I begin my year trying to break habits. My students come to me having spent the last year writing rhetorical analysis and persuasive writing about authorial intent. They focus on nonfiction in AP Language and Composition, while my class focuses on fictional literature. I have to get them to stop thinking solely about the author and the moves they make and switch gears into thinking about the characters, theme, and poetic language. It is always a rough transition – for everyone involved.
Then I let them in on the magical secret of AP Literature. It’s still an argumentative paper. That really makes them mad.
You’ve just spent 3 weeks telling us NOT to do that!
This is the time in the year where we really start talking about theme, too. Literature inherently has a driving message. The author is attempting to create an idea readers can take away. It’s not always a moral, or lesson, but there is a message. A statement for, and sometimes about, the world. And that statement is always argumentative– someone can agree or disagree at any point.
To be sure, some texts are more explicit in their arguments than others. George Orwell’s 1984 is a much more obvious example of social commentary than Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But both make a claim about the roles of the upper class and the potentially harmful effects of government interference.
In week two of this class, we struggled with the concept of narrators. Narrators are not people! This complicated nonfiction for me, but when we got to the root that when we tell a story we create a persona of ourselves and edit how we want our audience to view us, things made a lot more sense. And it reinforced the idea that "All fiction can be profitably regarded as argument." I would suggest the addition of nonfiction to this statement as well. Even a nonfiction story like Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is argumentative. Yes, he is telling us the story of his early childhood and his rise into comedy, but he is also talking about racial tensions in South Africa and the need for economic and racial justice. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace not only tells the heartbreaking life of a kid from inner-city Newark who makes it to Yale only to be killed in a drug deal gone bad but uses that story to comment on flaws in the education system and argue for class reform.
Argument is all around us. That doesn’t mean it is always persuasive, or effective, but it is there. Kirkwood discusses this when he says “although careful selection of narrative details can be used to disclose a specific possibility, this strategy cannot ensure that all listeners will recognize that possibility. This recognition requires careful reflection on the story, and not all listeners may engage in such reflection” (43). Kirkwood’s response serves as a “yes, but…” to Sukenick’s original claim. While everything can be found to have argumentative elements within it, it is the job of the reader to take the time and try to suss out claims being made.
Then I let them in on the magical secret of AP Literature. It’s still an argumentative paper. That really makes them mad.
You’ve just spent 3 weeks telling us NOT to do that!
Sort of; they always miss the point. But that's ok. Our purpose has changed, I tell them. Our modes have shifted. But it is still an argument! Every paper you write has a thesis. Every paper you write is trying to prove a point. Whether that is about the importance of a symbol or the author’s use of emotional appeals for a given audience.
This is the time in the year where we really start talking about theme, too. Literature inherently has a driving message. The author is attempting to create an idea readers can take away. It’s not always a moral, or lesson, but there is a message. A statement for, and sometimes about, the world. And that statement is always argumentative– someone can agree or disagree at any point.
To be sure, some texts are more explicit in their arguments than others. George Orwell’s 1984 is a much more obvious example of social commentary than Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But both make a claim about the roles of the upper class and the potentially harmful effects of government interference.
In week two of this class, we struggled with the concept of narrators. Narrators are not people! This complicated nonfiction for me, but when we got to the root that when we tell a story we create a persona of ourselves and edit how we want our audience to view us, things made a lot more sense. And it reinforced the idea that "All fiction can be profitably regarded as argument." I would suggest the addition of nonfiction to this statement as well. Even a nonfiction story like Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is argumentative. Yes, he is telling us the story of his early childhood and his rise into comedy, but he is also talking about racial tensions in South Africa and the need for economic and racial justice. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace not only tells the heartbreaking life of a kid from inner-city Newark who makes it to Yale only to be killed in a drug deal gone bad but uses that story to comment on flaws in the education system and argue for class reform.
Argument is all around us. That doesn’t mean it is always persuasive, or effective, but it is there. Kirkwood discusses this when he says “although careful selection of narrative details can be used to disclose a specific possibility, this strategy cannot ensure that all listeners will recognize that possibility. This recognition requires careful reflection on the story, and not all listeners may engage in such reflection” (43). Kirkwood’s response serves as a “yes, but…” to Sukenick’s original claim. While everything can be found to have argumentative elements within it, it is the job of the reader to take the time and try to suss out claims being made.
Comments
Post a Comment