Reading REsponse Journals // Dystopian Literature Circles
Throughout the unit on dystopian literature, I asked my seniors to keep a reading response journal reflecting on their experience of reading their literature circle novels. The journal assignment was left open-ended; students were given a list of prompts but had the option to respond to them or write about something else that sparked their interest. I wanted to see how students naturally reacted to the texts without being told what to look for.
Georgie's JournalGeorgie is a diligent student. He attends class regularly and completes assignments. However, throughout the literature circles, I noticed him struggling to engage both with the text (Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) and with the rest of his group. In particular, I observed him becoming increasingly frustrated by several group members who did not follow directions and repeatedly were absent or came to class unprepared to discuss the novel. About halfway through the unit, Georgie came to me concerned about how the actions of the rest of his group would affect his grade.
In addition, he expressed a dissatisfaction with the book itself, citing a lack of explicit detail as an obstacle to him being able to envision the story. His journal entries (below) are revealing of the efferent stance which he seems to be taking toward the book. In Journal #5, Georgie writes, “No, I can’t see into the characters’ minds and hearts in my novel. The reason for this is that they’re sic personalities aren’t revealed to us and their past lives are vague. This leaves us guessing about each character’s true feelings and thoughts.” This shows that he is positioning himself as a reader whose job it is to “solve” the characters - that the answer to what is in the characters’ minds and hearts - their “true feelings and thoughts” - is pre-determined and fixed, rather than needing to be co-created through his interaction with the text. He states that he is left “guessing,” but does not share any of his guesses.
In Journal #6, Georgie discusses his inability to connect the society in the book to the real world due to what he sees as a lack of detail. “It seems to be impossible to take place in present day. The reason I say this is because the book is vague and about a religious oppressive country. There is very little detail but it’s stretched out into a book. In the past many countries were religiously oppressive. In the present there are very few religiously oppressive countries. If there was more information in this book that relates to the religious oppression I would probably be able to compare this book to a present day country that is oppressive such as Syria.”
It is worth noting that through Georgie’s insistence that he cannot make a connection to the real world he seems to be doing exactly that. Clearly, the book reminded him of things he has heard about Syria, due to the fact that he mentions the country. However, the fact that he remains detached from this connection and longs for the book to have “more information” echoes his previous entry’s sentiment of seeking an answer, rather than collaborating with the text to make meaning. It also suggests that his own reading of the world lacks the awareness of current societies that might be labeled "religiously oppressive" (of which there are, in fact, many). In this way, his word-reading is being influenced by a lack of world-reading. This raises questions of what makes a text relevant to a reader and whether or not a reader without personal experience that somehow resembles the one described in the text can connect with it on a personal level anyway. In Journal #10, Georgie responds negatively to the ending of the book. He is indignant that it is left open-ended, and he wants to know what “really happened.” He writes, “The book ends in a vague way and I want to know what happens to Offred after she leaves with the Eyes. Does she leave with them or does she run when she gets outside? What does Nick do after this? Where would the Eyes take her?” Georgie thus ends his journal with questions that show he has become more invested in the story. Nonetheless, he is either unable or unwilling to imagine answers to these questions for himself, which leaves him dissatisfied with the overall reading event.
Multiple times throughout his journal, Georgie alludes to an inability to find a “right answer” in the book. Ultimately, this seems to be the difference between someone who “hates” the ending of a book, as Georgie claims to, and someone who is intrigued by it. The reader who hates the ending is likely to be frustrated by the experience of the book and thus less likely to choose to continue reading on his/her own than the reader who is intrigued. |
Leona's JournalCompared to Georgie's responses, Leona’s journal entries (below) reflect the aesthetic experience of “living the book” that people who read for pleasure often describe and that I am hoping to encourage in my students.
In Journal #3, Leona describes her literature circle book (Octavia Butler’s Kindred) as having good imagery and writes, “as I’m reading it’s like a movie playing in my head.” She repeats and elaborates on this feeling in Journal #7, when she states, “As I read the different chapters and sections I feel as though I’m actually watching a movie more than reading a book. I invision and actually plantation, with dirt rodes sic and old shacks, not too far away from a bigger but not huge house.”
In journal #10, Leona admits, “I had originally planned not to actually read the book and just use Sparknotes but after reading the first couple sentences I decided to read the first chapter and I fell in love. This book makes me feel warm and fuzzy yet anxious and scared.” It seems that Leona’s strong aesthetic reaction to Kindred has much to do with the book itself -- it is a good match for her. There is something about either the way the story is told or the content (or both) that seems to have captured her attention almost against her will.
Like Georgie, Leona has been successful in English class this year. She consistently attends and participates in class, and she completes assignments thoroughly and on time. She currently has an “A” average for the marking period and the year. Though the two students are similar in terms of achievement levels, Leona’s ability to visualize her text is different from Georgie’s experience with The Handmaid’s Tale. While Georgie is a conscientious student and completes reading that is assigned, it is Leona’s response to her book that makes me optimistic that she will choose to read in the future. It is possible that The Handmaid’s Tale was simply less readily accessible to Georgie or less directly relevant to his experience of the world than Kindred was to Leona’s. However, I wonder if there is a way to enable students to make the connections necessary to take an aesthetic stance toward texts that challenge them more. Since the ability to visualize the text seems to have played an integral role in Leona’s experience of her novel, I would like to explore what happens when students are explicitly asked to make visual representations of what they read. I intend to experiment with this approach with our upcoming reading of Sophocles’ Antigone. |