Storytelling: Fictional Narratives, Imaginary People, and the Reader's Real Life

Strategies and Activities

The reading pace of the novel is, I believe, critical to guiding students and keeping them engaged. I generally expect my students to read at least 25 pages a night, but a text this dense requires a bit more time. There are important moments that students need to read about prior to one class period and there are others that necessitate a bit of time and space between them. My chapter-chunking suggestions for a class that meets every other day are as follows: 1; 2-3; 4-7; 8-9; 10-12; 13-15; 16-18; 19; 20-23; 24-25; 26-28.

Teachers have developed many different methods for checking that students have read and tried to understand the text. While many upper-level teachers check text annotations, I ask students to create a reader's journal. For the journal, students must pull a designated number of quotations from the chapters assigned and respond to them. The quotations that they choose should illuminate some significant element: plot development, symbol, characterization, motif/theme, writing technique/style, etc. They are reminded that their responses are NOT a summary or paraphrase but an explication of meaning. Below is the example that I give to my students:

• QUOTE: "The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stocking awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too." (7)
• RESPONSE: The string of clauses at the beginning of this long sentence reinforces the idea that anything can trigger a painful flashback to the plantation where Sethe was a slave; the length of the sentence also shows how her present life is inextricably linked to her past. The repetition of the word "rolling" seems to emphasize how unstoppable a force memory is—like a bulldozer. There's also obvious irony in the name "Sweet Home;" while it was beautiful, just the memory of the sight causes her pain and invokes an allusion to hell. While most people think of "home sweet home" as a tired but accurate cliché, this is obviously an example of harsh discrepancy between naming and reality, an important theme. I wonder what other elements in the novel are not what they seem?

I have tried to embed analytical modeling in the previous pages as a primary strategy of working through the text. In addition, however, small group work can be extremely effective in working through multiple chapters, improving comprehension, and encouraging students to think independently about interpretation and analysis.

Below are questions that students address in small groups regarding chapter one. The questions are a mix of comprehension and interpretation, and students must provide evidence for all of their answers, which requires them to interact closely with the text.

1. Who took the iron from Sethe's eyes? How is that character associated with the tree on her back?
2. What makes Sethe choose Halle over the other Sweet Home men?
3. What does the passage on p. 14 add to Sethe's characterization? From whose perspective is it?
4. What does the audience learn about the ghost in this chapter, and what is each person's relationship to the ghost (Sethe, Denver, Paul D)?
5. How does Denver feel when meeting Paul D? What makes her feel this way? Interpret the following: "Denver burst in from the keeping room, terror in her eyes, a vague smile on her lips" (21).

In order to have students thinking about the structure and literary qualities of the novel from the beginning, I also assign each small group a writing style and a theme, motif, or symbol to trace within the chapter. The students must provide two examples of each, think about its significance, and present it to the class. The pairings I have are: nature and flashback; iron and stream of consciousness; bestiality and repetition; home and Gothic Romanticism; memory and magical realism (bildungsroman isn't evident yet).

Another useful activity that requires students to think critically is to have them create their own questions. This works best when you can divide the class in half and then put each half into small groups of 3-4. Side A will create questions for chapters 11-12 and side B will create questions for chapters 13-14. Once they have crafted their questions, they must switch and answer the questions created by the other half. This also cleverly serves to have students review a large section of text because they must think carefully during both parts of the activity. In order to ensure the students are creating quality questions, I assess the questions and not the answers, though they count for participation. Also, I have found that giving the students question stems/verbs based on Howard Bloom's taxonomy of higher order thinking skills leads them to create stronger questions. Students must create five questions; two may be comprehension (knowledge or comprehension in Bloom's language) and three should be interpretation or analysis (analysis, synthesis, or evaluation).

Finally, one of the most useful activities is the timeline. This is best done after chapter 18, at the end of part I. I made some changes for my own classes, but the original idea comes from Teachit, a copyright-protected website originally created for British teachers, but which has many valuable resources for the literature classroom. I strongly encourage teachers to visit the website (www.teachit.co.uk) and evaluate the materials for themselves.