Body and Soul

Well, I switched books again. Not really for any reason, and actually, I kind of regret it. Why? Um, go look up self-trephination. That's why.

Today's short story comes from Barbara Gowdy's book, We So Seldom Look on Love. The book was a finalist for the Trilliam Award, which means Canadian.

The first story in this book is entitled "Body and Soul", and I don't really know what to say about it. Like so many short stories, it stuck with me. My jaw actually dropped when I got to the conclusion of the story. It was a real shock, though not a surprise, if that makes any sense.

Honestly, I found this story difficult to get into. Not sure yet if that's due to the writing style of the author, or this particular story. I'll keep reading the book to find out. She definitely creates a sense of disorientation early in the story, and I can see how it illustrates life in the apartment and gets us right in the middle of the lives of these two girls. But I had trouble figuring out the dialogue, and I found the character of Julie difficult to think about, both before and after the ending.

Aunt Bea is an interesting character. It's funny to take up a character that is both good and not good- not bad, exactly- but inexact, and inefficient and a little foolish. She reminds me a bit of Mansfield's Miss Brill, not because she is so outwardly vain, but because of how transparent her "goodness" is.

Would I Teach it: No, I don't think so.
Where: Nowhere. Maybe 20 or 20-2.

Other stuff: self-trephination. *shudders*

The Vandercook

Well, if any of you were to follow me on Twitter, you would already know the dismal state of my marking pile. So, naturally, I'm going to spend some time today blogging instead of doing any of that other stuff.

Which brings us to today's story: The Vandercook by Alice Mattinson

In short, I quite liked it. It's one of those stories that sticks; a few days after reading it I kept thinking back to a few images, or a few lines that somehow resonated, and I think that's a lovely effect for a story to have. Here are a few of those lines and my thoughts on them:

In the dark, I had finally said, "You may not do this," and from her pillow, sounding wide-awake, she'd said, "You may not tell me what I may not do."

In any other story, I think the above exchange would let me feel good about the woman who stands up to her husband in this way; but here, everything Molly says just adds to the growing dread that leads to the story's end. Molly is something, and it's a complicated something. Too complicated for a high school student? No, not depending on context. But maybe there's too much going on in terms of white feminism and US history to cover in a short story unit. I don't know.

He put the palm of his hand on the back of my father's head and pressed Dad's face into his own white shirt, like a parent protecting a child from seeing something terrible.

Oh, this line just breaks my heart. Here is the character with perhaps the least amount of agency and voice in the story acting with the most compassion in the story and oh, it's awful. The comparison there that brings in the parent-child relationship is extra potent because in that very moment, that's almost exactly what the narrator is failing to do. My heart.

I couldn't look at her frightened face. I wanted love to be simple. I wanted to tell her how nimbly our son with his new haircut had darted across the street, how scared he seemed, how hard it was not to run toward him, stretching my arms out wide.

These are the final lines of the story, and they are exactly what the story is: at once disjointed, recursive and tying together multiple levels of family, of obligation and of the impossibility of having to live with the choices of the people we love. Just great.

    

And I didn't even talk about the Vandercook itself, which, especially if you're into printing presses and typography or whatever, provides ample opportunity to engage with symbol and image. 

*     *      *

I don't know a lot about the author, which is my own failing, as a quick online search showed me that she has published several novels and her work is often included in the Best American Short Stories anthology. This story does not live online, but it while I was looking for it, I instead found this blog, which does what I'm trying to do here but probably a thousand times better. Ah well. 

Anyway, I liked this story a lot. 

Would I teach it: No, I don't know how! I should probably figure that out, hey? The more time I spend thinking about this story, the more I like it. But I don't know how I'd write an essay of character about a story that deliberately lacks a resolution. I mean, I guess there are students who write about Raymond Carver's Cathedral, which is similarly difficult. We'll see. There are a lot of stories left in this book, but if this one continues to echo around in my little brain I may return to this story with a past diploma topic and see what I can come up with.

Where: An advanced class for sure. 20 or 30 AP or IB. Or a dedicated writing class, if there were ever such thing.

Other stuff: Again, because this story is published in the Pen/O. Henry Prize book, there is a very short blurb at the back where Alice Mattinson writes that she began the story with the idea that the people in it "can't solve their problem". Maybe that's part of why this story sticks in my mind so well. It is made up of a number of lovely shaped puzzle pieces, but they can't come together because they were designed not to. 

Uncle Rock

Uncle Rock by Dagoberto Gilb

One story in, and I had to switch anthologies. This doesn't really bode well for that parallel texts book, but I'll get back to it in time. On to the 2012 PEN/O. HENRY PRIZE Stories. Is that really the title of this book? It's a little ostentatious, I have to say.

This is the first story in this book, and actually, I don't hate it. It was also published in The New Yorker in 2010. Wait, 2010? But this is a Best of 2012 book... *makes disgruntled sound*

The story itself is brief, only about 7 pages. It reminds me of the perennial Alberta favorite: The Glass Roses, by Alden Nowlan. Not only is it a similar length, but it also features an adolescent and relatively silent male protagonist; a significant and somewhat inscrutable parent figure; and some clear imagery that would fit neatly into a symbolism lesson.

There are major differences, of course, many of which can be inferred from the illustration that accompanies the New Yorker page, below. The potential pitfalls of this story could probably also be inferred from that illustration, a major one being that the character of the mother is problematic for a classroom.

Now, when I say problematic, I mean that from a teaching standpoint. I don't mean that she's written disrespectfully. It's that I'm willing to bet that students would be quick to jump all over her as an opportunity to write about character, and that really wouldn't work at all. Not to mention all the, um, nascent things they may have to say about single mothers who date, or women who have bodies, or people from Mexico. This would either be a good opportunity to confront students about all the(ir) racist and misogynist assumptions, or a good opportunity to mistakenly provide a place to perpetuate those assumptions. I guess that's all literature. Still, it's a risk.

That said, the potential for a good lesson is also in there. There are some interesting conversations to be had about where we fit (or don't) into the lives of our parents, as well as the power we have when it comes to not using our voices. I quite enjoyed the paragraph about what "back home" sounded like for Erick; I have some experience with the tension between how life here (wherever here is) is supposed to be so much better, but how life there still gets to be "home". It's a small part of the story, but it's there. Finally, it's the small action that closes the story, and that's another nice thing to get to harp on about in class: how the small things matter.

Would I teach it: Never say never.

What grade: 20-2 and maybe even 30-2? If The Glass Roses is fair game for the Diploma, this could be too. I think.

Other things: This anthology has little blurbs from the author of the stories at the back, and the paragraph from the author of this story could be fun to teach.
Also, the author, Dagoberto Gilb, is alive. That's neat.
The New Yorker has another page with some more words from the author, if you needed supplementary texts, or an excuse to read non-fiction.

The Beach

Brief recap of what I'm doing here: compiling a self-made resource of short stories to teach in my school, which is a high school in Alberta. That means I'll be making references to the courses (10-1, 10-2, 10AP, etc) as well as to the final standardized exit exam, hereafter referred to as the Diploma, which is made up of a Personal Response task and a Critical Essay task and here is the end of the sentence.

On to the first story!

The Beach by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Translated by Barbara Wright

So, an inauspicious start to this little project, to be honest, because this story was... uh... written.

To be clear, it was written in French, because this is from an anthology called Parallel Texts, where the left page has the story printed in the original French and the right page has the corresponding translated English page.

The story itself has some interesting things in terms of structure, I suppose, but as far as finding short stories to use in the classroom, this one is a little sparse. The entirety of the story simply describes three blond children walking on a beach for a few minutes. I'm not sure why it's important that they are blond, but much is made of the blondness. As they walk to an unnamed destination, one of them hears a bell and then a seagull trots around and then it's over.

I mean, the most likely scenario is that this story is simply beyond my grasp.

Possible Uses: If a teacher were trying to have a model text of making the most of a small moment, this may be a useful study. Or if they really liked stories about anonymous possibly sea-faring blond children.
Would I use it: um, no.
What Grade: If I had to, grade 10? Or very early on in a personal response unit on writing narratives in 30? But does anyone do that? Does anyone have time? But I'd never do this in a -2 class, ever.

Wait, never mind: Ok, on second thought, I actually am going to photocopy this story and give it to a student of mine tomorrow. Not for the glory of the writing or the insights this particular story provides, but because it may prove useful to her to see direct English translations across the page from French. So yeah, forget everything I say, ever.

A post about Macbeth that I think I wrote, but forgot about for a few years

Poor little abandoned blog. Let's just pretend the extended hiatus never happened, shall we?

Ahem. (I had a baby and went on mat leave and changed schools again and took up weaving).

So, I think that English teachers should write the essays they assign. I've felt that way for a while, and this year, being back from maternity leave, I definitely have failed at this ideological resolution, but with the perspective motherhood brings comes the realization that failure is just life.

Discuss. Just kidding, that's what I'll do.

Anyway, I want to start posting things on this blog again, mostly to preserve in digital stone the experiments and ideas of my year back in the saddle. I found this post, which is an old essay that I think I wrote with the intention of publishing but never got around to it. It certainly reads like my attempt at impersonating Camille Paglia's poetic analysis, so there. So I'll post this here as a challenge of sorts to other practicing English teachers: those essays that merit the highest grades- could you write them? Though I admit the essay below is a little on the wordy side (read: someone loves her thesaurus), I think I could write a hundred-percent essay every time. Reading comprehension, well, that's different.

p.s. Did I plagiarize this? If anyone else wrote this, please let me know and I'll take it down or credit you. But I think I wrote it. (Three years ago- before I had a baby and so clearly had too much time on my hands.)

Macbeth's relationship with the state

For King and Country! The battle cry is brief and direct, and so is the meaning: in the hearts and minds of the British people that uttered them, King and Country are firmly and justly tied together. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the word King is amended to Tyrant and the image of country becomes that of a bleeding Christ. Instead of nurturing, right and holy, Macbeth's is unnatural, paradoxical and without sacrament. Macbeth's relationship with the land of Scotland is such that he hurts it, and leaves it changed, both ideologically and geographically. Just as Macbeth turned his back on God when he plunged his dagger into Duncan, so too did he turn his back on Scotland. 

The opening paradox of the play, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Act 1, scene 1, line 12) acquaints the attentive audience with the fundamental paradigm shift that is the basis of the play. In this play, their chanting tells us, what was right is now wrong, what was good is now bad, and what is clear is now murky. This paradox infects everything: Macbeth's integrity, the role of England and the meaning of patriotism, even the most basic action and word may become perverted, or backwards. The presence of pathetic fallacy beginning in Act 2 take this paradigmatic change and brings it into the physical diagesis of the play. Jacobean England was a time when social orders and expectations were clear and immovable, so it is only natural that when Macbeth instigates the perversion of that order by committing the ultimate sacrilege the ground literally shifts beneath their feet: "the earth/ Was feverous and did shake." (Act 2, scene 3, line 65). Unfortunately for Scotland, Macbeth's choices inflict even worse upon the land, and we hear that the Old Man in Act 2 senses right away that whatever is going on with the land is dreadful, strange and unnatural. By Act 4, the damage has escalated to the point where Malcolm shares, "I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;/ It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash/ Is added to her wounds" (Act 4, scene 3, lines 39-41). Scotland is presented to the audience like a bleeding Messiah in a prolonged crucifixion scene, reminiscient of the other "Golgotha" (Act 1, scene 2, line 44) that Macbeth evoked back when he deserved the name "brave Macbeth" (Act 1, scene 2, line 18). The eclipse is another feature that ties the murder of Duncan to the crucifixion of Jesus, and we wonder," Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,/ That darkness does the face of earth entomb,/ When living light should kiss it?" (Act 2, scene 4, line 9-11). 

Does the blame for Duncan's murder lie solely with Macbeth, the perpetrator of the act, or is his sin like Adam's, and all of humanity (in this case, Scotland) is left to suffer for his choice? It is certainly a frightening prospect that the lack of light in the kingdom may signal the complete control of the powers of darkness, but at this point in the play, the Macbeth's "are yet but young in deed." (Act 3, scene 4, line 144). This religious allusion likening Scotland's suffering to Christ's reinforces this possibility that though Macbeth has turned his back on God, God has not abandoned Scotland. We are not dealing with the vengeful and terse Old Testament God who abruptly threw the sinners out of the garden. Instead, "the heavens, as troubled with man's act,/ Threaten his bloody stage" (Act 2, scene 4, line 6-7), and the threat in this land is not an attack on the people of Scotland. Rather, since Scotland's new king has turned a deaf ear to God, these unnatural movements and sounds that plague the land is perhaps the only way God's will can still be heard. The reign that Macbeth brings to Scotland is so terrible and so damaging that he makes it ideologically impossible to be a patriotic Scot. By the end of Act 3, to be a true Scotsman is to be a traitor to the king, as Lennox voices aloud "that a swift blessing/ May soon return to this our suffering country/ Under a hand accursed! " (Act 3, scene 6, lines 4-10). That Lennox refers to whatever may relieve the country of Macbeth's hand as a "blessing" reveals his understanding (explicit or inuitive) of the taint that the witches have left on Macbeth's rule, since the notion of King and God should be revered as one and the same. The most lasting and physically impressive change that Macbeth's regime brings about in Scotland is the movement of Birnam wood to the foot of Scone. When Macbeth boastfully asks "Who can impress the forest, bid the tree/ Unfix his earth-bound root? " (Act 4, scene 1, lines 96-97), he is in his rights to ask, for even the King has no physical command over the trees and rocks that make up his Kingdom. 

Malcolm, in pursuit of the throne and revenge for his father's death, both of which are rightfully his, is desperate enough to save his country that he commands the English army to hack it to peices: "Let every soldier hew him down a bough" (Act 5, scene 4, line 6). This act, at once cunning and damaging, is another paradoxial example of hurting the country to save it, a paradox made possible only though Macbeth's unnatural reign. Which leads us to what it is that is so unnatural about Macbeth's reign. Nevermind the obvious fact that he was never born to be king, that the "borrowed robes", "fruitless crown and...barren sceptre" were stolen in a violent and bloody act of treason. That Macbeth acted on his ambition and attempted to rise in his station is almost admirable, and the desire for advancement is understandable, if not universal. It's that Macbeth made no attempt to forge the relationship with the country that a king should have, as decreed by God. 

Macbeth's time on the throne had nothing to do with Scotland, or its people. During his tortuous reign, Macbeth was fully consumed with one thing: himself. His schemes, his whispered conversations with his wife, focused all on "the golden round", the "throne" and being "safely thus". He abandoned the country when he abandoned his morality, and the country suffers in the same physical way that he did: no sleep becomes no silence, no prayers become no sun. Macbeth's relationship with the land isn't similar to his relationship with God, it is his with relationship with God: severed and abandoned.

First Post of 2012 - April Fools! - It's actually an essay!

Roads and Rivers: Navigating the Image and the Real in Pleasantville

In a scene from Pleasantville (1998), a group of young people are gathered in the local soda shop. The subtle five-four rhythm of Take Five plays in the background, though it’s likely that music was added in during the editing process. Actor Tobey Maguire takes a deep breath, pausing slightly before speaking his lines: “There are some places where the road doesn’t go in a circle.” The actors that surround him appear surprised, astonished, intrigued. They lean in closer as Tobey continues: “It just keeps going. It all keeps going. Roads and Rivers.” And so, about 50 minutes into the film, the character David instigates a full-fledged youth revolution propelled by, of all things, classic American Literature.
         The originating image of the 50s sitcom that Pleasantville expresses perhaps never existed; it was projected onto an eager America through TV, but these programs become artifacts unto themselves. The ‘Black and White’ television era is a reference to both its appearing and its appearance: whole, smiling families; full plates of home cooked dinner; a population of obedient and successful (and yes, docile) bodies. But the images in Pleasantville don’t begin there; instead, the film situates itself in the real with David, one half of a set of twins. The image of the real, Baudrillard’s first phase, “the reflection of a profound reality”, is where and when David lives, which we assume from the fashion is the 90s (though, interestingly, these shots are preceded by a title card that reads “Once Upon a Time...”). As Baudrillard might suggest, the real for David truly seems to be a desert: the establishing scene shows him standing alone in front of a vast expanse of concrete that makes up the yard of his high school.

 Once inside the high school, we see lecture after lecture delineating one bleak future after another: Hollywood’s exaggeration of the potential of the 90s. It’s no wonder that David is enamored with the TV show Pleasantville, it serves as a way to mask his inability to interact with females - a twin sister who hates him, a mother who ignores him - these all amount to a feeling of rejection by the Symbolic order of David’s ‘real’ world, and so he turns to the Imaginary, amusing himself by quoting the lines of dialogue of the TV mom while his real mother quibbles over the phone with David’s otherwise absent father. One would imagine that David’s sudden literal immersion into the television show ‘Pleasantville’ would be his dream come true, permission to happily function within his desired Symbolic Order. Instead, David and his twin sister Jennifer are both one phase further removed from the real.

When first thrust into the world of the television show it becomes clear how David is now even more fully invested in living in the Imaginary, David wants to “play along” and demands that his rebellious sister do the same. David seems to take comfort in the Imaginary order of Pleasantville: here he is taken care of, he is part of a whole family, he is a successful and accepted member of the world. But this is also the second phase of the image, which “masks and denatures a profound reality”. Accordingly, Jennifer, despite experiencing what David does, is severely alienated by these events. In a somewhat tragic turn, the Symbolic norms of a mother cooking a hot breakfast and complimenting her outfit are deeply distressing to her. And, as she explores the world further, she simultaneously moves away from the Imaginary order she had set up for herself in the ‘real’ world. In that world, Jennifer cut class to smoke in the yard and hook up with boys. In Pleasantville, when confronted with a geography lesson that is summed up in two streets, Main and Elm, she raises her hand. And, after she is rejoined with the idea that “the end of Main street is just the beginning again,” she desperately seeks to find her way out of the hyper real prison, and ends up in a library. There, she discovers that the books are all blank. The price of pleasantness is lack of knowledge, a motif that the film plays with through various allusions to the biblical Adam and Eve. Jennifer’s desperation even drives her to attempts at destruction, but she’s still thwarted: though she’s somehow managed to find a lighter, nothing burns.
     Of course, it is David who disrupts his own illusion, causing a basketball to miss the net when he attempts to defer a date between his sister and the captain of the basketball team. This is where the image of reality begins to move into its third phase, where the image “masks the absence of a profound reality.” This too is the part of the film that challenges all the characters’ notions of the Symbolic order by introducing glimpses of the Real, and leaving those characters and objects changed. The initial upset, which David unwittingly began by ruining the perfect basketballs, is taken up by Jennifer, whose dalliance with Skip prompts a rose bush to spontaneously bloom in red- Real red. Sex is also the means through which Jennifer and David’s TV Mom traverses her own reality. A symbol of chastity in Pleasantville is the parent’s double beds: a reference to the lack of intimacy that the term pleasant carries with it. In a perversion of the ‘sex talk’, mother and daughter sit at the kitchen table beside the wholesome symbol of milk and cookies and it’s Jennifer who carefully informs her mother how to “enjoy yourself... without Dad.” And Betty does so, in a scene that is extremely uncomfortable to watch with a classroom full of seventeen year-olds. It’s Betty’s first experience with pleasure that brings her and those in the town closer to the Real than ever before in the film; as she orgasms, the world of Pleasantville responds, and the tree on the front lawn bursts into flames. Things do burn in Pleasantville after all: literally, figuratively. Again, it’s David who tries to put out the flames and dampen whatever they represent, but he manages to continue to subvert the town, now symbolically echoing Jennifer’s lessons by showing the hapless firefighters how to use their own equipment.

By the time the image has made its fourth revolution, “it has no relation to any reality whatsoever”; in Pleasantville, this imagining makes the implausible plausible and makes meaningful allusion out of the ridiculous. The changes in the town manifest in a thunderstorm, and all but David and Jennifer flinch and recoil in fear from the thunder and rainfall. The kids especially, are afraid of the rain at first, eyeing it dubiously as they ask if it is “real rain?” And it’s not real rain, though by then, David has forgotten that. The town divides. Signs pop up in shop windows that read “no coloreds”. Angry citizens gather around Mr. Johnson’s nude of Betty, which is exhibitioned on the soda shop window and eventually destroy it. The ridiculous hyper reality of this violence is underscored in the filming, as a high angle creates the image of a group of dissidents converging on a giant ice cream cone.  As the tension escalates, the traditionalist citizens, who previously had no knowledge of fire, burn books. Finally, the most organized attempt to quell the reading revolution begun by the “changists” of the town results in the creation of “The Pleasantville Code of Conduct” which include such provisions as “there will be no preparation for inclement weather” and “No bed frame or mattress may be sold measuring more than 38 inches wide.” When David reads this edict aloud, there is a marked difference between Jennifer’s reaction and that of the other colored youth gathered in the soda shop. She smirks, fully aware of the foolishness of a government sanction of bed frames, where her Pleasantville friends are not.

Her chuckle indicates her rejection of these newly imposed Symbolic rules, where the earnest attentiveness of the other youth ground their placement in Lacan’s Imaginary. In terms of Baudrillard, it's the hyper real. David learns from something in which he has basically no stake - he is never really threatened, not physically or intellectually- though the characters around him are. His own approach to the real comes in the form of violence, when he punches a boy who is threatening Betty, but why does he defend her? Even though David is moving farther and farther away from his true existence, his action without thought – defending and protecting his TV mother – brings him closer to the Real than he has ever been before. And after the conflict of the town has neatly resolved, the town is fully colored, the borders come down and the roads unloop themselves and stretch out into the unknown. Pleasantville has become its own simulacra.

In a most satisfying twist, David then decides to return to his real world, and it’s Jennifer who   stays behind. She seems to finally acknowledge the value of the rules she flaunted for so long, both in terms of school and in terms of the Imaginary order of Pleasantville. In this sense, Jennifer created the simulacra in which she could thrive. When she says to her brother “I did the slut thing,” she’s both rejecting her previous (performative) Imaginary expression and embracing the Symbolic rules of this new world. After questioning, changing and scoffing at the orders of both her real world and this Pleasantville world, she decides to pursue an Academic career, and armed with the knowledge of the two worlds she’s inhabited; it is an act of freedom, not an act of prolonging her subjugation. David’s return to his real world shows his readiness to seek out the Real in his original circumstances, and he is immediately confronted with the opportunity to connect with his ‘real’ mother. Interestingly, he also returns with a physical symbol of the world he left, the letterman’s jacket at once symbolizing his social acceptance and the validity of the simulacra of Pleasantville to part with physical parts of itself, blurring the lines between those two iterations of the Real.  
But that’s not where the movie ends. In its closing moments the film reveals itself and what its true conclusions are: Pleasantville, now fully realized, goes on without its savior or destroyer. It’s ambiguity that has awakened this place to its own reality, and it’s a celebration of this ambiguity that closes the film. We are back in Pleasantville. We see Joan Allen, who plays Betty, seated on a bench beside William H. Macy, who plays her husband George. “Do you know what’s going to happen next?” She wonders aloud. The camera pans over to a close up of William’s face. “No, I don’t.” he replies. They both laugh as the camera pans back to Joan, still laughing, then back again. William H. Macy has been replaced by Jeff Daniels, who adds, “I guess I don’t either.” What phase of image are we watching now, where one character seems to become another? Or perhaps this is no longer part of the narrative, and we are simply watching actors speaking to one another? This is the final expression of Pleasantville as its own complete Real image, not only does it now offer the Betty character an unexpected Real possibility, but that the viewer should be taken aback by this visual inconsistency from a world where objects and people spontaneously change color is remarkable. In both worlds: Pleasantville, David’s and finally, in our own, the roads and rivers flow on into the unknown as the soundtrack plays: “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”

Works Consulted

"Jean Baudrillard - Simulacra and Simulations - I. The Precession of Simulacra Translated by Sheila Faria   Glaser." Jean Baudrillard. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations-i-the-precession-of-simulacra/>.

Macbeth: it grew on me like a fungus.

A blog post just for you, Ms. Bayles!

Ok, so here is the slapdashiest of slapdash lists. The subject: things I've done with Macbeth.

Subheading: This is just a list of what works for me and is not intended to patronize or repeat the obvious, though it will likely do both.

•  I normally use Macbeth as an excuse to check my horoscope in class. I like this site http://www.dailyhoroscopes.net/ because instead of reading a paragraph for each sign, it breaks the horoscope down into a bar graph format for quicker comparison.

(The reason I use horoscopes is that it's a good place to lead into a discussion about determination and mysticism. There are so many different takes on what the witches in Macbeth actually represent, whether they are real, how malevolent they are, whether or not they were responsible for the 3rd murderer that allowed Fleance to escape, etc. I use the horoscope idea to play with the suggestion that with or without the witches' prophecies, the decision to act was Macbeth's and his alone. And to check my daily intellect level, 'cause that is totally based on the stars and not my intake of sleep and/or coffee.)

• If you have a theatre background you likely already know about the bad-luck-to-say-Macbeth-in-the-theatre thing. If not, it's not a bad way to start a lesson. There are lots of examples of Macbeth's curse and its ill effects online. Trivia, you know.

•  OMG- this is the best rap ever. For Macbeth, I mean. I usually show it to the kids before the 3 apparitions bit, cause they can connect with the mentions of the first 3 acts and then the rest is like pre-reading. And the hook seriously gets stuck in your head. 

•  I hope it's not patronizing to mention here that I usually bring up the fact that King James was Scottish and so the play was Scottish and that King James was into witches, and so Shakespeare put in witches, and King James published the King James bible during Shakespeare's lifetime and if you look up Psalm 46 and count 46 words from the beginning, you get the word "shake" and then 46 words from the end you get "spear". More trivia, but there are worse things. Are there worse things? Anyway, for me the King James conversation comes up late in the play, after the witches show! show! show! him the 3 visions and he demands the 4th, which is the line of 8 Kings that were likely make up to look like King James. King James!

• Oh yeah, don't forget to use a map. It's fun to find these places on a map, even if Shakespeare himself never really went there. I find that the smartboard in my classroom comes in handy for this because I can call up a realistic map of Scotland and use pictures of the characters * to move around. I find this makes it easier to explain the minor but potentially confusing details like Scone, Northumberland and Fife.

* Another silly but fun activity is asking students to cast actors of their choosing for the major the roles. Admittedly, the conversation begins with a list of dreamy or hot people, but once the students (and myself) get that their (our) systems, it's a place to start considering the different aspects of Macbeth's character as well as actor range. I usually do this via an online discussion board so that students can post pictures of the actors they are thinking of, as well as search for actors that they don't immediately know the names of.

• Oh yeah, and this may seem simplistic, but when we get to the Bloody Soldier's speech in Act 1, scene 2 and he gets going about the 'unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps', I always use a sword (I went out and bought a styrofoam one after breaking my meter stick) to kind of highlight the whole 'unseam'd' business. Something about the idea of a smoking bloody sword and a man's guts spilling out from a cut in his belly really seems to get kids sitting on the edge of their seats. Or bolting to the bathroom to throw up, you know, whatever. Engagement!

Films

I always use films with Shakespeare. I'm of the school that likes to approach the play as a play, not just a story, and to me plays were meant to be watched. So much of Shakespeare is lost with the absence of stage direction, blocking, expression, so filmed versions really help to fill that part of the play out.

Normally, I switch between versions as we go, not showing the same scene more than once, with the exception of the Banquet scene with Banquo's ghost. For that scene I show usually 3 different versions, some with the ghost and some without, which is a nice starting point for students to talk about what's more effective.

I remember asking a wiser, more experienced teacher what he thought of that and he told me to can it because then my students would be stuck with that one interpretation in their collective heads forever, instead of what the author intended. So, I show multiple versions to highlight the idea of interpretation. And honestly, I'd rather have something stuck in those heads.

• The Sam Worthington version is full of potential and is a good enough looking film, but it cuts a lot of text out and every visit from the witches (3 schoolgirls in this version) results in an out and out orgy. Titilating, definely; appropriate for 15 years olds, less so. Past my comfort zone anyway. There's one neat detail with the "Is this a dagger" bit where he grabs at a shadow and it's a fern or something, but it's pretty short lived. I guess it's alright though for highlight context and seeing how long it takes for someone to say, "Hey, that's the guy from Avatar!" Simple pleasures.

• The Roman Polanski version: naked witches; a real life example of the curse; a banquet scene that is at once disturbing and clear, and a final battle scene that never fails to get laughs, but does a good job illustrating what fighting in armor was probably really like. Incidentally, I also use that final battle scene to point out to students how prevalent cuts are in modern action sequences. But I'd never show the film from beginning to end.

• The Trevor Nunn movie, or as I like to call it, the you-probably-had-to-be-there version. It's always a pleasure to watch Shakespearean Ian McKellan and Judi Dench, but this film is not a film, it's a play on screen. You'd think that would be exactly what I was looking for, but I truly feel that this film works best for people who are familiar with the play already, as in, teachers. Or actors, I suppose. Don't get me wrong, there are a few treats: the drool in the banquet scene, Judi Dench's ear piercing wail in the sleepwalking scene, and I actually find the exchange between Malcolm and Macduff in this film pretty endearing. But overall, I would never show this film from beginning to end.

• Just discovered the Patrick Stewart film, which is actually stored in its entirety online. I think this is a filmed version of the Broadway production, and the fact that I'm totally a Star Trek the Next Generation geek has nothing to do with the fact that this is my favourite one. But I think Picard, I mean Stewart, brings a kind of worn desperation to the role that I haven't seen before, as well as a wicked moustache. The parts with the witches in this one are a little different though, but not sexualized, and that's how I interpret the play personally. (As in, if I have to watch one more witch scream 'Double! Double!' in orgasmic delight, I'm switching to Romeo and Juliet- and I mean it this time.)

• There's another version with Nichol Willamson version of Hamlet that I've only ever seen clips of on YouTube. From the little of it I've seen, it's a decent version: I've shown both the banquet scene and the sleepwalking scene.

Other stuff

• Lady Macbeth's "Out Damn Spot" bit, by this point in the play I find students are getting into the routine of watching the film (as in, heads down and napping) so I try to show this speech from a different perspective by showing a clip from Verdi's opera. I used to show this one, because of the captions. That made sense back when I worked in a French Immersion school. It may also help that I'm an opera fan.

• Anyway, there are trillions of ways to teach Macbeth. I know one teacher who actually hosts a banquet with his students for the banquet scene (Marshall, are you out there?), though I'm not sure if he invites a ghost or how that works. Sounds fun though.

• Something I tried once when I was student teaching was reserving Fridays for performance days. We'd rearrange the desks into an Elizabethan theatre shape, and kids would draw cards to see who would be groundlings, who would be nobles and who would be royalty. Royalty got comfy chairs to sit in, and (for a while) we played the game that whenever a royal would stand up, so did everyone else, a la Hallelujah Chorus. For obvious reasons, this game did not last. But they still got the best seats; nobles got to sit at desks towards the back and groundlings had to sit in chairs, or on the floor, depending on what we were doing. Anyway, these performances would range in goodness (and relevance) from students reciting lines like rap songs, showing pictures of images in the language, performing scenes that were transported to different settings, etc. 

So, these are all activity suggestions, not really teaching suggestions, if you know what I mean. I could (and likely will) (and sometimes do) (k, often do) wax poetic about the thematic poignancy, relevance, horror and thrill of what Macbeth has to offer, but not today. I will tell you this though: every time I teach Macbeth, I never fail to quote Laura Ingalls Wilder: "Ambition is a good servant but a bad master." The beauty of that quote is that it works for any theme, really. Another reason to read Little House on the Prairie, as if we needed one.

Last, I think it may be worth mentioning that for the first few years of teaching, I hated Macbeth. Hated it. Hated. But it grew on me, it did. Like a fungus. Or a rash.

Teaching Hamlet

Man, I love teaching Hamlet. Hamlet! I still remember sitting in my grade 11 English class ( ____ly, the very same classroom I now teach in), reading the line "But look, the morn in russet mantle clad" and actually getting goosebumps. Russet? Seriously.

At this point, it is now clear how a geek like me would grow up to become an English teacher. And this English teacher is about to embark on a Hamlet unit once again.

Here are a few assumptions I make about the students before I begin:

- Students struggle with the language
- Students struggle with envisioning the action of the play
- Students struggle with the context of the time the play was written

Sense a theme?

I should probably acknowledge that the very notion of struggle seems to me to be a very physical image, as if the shakespeare textbooks fly towards the faces of my young charges and threaten to suffocate them with pages and pages of endless blank verse. But, that's probably how a lot of my kids feel. And, in past classes when students read the lines aloud, that's also how it sounds.

Again, throughout this entire unit (which is supposed to last about 7 weeks- this seems like a very tight timeline to me) I'm going to try to avoid the words 'get through' or 'cover' or 'go over' because I think it reinforces the idea of Hamlet as an obstacle, instead of a play.

Here is where I'll compile a list of aspects of my Hamlet unit, but there are some things I will not do. I won't create an order for presenting information. I won't be including worksheets with my units, because I don't use them anymore, and I think the notion of 'busywork' is kind of not what I'm going for here.

Things I haven't had success with

• Getting students to memorize a soliloquy - some teachers get kids really pumped about it, and I admire that. It's just not for me.
• Worksheets.

Things I have had success with

• Asking seemingly silly questions on a student discussion forum such as 

"If Hamlet were a cupcake, what flavour would he be?" (Not all the answers are gold, but it's a good excuse to bring cupcakes to class)
"Who would you cast as Hamlet? Include a picture!" (God bless the Kenneth Branagh version, but 1996 was a while ago.)

• Taking the time to explain to students that when words have mysterious apostrophes in the middle (ne'er, i', e'er) it's because there are letters missing for rhythmic reasons and they are not encountering some new mysterious word. I find it especially difficult to hear a student read aloud " I am too much "I" the sun". Gah! That makes no sense!

• Using different versions of filmed interpretations in class. This is a tricky one, because it's so easy to just let the movie run and run and tell yourself that students are 'getting it' because it's on screen. Still, when I teach Macbeth I've always made a point of showing as many different versions of the banquet scene as I can find so the students can discuss staging and director's interpretation. 

Things I haven't tried yet but will get back to you about

• This year I am going to include parts of the David Tennant film, but it will be difficult to practice equanimity due to my Dr. Who fangirl-dom. Still, from the limited previews I've seen this looks like an extremely attractive film that highlights how the play actually works as a play. (I was always more impressed with K. Branagh's sets than his soliloquies.) 

Work in Progress!