ELA 9: Introduction to Literature—Semester A

Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 1.01: Trust Us, We're Shmoop

We warned you about this.
(Source)

Imagine that you're walking down the street listening to the latest hit on your new Dre Beats, when a wildly bearded man—smelling none too fresh—sticks his face in yours and starts ranting about the end of the world, coming up in exactly three days.

Now, imagine that your school principal calls you and your classmates to an assembly, stands in front of you with the other teachers lined up behind her, and tells you very seriously that word has just come from the White House: the world is going to end in three days.

Who do you believe?

You believe the principal—at least, we assume you don't believe the crazy guy. The principal is trustworthy: she wears a nice business suit, she's speaking calmly, she has the support of the other teachers. When she tells you something, you listen.

Think of the crazy guy and the principal as two different narrators. They're both telling you the same thing, but you interpret it differently based on how you're getting the information. That "how" is the narrator. Fiction writers give us clues about a narrator—and whether or not this narrator should be considered reliable or not—through language, description, appearance, clothing, interactions with other characters—everything that a narrator says and does. Based on that information, we can make inferences about the rest of the story's elements, like other characters, plot, and themes.

Even third-person narrators can have personality, but we're going to make it more straightforward by starting you off with one of Raymond Carver's first-person narrators. We can't guarantee you're going to like the guy, but the beauty of Carver's writing is that by the end, you can't help feeling at least a little bit sorry for him.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.01a: "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver

In "Cathedral," a man helps a blind man "see" and learns a little about his own blindness in the process. Check it out for yourself—but since it's still in copyright, you're going to have to track down a copy for yourself. Try buying a Carver collection—it'll look awesome on your bookshelf, smartypants.

While you're at it, check out what Shmoop has to say about "Cathedral."

In a Nutshell

"Cathedral" is American writer and poet Raymond Carver's most famous story. It was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1981. A somewhat revised version is the last story in Carver's 1983 collection of the same name. We are relying on that version for this guide. Carver, often compared to Ernest Hemingway, is known for his bleak and stark portrayals of working-class people trapped in states of isolation.

On the surface, "Cathedral" is a story about a dissatisfied man whose encounter with his wife's blind friend teaches him new ways of seeing. Beneath the surface it's a story about three people who need each other badly, and manage to connect.

Critics and Carver himself see the story as a turning point in his writing because of its happy, hopeful ending. Kirk Nesset describes "Cathedral" as "a light note amid a tide of darker ones" (Source). In an interview, Carver said that "Cathedral," one of his favorite stories, "was very much an 'opening up' process for [him] […] in every sense. [It] was a larger, grander story than anything […] [he] had previously written" (Source).

Carver died at the age of fifty, in 1988, just a few years after publishing his short story collection Cathedral. His body of work isn't massive, but he did receive lots of recognition when he was alive. In 1983 he became the first winner of Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and in 1984 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Why Should I Care

Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" centers around two men, one blind and one who can see. When the sighted man tries to explain what a cathedral is like to the blind man, he finds that words fail him. Though both men speak English, one relies on vision to communicate, the other does not. It's as if they speak different languages.

Have you ever been in a situation where you met a person who didn't speak the same language as you, but you still needed to find a way to communicate? What did you do in that situation? Were you uninterested in finding a way to communicate? Or too shy? Or did you try to form a new way of communicating with hand gestures or drawing pictures?

That's basically what happens here. By being willing to try something new, the men open themselves up to an entirely new experience, a unique way of connecting with another person. This great experience serves as a sort of epiphany. Carver seems to be saying that when we open ourselves to new ways of connecting with others, and new ways of looking at the world, we can have hugely rewarding experiences.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.01b: Novel Matters

Let's talk narration. You might want to grab a snack for this one because narrators can be a little long-winded.

You know the type.

The narrator is the one who tells the story—kind of like a guide leading you through a text. Narrators can have a limited point-of-view, as with first-person narrators, or they can have total omniscience. Narrators can be unreliable or trustworthy. They can be close to the action or as far away as possible. It all depends.

First-Person Narration

When the story you're reading is from the point of view of a character in the novel (often the protagonist, you're reading first-person narration. First-person narrators make frequent use of the pronoun "I," because they're talking about themselves, or at the very least what's going on around them. This style of narration gives us insight into a character's thoughts and feelings. Lucky us.

First-person narration sounds nice and simple, right? We've got an "I" and he's doing some talking. Moving on. But there are actually a ton of different ways that first-person narration can play out. Examples? Oh, we've got those in spades:

• There's the interior monologue of the Underground Man in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground.
  
• There's the dramatic monologue of Jean-Baptiste in Albert Camus's The Fall.
  
• There's even the strange, plural first-person narration in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."
  
• Oh, and speaking of Faulkner, he had three (count 'em!) first-person narrators in The Sound and the Fury, who trade off telling their stories. Then he even tosses a third-person narrator our way at the end, just for kicks.

Faulkner was a sneaky guy, and he found his way around the limitations of first-person narration. But there are other tricks authors use, too, like, say, a peripheral narrator.

A peripheral narrator is a first-person narrator who's not the main character. She gets to give us the lowdown on the juicy dealings of the true protagonists and antagonists, all while watching from a safe distance. Think Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

But we can get even further removed than Nick, if we really want to. The narrator of Joseph Conrad's most famous novel, Heart of Darkness is telling us a story he heard from a guy named Marlow, who's telling the story of yet another guy named Kurtz. You might have heard of him. He dead.

It's also super important to remember that when a first person is narrating the story, they're somehow involved in the whole shebang. They're part of the action. They've got something at stake. Unfortunately, this means that they're not always the most trustworthy of folks. They're not always interested in full disclosure.

The first-person narrative style can open up a lot of doors for the author, but it slams some other doors right in his face. On the one hand, he can give the readers VIP access into his character's thoughts and feelings, which is just what we hungry readers are craving, right? But on the other hand, he can't just zoom out and suddenly see things going on in multiple places at once, like a third-person narrator (which we'll be talking about next) can.

Third-Person Narration

You'll find third-person narration in stories where a detached person—also known as someone who isn't directly involved in the action—tells you everything that goes down. A third-person narrator can sometimes be omniscient, when they have a bird's-eye-view of all the goings on. Or they can be limited, and stick closely to the perspectives of just one or two characters.

The bonus of having a third-person narrator is that we readers aren't trapped inside one character's head. We might gain access to the thoughts and feelings of other characters, and we might get to see what goes down in two different places at the same time. It's a nice dose of perspective that allows us to evaluate what's going on with as little bias as possible.

But there are drawbacks, too. For one thing, it can be tougher to sympathize with characters when an author is using third-person narration (particularly when it's omniscient), because the narration is so detached from what's going on in the hearts and minds of the folks on the ground. Hey, sometimes we want a little bias, arewerite?

Getting Fancy

You've already got the smartypants. Why not add the tweed jacket—and some more sophisticated styles of narration to your repertoire? Check out these deep cuts below.

Free Indirect Discourse

Free indirect discourse is a big clunky phrase that describes a special type of third-person narration that slips in and out of characters' consciousness. In other words, characters' thoughts, feelings, and words are filtered through the third-person narrator.

Here's an example from our analysis of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And yes, we're trying to make your head spin.

He strode homeward, conscious of an invisible grace pervading and making light his limbs. In spite of all he had done it. He had confessed and God had pardoned him. His soul was made fair and holy once more, holy and happy. It would be beautiful to die if God so willed. It was beautiful to live in grace a life of peace and virtue and forbearance with others.

(Source)

See what Joyce did there? The narrator is reporting the thoughts and dialogue of the character to us. It's almost as if he is the character, except he's still that third person. He just has a backstage pass to the character's soul. Bonus!

Stream of Consciousness

In literature, "stream of consciousness" refers to a style of narration in which a character's thoughts are thrown at us, one after the other, as if we were thinking those thoughts right along with them.

Pioneered by Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf, this narration gives the illusion that we're privy to a character's unedited, uncensored, and sometimes more than a little nonsensical, thoughts. After all, our own thoughts don't always make perfect sense, so why should a character's? The idea here is to represent as accurately as possible human consciousness. Talk about a tall order.

For some examples, check out our analysis of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying or James Joyce's epic Ulysses. (Oh, and good luck.)

Now that you know everything there is to know about narration, try it out for yourself.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.01a: From Snoring to Not-So-Boring

Ready to read the most boring thing you've ever read? And no, we're not talking tax laws.

Here you go:

He looked at the photograph, picked it up, and put it down again. Then he walked out of the room and closed the door. Immediately after, he opened the door again and looked back into the room. Then he left again and closed the door.

Major yawn.

Here's your task. Rewrite that paragraph from at least three different points of view. That's right—change the narrator.

Consider the following suggestions to get you started, but as always, feel free to get creative and come up with your own:

• A teenaged boy whose girlfriend just broke up with him
• The President of the United States
• Your grandpa
• A solider serving overseas
• Dr. Seuss

Remember, the task here is to keep the events—or plot—the same, but to change the writing style to reflect the narrator. So a photograph should be picked up and put down again, but how that happens is up to you.

Here's how Shmoop might rewrite our own super boring paragraph in the style of a man on his deathbed, and keeping the third-person narration:

He squinted his eyes at the photograph, lifted it from the desk, and eventually set it back where it came from. It was too much for him to bear; he turned painfully toward the door and shuffled away, pulling the door closed behind him. An instant later, he was gripped with panic, pulled open the door and glanced fearfully about the small space. Knowing there was nothing more he could do, he gently shook his head, and closed the door for good.

See what we mean? Now you give it a go.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.01b: Goof or Geezer?

Let's get back to the story at hand. Is the blind man in Carver's "Cathedral" a harmless old goof, a creepy old geezer...or a wise old sage?

We don't know for sure, since there's no objective third person narrator to clue us in. Instead, we have to go on a fact-finding mission to see how he's described, and come up with the answer ourselves.

In this activity, you'll find out how narrators can reveal information about themselves indirectly. Your job is to create a graphic organizer contrasting and comparing the narrator and the wife based on how they react to events in the story. We've started you off with two as an example:

In a word processing document, create a similar, two-columned chart, and then fill the rest in with both the narrator's and wife's responses and reactions to events in the story—your completed chart should have at least ten examples of reactions from the narrator and his wife. Once you're all charted out, submit below.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.01c: Analyze That

It's time to put all those specific examples to use in a real, live literary analysis. Yep—we're talking a literary analysis paragraph with text evidence. Since this is your first of ninth grade—hey, of high school—we'll start you off. Here goes: