Appleman 8

This is another chapter that I'm going to struggle saying a whole lot about, because well, there wasn't a lot to it. It's the end of the book, barring the appendices that's it, no more, done, finished.

I really liked the idea of the Critical Theory relay, and it and other things brought up in this book have really warmed me to the idea of using some critical theory in the classroom. I know I've said it a few times before but I feel much more excited about teaching now and I think part of that is because I have a much better idea now of the kinds of things I can teach, as well as the things I want to teach.

Deconstructing Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"

Daddy by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

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From the beginning of this piece you know from the title that the poem has something to do with Plath's father figure, but from the outset it's impossible to tell what that connection is. In the first Stanza references a Black shoe and her being a foot inside that shoe. The weird part is where she talks about not being able to breath within the shoe, melding the comparison between the foot and herself, because obviously feet don't breathe but people don't go in shoes...which one is it Plath?
The first part of the second stanza has violent undertones, claiming Plath wanted to kill her father in some way, but the second part of the Stanza has nothing to do with that, coming back to the foot analogy, she's claiming her father died before she had the chance to kill him, but these lines about a giant statue make it seem as though she's claiming he's immortal, a stone-like presence.
In the next few stanzas we move out of the metaphorical a little bit, because it seems like Plath is literally talking about a trip to Germany and Poland, maybe her father was actually a Nazi or that's just how she felt about him but that's obviously the point she's trying to get across here.
Later she claims that every woman adores a fascist, but that doesn't make sense when it seems that she's been constantly claiming to this point that she hates the man and she wishes she had killed him. She claims that she tried to get back to him, so there's obviously some contradiction here between her hate for her father and her love for him, and she even goes so far as to contradict and rewrite some of the same things she was saying about him being like a Nazi to her, saying that the cleft wasn't actually in his boots, just in his chin.
She goes on once again to compare him to something immortal, a vampire, so that even though she claims for most of the poem that she's dismissing him even at the very end there's the claim that he will always be there.

Appleman Chapter 7

I really enjoyed this chapter about Martha, mainly because instead of taking one subject for many pages and using many quotes from students, we got to hear about a number of important subjects directly from a teacher who's been through it. It's really encouraging to hear about how things can change in the classroom, and I'm particularly struck by the quote at the end of the chapter:

"As Freire (1971) has suggested, [teachers] are "knowing subjects," constantly learning from the process of teaching. Here we take the more radical position that learning from teaching ought to be regarded as the primary task of teacher education across the professional life span. By "learning from teaching" we mean that inquiry ought to be regarded as an integral part of the activity of teaching and as a critical basis for decisions about practice."

I know for a fact that when I start my student teaching that I'm going to be lousy at it, I'll be struggling to move beyond simply doing the kinds of presentations that I've been doing for my classmates for the past 15 years or so, and I know it's going to be a rough trip. But there's proof out there that things improve, that as we teach we learn, and I think that's one of the most important things. I know I've mentioned this before, but I was also really worried about what kind of actual material I would be teaching in my classroom because I've had trouble actually coming up with things to say in my unit plans in the past, and I think this book has helped me with that more than anything else. Not only does it give you things to say, it gives you ways to say it, and I think I feel much more comfortable now about teaching literature in the classroom.

It's an unfortunate thing, but I am skeptical that the majority of teachers actually follow the same path of self-discovery that Martha and Appleman did, I'm sure that there are a great number out there that are still teaching the same things they taught their first year. It's an important point to make because one of the main things that I got from reading about Martha is that she must have been ridiculously busy, she had to work hard for this, and we'll have to work hard too. Change and improvement don't come easy, but I think it's worth it.

Appleman Chapter 6

Deconstructionism! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

That's basically the main thing this chapter presents to us. First of all, I'm almost positive now that these conversations with students aren't real at all, I mean, they seemed so contrived before but some of the ones in this chapter were just ridiculous. My other problem with the chapter is that Appleman basically uses the quotes from other people to try to cobble together a definition of deconstructionism, and even the "clear and lucid definition" is seriously lacking. Basically the best way to get an idea of what deconstructionism "is" is from the name itself. I realize that one of the main aspects of this theory is that it's a little vague, but it was really aggravating reading an entire chapter about a vague theory, and the reactions the students had to it and the warnings made about it didn't really make any sense. Claiming that deconstructionism takes apart everything it means to be a person and destroys the other theories is really darn melodramatic.

English Teacher Censorship Snafu

Just though this would be an interesting read for people considering our recent talks about censorship in the classroom and whatnot. It looks like this teacher let a seriously disturbing book slip by him and now he's in some hot water for it. I guess it's just one more reminder that we should always be reading everything we assign.


Here's the article


Here's an excerpt from the book "Child of God"

Webb Chapter 3

I've had a good amount of experience with Feminist text, and I have some well read Math major roommates (who I consider to be some of the smartest folks on this campus) who I can talk about these texts with as well, and the conclusion I came to is that a LOT of guys just plain hate Feminist literature. I'm not saying that the stances we take on it are decidedly chauvinistic, it's just that so many of us have a problem connecting with the literature on any level and I'm still not really sure how to solve that in the classroom.

Because it has to be solved right? We need to find some way to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Even in our classroom I noticed that almost without exception it was the girls clamoring for books such as "The Bell Jar" and "Tsotsi", while most of the men were interested in reading Catch-22 and Vonnegut. I think we should have a discussion in class based around the different books people have read, and whether they've read anything and really enjoyed it that they would consider a book "meant for the opposite sex". It would be useful to hear what kinds of things get people into novels that they would normally have a hard time connecting with because of gender differences. I might sound here like I'm drawing some unstoppable, infallible line between the tastes of the two sexes, and I'm not. I know that there is plenty of give and take and plenty of books that people just plain read, but from everything I've seen the solidarity of the differences in literary tastes between the two sexes is surprisingly strong.

Anyway, if anyone has something they want to say about it here, or in class, that would be great. What I want is insight from some of the girls who love books like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice on how they feel about books like Fahrenheit 451 or Vonnegut or Catch-22 etc.

Appleman Chapter 5

I'm starting to realize that these books, almost in their entirety, aren't really all that useful for teaching low level English classes(6-9th grade) and actually, I'm ok with that. We take so much time in our teaching courses learning about the basics and how to get students interested that it's really helpful to learn about how we should be teaching some of the more advanced classes. The reason I say this is that practically all the classroom environments that Webb and Appleman are talking about for their Theory teaching are 12th grade or AP or even College classes. I read A Room of One's Own for my 11th grade AP English class and for me that book was just brutal, it took everything I had to actually finish the damn thing, although it probably didn't help that it was summer reading. I find that some of Appleman's classroom examples seem a little bit contrived, the way his students respond so perfectly, but once again I find that I'm really drawn to this concept of teaching different literary theories. Feminist theory is important because there have been so many portrayals of women in literature over the years by both men and women and the comparison is amazing. I think a good focus would actually be to read two relatively similar works by a Male author and a Female author and compare both through a feminist lens.

Also, you could probably combine the whole unit of Feminist examination with a unit on Victorian Literature, heh.