot like the title of this song by Billy Joel? (“Only the good die young” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhjNm20XbXw)

4)      Who is death a “slave” to?

5)      What does the word “swell’st” mean here?

6)      What does it mean to “wake eternally”?

7)      As an intangible object, Death cannot die; so what is the speaker really saying?

****

All of this was in aid of the following activity: 

At which point, there is a debate.

And then, because the professor has been mentioning "for whom the bell tolls" all week in class without showing them the primary source, I decide to show it to them. 

There is Simon.

There is Garfunkel.

There is Metallica. 

(I earned some fans that day)

"A Rose for Emily" Diction Debate

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

Diction Debate

What are the most important words in “A Rose for Emily”?

Here are six that appear most frequently: (besides “Miss,” “Emily,” etc)

Smell

Old

Father

Dust

We

Rose

1)      Your job will be to find the word given to you where it occurs in the text. Underline, highlight, or copy the passages containing the word.

2)      How many times does the word occur?

3)      At what point in the text does the word occur? (Early, late?)

4)      What does your word tell us about the text?

5)      Why is your word important? (Think of your word as “doing work”; what kind of work is your word doing in order to convey meaning?)

The word you have appears multiple times in the text. Your word tells us many things about the story. Compared with the other five words, explain why your word is the most important in the story for giving context and meaning to the plot / characters.

·        

Your first argument must be strictly argumentative information: it must explain why your word is important.

·        Your second and third arguments can also be arguments in your favour; however, they can also be “deconstructive” arguments, which means they can be aimed at one or more of the other five words, showing why they are not important.

·        You must use at least three quotations containing your word (or that of your opponents) in each of your arguments.

·        Once you have 3 major reasons why your word is the most important to the story (or why somebody else’s isn’t), then we will have a debate.

How to Debate:

1)      Give your arguments as if they were a speech: in complete sentences, explain how your arguments prove that your word is the most important out of all of them. Be as convincing as you can.

2)      Take notes while the others are speaking; when they inevitably say something disparaging about your word, you should write it down to address it in your speech. Explain why they are wrong, giving specific reference to what they said.

3)      The person to go first will have a free minute at the end of all the speeches to address any points that may have been made against their word by his or her opponents.

4)      You will be given hand signals to indicate time: minute signals, 30 s signal, 10 s signal, 15 s grace. Use the last 15 s grace period to say the following: “Because of all of the reasons I have given you, our team believes that the word, __________ is the most important in “A Rose for Emily”

Here is a copy of the instructions I wrote for myself:

Divide the room into groups; we should have 22 students, 4 groups of 4 and 2 groups of 3 (Are there six people with laptops?)

Assign each group a word.

Give the following example:

The word “Miss” is the most important word in “A Rose for Emily”

1)      The word “Miss” is used to refer to Miss Emily consistently throughout the story. The word is repeated throughout the story 35 times. At the beginning of the story, the narrators claim that when she was “alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care,” indicating that she has several roles within the community. While they must take care of her, they mark her as a “tradition” and a “duty” which corresponds with their decision to consistently refer to her as “Miss”; the word Miss is a traditional way to refer to an unmarried woman, and thus they use the honorific as a means of maintaining their Southern traditions of politeness and propriety.

2)      While the word “Miss” indicates her unmarried status, and is usually thought to be a polite term, as previously mentioned, it may also be superficial: by constantly referring to her as “Miss” despite her elderly age, the community may also be thinking of her as a little girl who can’t quite take care of herself. In calling her “Miss,” the townspeople are behaving both ironically and mockingly: she is obviously no longer a young lady, and she is well beyond “marriageable” age. As though becoming married enables a woman to participate in society, they call her “miss” as if she has missed a step in becoming a person, and is stuck in the virginal temporal space of being a “Miss.” The townspeople claim that they “had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground.” They see her as a static unchanging figure in white – suggesting virginity – and behind her father – suggesting that she is fully at his mercy and control. Her identity is defined by her disused body and her lack of a father and husband. Her name, then, represents that feeling that she should be pitied for having not found a husband, and secretly mocked for the same.

Together, these two ideas of the word Miss used both as a tradition and as an insult demonstrate further insight into the actions and beliefs of the Southern community. The complexity of their feelings towards Miss Emily are wrapped up in the way they name her: with pity, mockery, and disdain. In calling her “Miss” they can call her all of these things, too, without breaking the rules of propriety set by their Southern society.

3)      The lack of the word “Miss” in the title is particularly interesting, because it is the only place where her name is not preceded by the honorific. The title itself is worthy of further thought, because it indicates a “rose” for Emily, and yet there is no rose within the story. A rose for Emily may be an offering of marriage or a relationship, and it may also be the gift of a rose. However, I think the rose might be an offering at her funeral; while the community disdains and mocks her, the story itself becomes a rose offered to her as a means of saying that she is understood, if not by the speakers, than at least by the writer. The writer gives her this rose – the story – as a way of saying that she isn’t crazy or pitiable, but that her motivations and actions can be comprehended. Likewise, she is called “Emily” rather than “Miss Emily” in the title, because she is being recognized as a person with real thoughts and feelings, rather than the mockingly and ironically named Miss Emily.

Give debate instructions.