Things to do on Results Day

Hello.  It's that time of year again - the fortnight of horrible Thursdays.  Results day scares me a great deal.  It is partly the importance of the grades on the students: have they achieved what they have to achieve in order to progress through life happily and fulfilled? This weighs heavy on any teacher's mind this next two weeks, and yet is probably outstripped by the more selfish, yet arguably more important (to the teacher themselves) question of 'how do these results reflect my ability?'  Like it or not, the grades awarded to students after one or two years of teaching from you do reflect your teaching ability.  Yes yes, I understand the old adage about horses and drinking but still - ignoring your input on their grades is foolish and would lead to a logical conclusion of removing teachers altogether if gone the full distance.  We can bleat as much as we like about the little terrors ignoring us or not revising, but ultimately, your ability to teach and aid them learn has a huge, huge effect on their results.

So this is quite a lot of pressure.

I am terrified of letting the students down, you see.  It keeps me awake at night, sometimes - the very idea that I could have explained something more clearly, or used a more effective activity to practice a skill.  This is the torture of any professional left to their own devices - I'm sure doctors and lawyers recognise the feeling.  It's an integral part of reflective practice and is, therefore, ultimately a good thing.  However, it still remains a fact that the whole thing is horribly stressful.

So, here's my tips on what to do on results day 1 or 2 (you know what I mean):

1. Only go to one of them, unless you have responsibility in that area.  This is obvious - don't go through it twice if you don't need to.  I know this seems a little uncaring, or even unprofessional, but it isn't.  Your presence on results day is far from vital, especially if you only teach Year 12 - you'll see them in September.  Wait for the email and do your analysis in comfort at home, at your own pace.  This will give you the breathing space you need to work out how the students did and what comes next.

2. When you do go in, spend most of the time talking to the students.  This is the only worthwhile way to spend results day if you're in school.  Analysis and worrying can come later at home with a glass of wine.  If you trouble yourself to go into school, you're only really doing it to see the kids, so chat with them, advise them, console them if need be.  That's the way forward.

3. Be on holiday.  If you really can't cope with the stress in the midst of your mega-downtime, then wait until September before you engage with it at all.  Unless you're a HoD or higher, you can get away with this - do it if the alternative is losing your mind.  Being away (preferably abroad, away from the British media) is the perfect way of making it so you don't even know it's results day.  It's not cowardice - just self-preservation.

4. Do not read the papers on the day.  Don't even be tempted.  It'll only make you angry and belittle your years of hard work as they bleat about rising standards, as if they're a bad thing.  Honestly, it's as if all that money and expertise spent on improving education over the last 20 years was meant to yield no results at all, isn't it?  The logic of the papers (and the Daily Hate Mail in particular) is astonishing.

So there we are, four ways to help maintain your professional sanity today and next Thursday.  I do hope they help.

Of Mice and Men - Character Ideas

I love Steinbeck's novella about two guys so much, that I fancy writing about it on a grim grimy morning. So here we go.  If this is useful for revision, then that's obviously very good news indeed.  If it's useful for teaching, then all the better.

Character - beyond the basics

George is a very complex character who suffers from a permanent clash of motives.  He is a young man, working itinerant ranch labour, and yet he is also essentially a parent of a very difficult child.  This is a totally impossible situation which tears the man apart, as he simultaneously loves and hates Lennie.  His flashes of temper, as seen in part one, are a symptom of this internal strife.  His self-isolation is another manifestation of this.  He plays solitaire at all times, never seeming to play a competitive game with others (the game of euchre in part three never really gets off the ground, due to the tension building as they wait for the gunshot) and speaks in terse, thin sentences to the majority of characters (especially Curley's Wife, Carlson and Whit).  Despite this, the novella gives us a fascinating window into a transitional phase in George's life: he meets new friends in Slim and Candy, and his long-held pipe-dream seems, startlingly and disorientatingly, to be on the cusp of becoming reality.  As such we see glimpses of warmth, sorrow and shame in George: particularly when talking to Slim in the opening pages of part three.  His decision to kill Lennie is not inevitable, though.  There are other options open to him, and I believe there must be some sense of relief in pulling the trigger.  Relief that is submerged under a tide of misery, but it would be a simplistic reading to assume there was no sense of final rest from the stressful life he's been forced to live for so long.

Lennie is scary.  There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that when Lennie gets annoyed, he is a tremendously intimidating character.  The 'fish'-like flopping of his victims, and the repetitive 'bear' imagery present us with a monstrous being - a Jekyll and Hyde - that is usually docile and calm but occasionally lethal and wantonly aggressive.  Simple readings of Lennie as a victim are inaccurate.  It is fair enough to a point, but his disability (whatever it is) makes him something of an anti-hero who does choose to do horrific acts of violence.  Evidence for this is in the petulance with which he 'hurls' around the dead puppy: the intense flash of hatred that the dead animal sparks is an insight into a deeply troubled character who is far more than just 'stupid'.

Candy is a troublesome gossip, and not as great a guy as some may suggest.  His glee at sharing his disgusting information about Curley's glove shows a man who thrives on rumour and scandal, and his reaction to his ticking off by George in part two - 'He had drawn a derogatory statement from George.  He felt safe now' - shows a man comfortable in the role of disciple rather than leader: he is very easily led and has little power of his own.  This is most clearly displayed when the men bully him into killing his dog, though Candy's insistence on keeping it alive could be viewed as selfishness.  Candy's relationship with Curley's Wife is fascinating.  He clearly hates her, behaving brutally when she joins the three 'weak ones' in Crooks' room.  He changes when addressing the only woman in the tale, becoming more assertive and aggressive.  Clearly, this emphasises the level at which women operate in this story - below even the weakest of the 'weak' trio.

Curley is a simple plot device, really - a simple antagonist with a coincidental hatred for the very physicality of Lennie.  George is right about him, in that there is nothing Lennie can do but wait for the boot to eventually drop onto him.  Steinbeck offers a little more insight, but it is all third hand: the vaseline glove, the boxing...even his position as boss's son is never fully explored.  He is, therefore, unknowable, which is exactly how Steinbeck wanted it - a mysterious, blank presence whose raw energy and hatred acts as a catalyst for the plot.

Curley's Wife is the only woman in the book, apart from the hallucination of Aunt Clara and the mentioned floozies and jailbaits of the town.  She is an exotic addition to the novel, multi-coloured and feathered like a rare bird ('ostrich feathers' on her 'red mules'), and so she is always centre of attention.  Her posture and habit of standing in doorways adds to the idea that she is inescapable: it is impossible to avoid her as she moves randomly through the ranch, like a ghost in Pac-Man.  The danger signified in her red colouring and her 'brittle, nasal' voice means that she is a source of incredible tension - totally unpredictable and capable of causing infernos of anger wherever she goes.  Every major bout of aggression has Curley's Wife at its core somewhere.  Despite this, she is not an antagonist.  Instead she is misunderstood, but prone to bursts of childlike and petulant behaviour, just like Lennie.  And just like Lennie, she cannot simply be a victim, though as a woman she is certainly prejudiced against.  Her naivety in believing the man from 'the pitchers' create some sense of culpability, but as a whole she is simply a bumbling character, desperate for love and warmth in a world where these things barely exist.  Her treatment of Crooks is fascinating, as it shows a more assertive side to her character.  Again, though she is low down the pecking order, she is still higher than Crooks, and enjoys her moment of power in part four.

Crooks is the only black character in the novel.  This highlights the unusual nature of racial relations in California at this time.  It would be dangerous to assume that California was akin to the Deep South of Alabama and Kentucky (the racism in Of Mice and Men is of a different nature to that in To Kill a Mockingbird).  As Crooks himself says, he grew up on his 'old man's chicken ranch', in a position of reasonable security.  Racism in the North and West was generally de facto, rather than enshrined in law.  The infamous Jim Crow laws were only a factor in the Southern States, where racism was an institution.  In fact in the 1930s California was most famous for its prejudice against the Filipino population that led to scenes of terrible violence in Watsonville in 1930.  This is not to say black people were not prejudiced against: they certainly were, and California had a system of segregation in place.  The Ku Klux Klan had a great many members in various areas of California at this time, too, with Orange County alone having 1200 members in the 1920s.  This lends weight to Curley's Wife's threat of lynching - it would probably have led to that.  Crooks is a quiet, embittered man who reads to pass the time when not working.  He literally shares his home with the animals, to the point that his medicine, and the medicine for the horses, are stored in the same container.  His collection of books is fascinating.  It contains an out of date copy of the California Civil Code, presumably to create the impression that he is familiar with his rights.  He has some ambiguous 'dirty books', suggestive of pornography.  Considering he can't go into town with the boys, this is not unreasonable to presume.  His tattered dictionary is the most interesting possession, as it is 'tattered', suggesting great use.  His interaction with Lennie and Candy is an emotional high point in the book, as we see the three misfits bonding over a common dream after initially hostile posturing.  Steinbeck seems on the verge of creating an Eden for these loners and 'weak ones' when Crooks asks to join them on their ranch, and society seems on the verge of inversion, with those on the periphery becoming those who have succeeded in the pursuit of happiness.  Of course, Curley's Wife's intrusion destroys all of this, as this Eve is placed below even them, worthy only of scorn and distrust.
More later on...

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Tennyson and setting for AQA English Literature

“A land where all things always seem'd the same!” – A study of setting in the poetry of Tennyson.

Imagine Alice without her Wonderland.  Doesn’t really work, does it? This text is inextricably bound up with its setting:  the story’s meaning is reinforced or crystallised by geographic location, and other examples are too numerous to list.  However, even though setting is listed in AQA textbooks as a key ‘Aspect of Narrative’, it can be quite difficult to find criticism examining how authors consciously utilise it to bolster the meaning of their tales. Hopefully, more support material will emerge as the specification matures.  In the meantime, though, here are some scribblings examining two poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, taken from the AQA Anthology.  I hope that they are of some use to students and teachers alike.

‘Always Afternoon’

As an example, Alice’s Wonderland has been argued to represent or symbolise many things: the mysterious world of adult activity, or the shift from childhood innocence to teenage angst and awareness.  Any reader of the original text could see how either of these two readings could be argued (or both, in order to get that AO3 mark) and it is purely in the representation of the story’s setting, its world, that this symbolism occurs; be it the sinister and possibly even sexual imagery of painting white roses red, or the obvious ‘growing-up’ metaphor of the beautiful, yet unreachable, garden beyond the tiny locked door.  Tennyson’s worlds tell similar stories.  Like those of Carroll, they reinforce and embody the themes and preoccupations of his tales, giving them a visual representation that we, the readers, can enjoy.  ‘The Lotos Eaters and Choric Song’ was written after a trip with his friend Arthur Hallam (the one who died) to the Pyrenees in Northern Spain[1].  It is about Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, and his experiences on the shore of the Lotos Eaters. The lotos is an “enchanted stem” that has the same hazy effect as opium or heroin, causing the “pale and melancholy” inhabitants of the region to lose all sense of ambition and desire, and in doing so, as the quotation shows, their health and happiness. The land itself emphasises the focus of the narrative – the effects of absolute lethargy and despair – in a series of linguistic manoeuvrings by Tennyson.  The air is “languid”, “swoon[ing]” in the damp heat of a summer afternoon: an eternal afternoon, where the moon flies “full-faced”.  This creates a bizarre yet effective opposition: it is neither day nor night in the land of the Lotos Eaters, in just the same way as the eaters themselves are neither dead, nor alive.

This ‘living death’ is amplified by Tennyson’s clever depictions of the passing of time; a time that isn’t quite the same as ours.  It is hesitant and shy, popping in and out of existence throughout the whole poem.  A waterfall, “like a downward smoke”, seems to “pause” in its fall, implying that time is not a constant here; this reflects the uneven nature of consciousness in the land.  On the other hand time does paradoxically give the impression of moving onward.  The sailors, in their low chant, sing of an apple in “the middle of the wood” and chart its growth and eventual fall.  Whether this apple is simply a rhetorical device in their argument or an account of an actual apple in the land of the lotos is difficult to say, but nevertheless it helps give us a sense of ages of time passing as the sailors lie drugged and helpless.

‘Cool mosses deep’

It is very definitely a land of plants.  Throughout the poem Tennyson makes reference to a host of flowers and herbs, from the sleeping poppies and weeping flowers of stanza six, to the “beds of amaranth (a plant that symbolises eternity) and moly (a magic herb found in Homer’s legends)” in stanza twelve.  These plants, and their associations, certainly add further weight to the main theme of sleep and “dreamlike ease” of the poem, but could add something further.  Tennyson was writing at the time of a great acceleration of the industrialisation of Britain.  Railways were snaking over the whole of England, and the long procession of hopeful country folk to the slums of the cities was continuing as it had for the last fifty years.  Tennyson’s beautiful, endless and slothful land is one without the iron shackles of industry: it is a land where the idea of being industrious is alien and the beauty and timelessness of pure nature is allowed to survive, untouched by the “toil” of humanity.  Tennyson could have been contemplating a better world of the past, a bit like the way the Romanic poets (including Keats and Wordsworth) longed for the idyllic world of the agricultural mediaeval.  Thus, we could argue that ‘setting’ in this poem is used to highlight contextual concerns (AO4). 

However, to turn this argument on its head, Tennyson’s description of this world becomes quite sinister at times.  The “yellow lotos-dust” that blows around this “hollow” (meaningless?) land chokes and fills the landscape with its own, perfectly natural pollutant; the land, though beautiful, is ultimately a land of living-death, offering the lotos as a means of keeping humanity docile and still.  It is a vengeful, controlling world that fits fascinatingly with modern contexts and the environment, as well as issues concerning drug addiction, such as the dangerous effects of the Opium poppy, from which heroin is derived.  Tennyson was to face accusations of being addicted to this for much of his life[2].   So, like Alice’s Wonderland, Tennyson’s land of the lotos hides meanings above and beyond the need to give a story a geographical location.

‘The island of Shalott’

Let’s move away from the Lotos-land before we fall asleep, and travel to Shalott.  Rather like Tennyson’s home of the Lincolnshire Wolds, Camelot’s country is one of “long fields of barley and of rye”, filled with willows, lilies and flowers: another idyllic mediaeval world.  It is this beautiful, unspoilt world that the Lady inhabits.  But no; ‘inhabit’ is the wrong word.  The Lady of Shalott is not of this land at all.  She is somehow beyond it, enclosed by “four grey walls and four grey towers” and hidden from view.  The only hint that she exists at all, beyond our narrator’s omniscience, is the song that “echoes cheerly” through the land.  Furthermore, she is forced to view the world through “a mirror clear”; she doesn’t see reality, rather a manipulated and twisted version of it.  In fact, she is punished when she attempts to view the world and an attractive man riding through it, and then eventually dies. The feminist connotations are strong, but I’ll leave that here as you’ll discover more about that in A2 English Literature.  What is very interesting for our purposes is her seeing “the water lily bloom” just before the curse crashes down on her.  Not only are white lilies associated with death and funerals; one species of water lily is known as the Nymphaea Lotus and many other lilies have lotus-like properties.  Now, admittedly these lotus plants are real and do not share quite the same properties as Tennyson’s lotos, but the point is there: once again we see a reference to the seductive and dangerous side of nature.  Did the lotos charm the Lady to make an error just as it charmed the sailors of Odysseus? Perhaps, and as an idea it is a good candidate for some AO3 marks.

‘In the stormy east-wind straining’

Finally, remember how Alice’s Wonderland could be argued to be a symbol of loss of innocence?  Shalott could hold the same meaning.  The Lady dares to gaze down on Lancelot and the curse falls on her as the mirror cracks “from side to side”.   After the curse takes hold and the Lady is aware of her impending death, the setting also changes.  With a touch of pathetic fallacy the landscape reflects the mood change and goes from a colourful idyll to a dark and sombre land.  The “stormy east wind” blows around the “pale yellow woods”, with rainfall adding further tears to the occasion.  The destruction of her chaste innocence is a cause for mourning, as even the clouds join in the grief.  Whereas Carroll celebrated the shift into knowing adulthood with his bizarre and ultimately beneficial landscape, Tennyson seems to condemn it, using the setting as his judgement.  Hopeful and glorious summer turns to depressed and brooding autumn...all because a woman looked at a man.  This is only one reading of the situation, and as you know AO3 is all about accepting that there are different ways of looking at these issues, so you should also consider the more ‘positive’ view that the landscape is mourning the death of the Lady herself.  But then, why is she robed in that most symbolic of colours, white?  

There isn’t space here to delve any deeper into the mysteries of setting.  Perhaps the fairy-tale nature of both poems’ setting could be examined, as could the use of the townscape at the end of ‘Shalott’.  But these are for you to think about.  Setting is a fascinating focus of study in Literature; combined with a close textual analysis and a bit of contextual knowledge, some really intriguing theories can be explored.

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[1] The Poetry Foundation ‘Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), biography’ at www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81472, (accessed 18^th April 2010)

[2] Platizky, R (2002) ‘"Like Dull Narcotics, Numbing Pain": Speculations on Tennyson and Opium’ in ‘Victorian Poetry’ (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press)