On three perfect
examples of how student voices and ideas keep me moving forward.
Along with the
longer and more developed papers, my American Literature II course includes a
couple of shorter and more creative exercises, offering (I hope) different ways
for students to connect to and analyze particular readings. In the second, I
ask them to pick any character other than the protagonist in Nella
Larsen’s Quicksand or Passing (we read both) and to imagine
that character’s perspective on that protagonist (since Larsen gives us only
the protagonists’ perspectives on everyone else). The creative exercises always
produce some of my favorite work of the semester, but this time students made
particularly original and effective choices, with these three at the top of the
list:
1)
One student created the perspective of God (!) on
Quicksand’s
Helga Crane. As she wrote, religion plays a central and complex role throughout
the novella, leading up to its crucial influence in Helga’s final setting and
role. But the choice also allowed this student to consider questions of free
will and fate—and thus of how much responsibility Helga bears for her decisions
and life—in a truly striking way.
2)
Another student created the perspective of the
cab driver who picks up Irene Redfield in the opening scene of Passing.
This profoundly minor character appears for only a few paragraphs, but this
student did a wonderful job considering how much the cabbie helps introduce
themes of social perception and identification that permeate every moment of
the novella. And he managed to imagine the voice of a 1920s Chicago cabbie
pitch-perfectly to boot!
3)
A third student worked with the same opening
scene of Passing, but created instead
the perspective of another very minor character—the unnamed man who escorts
Clare Kendry to the rooftop restaurant where she unexpectedly reunites with
Irene. All we ever know of this man is that he’s not Clare’s husband and yet
seems intimately connected to her—but as this student highlighted, that’s more
than enough to introduce key aspects of Clare’s situation and character, and to
foreshadow one of the novella’s climactic revelations.
I learned a
great deal from these exercises, and from so many of my students’ voices and
ideas, this semester as every semester. Works for me! Next semester conclusion
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Student work
you’d highlight?
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