US Lit Exams: What my students learned Fall Term

With unexpected extra time on our hands, I decided:  Let’s take a break from news about “the virus-that-shall-not-be named.”  Instead, why not gain some insights about what my students learned about American Literature over Fall term?  While not all of it was what I remember teaching, as we all know, the gap between what we teach and what students learn is always interesting to discover when exam time rolls around.

 The class was for Juniors who were English majors.  The class met once a week for 2 hours.  This is the typical time frame for a Chinese class.  Chinese students take 12-15 different courses/week and meet for 2 hours for each class.  American Students have 4-5 different courses/week that usually meet 2 or 3 times per week for 1 or 1.5 hours.  

The Chinese method – one intense class per week -- is, to my mind, crazy pedagogy.  It encourages mad memorization at the end of the term.  They struggled in my class because there wasn’t a set text, and so nothing to memorize.   Next term I’m going to be more deliberate and help them think about learning as a process rather than a means to an end.  We’ll see how that goes. 

 On the exam, there was a fair amount of multiple choice and identification, because, I was told by my Chinese teachers, this is what the students expect and study for.  However, I did include one essay question, just to see what they would do with an impromptu, no-memorization question.  The question was:

 If you were going to teach a class on American Literature and you could only choose two (2) works of literature from this semester’s reading, which two works would you choose to teach?  In a response of no fewer than 200 words, identify the significance of the two writers, how they fit into the central ideas of the class and how they might illustrate different aspects of American literature. 

Before I get too snarky, I want to remind everyone:  they hadn’t seen this question before.  They were writing an essay in a foreign language with no dictionary.  If I had been asked to do the same in

Chinese, I would have failed.  But, with those caveats in mind… Here is what I learned:

Student #1:

“As we all know, America is quite a young country, which has a history of only about 230 years from the Independence War.  However, in this short period of times, compared to thousands of years in China, we still have many masterpieces of American Literature.  In this semester’s reading there were two works that I think we English majors cannot miss.  If the original English is a little bit difficult, you can read Chinese ones at first.  No matter what, read these works through and they will help you know a lot about American culture and literature.”

Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on this opening.  First we have the inevitable point made about the youth and inexperience of America compared to China’s age and sophistication.   We also have sideways confession and acknowledgement – You don’t have to read them in English, kids; Chinese versions are out there!

She continues:

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin belongs to American Realism Literature.  Realism is opposite with Romanticism. It mainly writes about reality and realism.  It usually changes whenever the society changes.  Uncle Tom’s cabin seems like a fairy tale when you only read the title. However it speaks the cruel truth of the slavery system during the civil war.  This novel made a hit in its reader and the whole society. We don’t know if the author saw the experiences herself, but we can imagine all the bloody behaviors of the masters. The language of this novel is very cruel, especially the descriptions of appearances of the characters in our mind.  The writing forms a figure, naturally.  Realism literature writers are brave and reflect the society truly, even if the authorities don’t want to know it.  The writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the bravest ones, because she was concerned about Black Americans.  Black Americans are minorities in America.  They saw that the words that made the Independence War didn’t succeed for them.”

This is a great paragraph because it fights between the facts she’s memorized about Realism, while sprinkling in some sparks of understanding – thoughts about what you can and cannot write based on what the authorities might think, a short reflection on minorities, some understanding of the shortfalls of the American revolution. 

In the second half of her essay, she writes on Alice Walker. 

(For some background: The story is about a young African-American girl who goes to college, returns and is embarrassed by her family’s poverty, but charmed by the vestiges of African-American culture in her mother's share-cropper shack.)

“Speaking about Black Americans, I want to recognize another great work by Alice Walker.  “Everyday Use” writes about Black heritage.  If you are interested in psychology, you will find an interesting case study in the mother, Maggie, and Dee.  This story is written after 1945.  It is different from the Lost Generation, because this story is of rebelling against tradition, but shows different ways people treat their tradition. Will you choose to follow the mother, and cherish your traditional culture by doing all of the housework, like your ancestors, or do you choose to follow Maggie to learn traditional skills from Grandma and continue to live by it?  Or do you choose to make your traditional culture into a museum or TV show?   Maybe we cannot say who is the right one. We only know that without “everyday use” the culture loses its roots, because culture is only alive in its population.  If a way of life dies, the culture will become a dead picture hanging in a museum.  We want to see living culture.”

In these essays – because they have no dictionary, no chance to rewrite – I look for three things:  Cohesion, Creativity (new ideas), and Relevance (Did she answer the question?)  This essay definitely offered a new spin on what we talked about in class.  I like the Chinese spin of focusing on one’s ancestors in the contemporary short story.   This student is also a psychology major, and when we talked about the work in class, she made a nice comment about how deep the character portrayals are, and how they remind her of case studies in her psychology class.  The two works would be very cohesive if they were taught in a class, and she answered the question – so not bad!

Student #2 chose Trifles by Susan Glaspell and Emily Dickinson’s poems.  Again, it is a nice choice because the student is comparing apples to apples – two different women writers from two different time periods using two different genres.   Again, she starts with words that she knows and has studied in other English classes—symbolism -- but then grows the ideas into her own interest and voice:

“From the study of this semester, the most salient features that are owned by American Literature are diversity and symbolism.  Therefore, two writers that I’d like to choose as the representation of these two qualities are Emily Dickinson and Susan Glaspell.

“Emily Dickenson’s poetry really reminds me of Keats’s world-famous lines – “Cast a cold eye to the death.”  [Actually, it is Yeats who wrote these words, but never mind]  From her irregular metaphors applied in her writing, she seems to be the person who has a special and transcendent sensuous way to reorganize the world beyond the reach of her era.  This is a perfect example that even contains a germ of the modern world’s literary creation.  Her literary style lets me associate with Japanese Haiku, pairs of poetry lines with devastating precision and profoundness which can be exemplified as the convergence of different cultural background and the artistic themes in common.”

You can see a lot of ideas floating in this paragraph – the irregular metaphors and the simple structure were definitely covered in class.  The Japanese Haiku wasn’t.  I’m not sure what she’s getting at with the “convergence of cultural background and artistic themes” line, at the end.   That sounds like a line she memorized for use on the Gao Kao, the big entrance exam everyone has to take.

 She quickly then jumps to Glaspell:

“Susan Glaspell’s Trifles thrilled me by the mastery of the symbolism in American Literature, which can be traced long ago as a cultural heritage created by Puritanism.  [Fascinating new insight for me!]   A catalog of trifles in the kitchen scenario defy the stereotypical roles of the Sheriff and the county attorney. They really undercut the masculinity that maybe is still an invisible force upon female thinking.  The dead canary and the broken cage, along with the knotted quilts show that women’s work is not a trifle, but an actual answer to the murder.  The visual effect from the text is the same as thrillers or adventure films that reveal injustice, oppression, and wars without any weapons from the men.

Great specifics!  (Although I’m still not quite sure what she’s talking about.)  She ends with a clarion’s call:

“If possible I want these two works to teach my students about the diversity and symbolism in American literature.  They are prophetic of walking history and man’s destiny.”

Wow!  Walking history and man’s destiny.  That’s something I never saw in either.  I’ll need to go back and reread them both.

Student #3:

“I choose Thoreau’s Walden and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie.

I like this opening.  Clear.  Direct.  I don’t feel as though I’m getting the remnants of past classes in a pastiche to show me what she already knows. (As reassurance, we just read excerpts from both.  Sister Carrie is 800 pages long.  We just read the chapter where Carrie leaves behind her small Midwestern village to go to the big city.  We talked about how it was similar to the migration that current Chinese rural people take to work in factories now a days.  But I digress…)

“First Walden is the representative of Transcendentalism, and it shows us the beauty of Nature, the simplicity of life, and the calmness of mentality.  Thoreau’s life and experiences also show us the power of individuals, and he urges people to pursue a simple life.  This idea is helpful in modern times, and it represents the idealism of the time.”

Good, clear, accurate.  No bullsh#t.

“Secondly, “Sister Carrie” is about industrialized life, and it is like “Walden.”  It shows us that individuals may become corrupt and choose the wrong path in a changing society.  The power of individuals is defeated.  Life is hard, and it suppresses people.  People become anxious, and their pursuit of happiness is difficult to pursue.  Their future is controlled by other forces.  We can also find today’s scenes in the novel.  In China, many young people are migrating to cities and forgetting their families, like Carrie.  I think my students would enjoy seeing a comparison between the US and China.  This makes us reconsider the development of cities and its effect on the development of modern human psychology.”

Very nice details, and a nice return to the actual question –how would you teach your students?

She concludes:

“Walden” and “Sister Carrie” are a great comparisons:  nature and industry, calm and anxious, simple and luxurious, naïve and sophisticated.  Through these two works we can see the diversity and many possibilities in American literature.”

Great answer.

Although, at this point,  the student worries that she may not have written enough, so we continue the comparison on the next page:

“Walden stands for idealism while Sister Carrie stands for reality.  Walden is a collection of essays, Sister Carrie is a novel.  This will show that different forms exist in American Literature.  Finally, we can see American people’s different mentality from the two works.  For example, Nature in Walden is fair and helps people to calm down and find themselves (their true selves), but Nature in Carrie is the big environment that shapes people and changes according to people’s mental situation.  (When Carrie is depressed, the sky is gray and the wind is cold.)  City life in overwhelming, something you escape from.  City Life in “Sister Carrie” is where dreams start, but then disappear and are not realism.  It condemns capitalism.  Cities are dangerous.  Two same concepts have different demonstrations in these two works, and it is very thought-provoking.”

Good.  I think she has two good works, and she has shown me that she has mastery over them…. Except, she’s on a roll, and keeps going --

“Lastly, they are written in different ages.  From their background the students will learn about the development and history of America. We can draw different pictures in our head and imagine.”

Good point, and very true.

And yet there is more!

“To sum up, I choose “Walden” and “Sister Carrie” because Thoreau and Dreiser represent different literary movements, different historical backgrounds, different ideas, but they are samely great and leave us much to reconsider and imagine.  By reading their works we can know better about the diversity, possibility philosophy and charm of American Literature.  I therefore choose “Walden” and “Sister Carrie.”  Class is over!  Thanks for listening!

No one can accuse her of not answering the question or concluding decisively!

*                   *                *

Other pairings that students offered include: 

•   "Birthmark," by Hawthorne, and Sister Carrie – to show the different treatment of women; 
• Declaration of Independence and Walden – to show the theory of the new country pursuing happiness, and then someone who actually did it; 
• "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Raven," because one is a story and the other is a poem….(yeah, this essay was as thin as that sentence implies!) 

It’s always interesting to see what our students learn during our 16 weeks with them.  I get to teach this group next term for Selected Writings.  Maybe we’ll work on exam essay writing.  I don’t think that it is something that they have had a lot of time to practice.

My home office where I graded these gems.