Invisible Man Part I: July 23rd Meeting.

This meeting went very well, even in the face of dental emergencies and enraged food service personnel.  We started things off by reminding ourselves of the goal for the next few meetings, which is to move beyond simply observing and pointing out themes and motifs in a piece of literature and begin making assertions about them.  What is the book revealing about these themes?  How do these motifs connect to some deeper source of meaning?  I noted that this is particularly important with Invisible Man, as the book is dense and filled with things that would seem insignificant or even totally unnecessary without a larger context of meaning in place to illuminate them.

From there we shared our first impressions of the book, and it was clear that the students had much more of a reaction to this book than Invisible Cities, or at least they were better able to articulate what struck them most.  One student commented on the "density" of the book, and when asked what it was that gave her that impression, she replied very shrewdly that she (as a typical reader) was expecting a fairly linear story about race relations and instead was confronted with a very complicated and ambivalent individual facing a huge array of characters with layers of deception and motivation.  Others replied that they really responded to the way in which Ellison blows up and exaggerates some of the more grotesque aspects of the story; Ellison plays on the line of "reality" and absurdity, and many found that interesting rather than grating. 

While sharing quotes, we found that the themes of "blindness" and the nature of perception were on a lot of the students' minds.  Some students mentioned the veil imagery, which gave us a brief opportunity to discuss historical figures such as W.E.B. Dubois and his metaphor of the veil and double consciousness, as well as Booker T. Washington in relation to the College.  One student made the brilliant observation that there are unique power relationships in the novel: often power is polarized between to sources (like Mr. Norton and Bledsoe) which feed each other but secretly rely on deception to keep the power relationship in place.  I noted that there is sometimes a third agent (i.e. Lucius Brockway) who serves the power relationship by keeping the pressure under control from underground (literary and figuratively).  We did not have a chance to think this through and connect it to the Invisible Man's own situation at the beginning of the book, underground and siphoning off power from the major power company.  But I did pose the question that haunts the end of the book: what do we do in the face of deep and ingrained cultural corruption that we can not control?  Do we hide underground or do we face it?

In this vein, one student mentioned the ironic inversion of what is crazy as opposed sane, and how often the book is so astute at revealing the insanity of cultural compliance, the insistence on stereotyping and self-enslavement.  Someone then brought up the great comic moment when the Invisible Man is trying to throw out Mary's black-face coin bank, only to have people tell him repeatedly to pick it up.   In a related sense, the letters in the Invisible Man's briefcase -- as well as the endless letters and pieces of paper in his dream -- are a symbol of a constant deferral of one's hopes.  Stereotypes are thrown back at you, and your hopes (the Golden Day of achievement) are endlessly deferred.

Next time we get together, we are going to take a moment to look at the language of some of the speeches and dreams.  We tried to hone in on some of the parts of the book that no one wanted to think about, namely Trueblood's dream and situation.  Take another look at that scene and see if you can come to the meeting with an idea or two about how this episode sits in the greater context of the book.

Our next meeting is planned for Monday, August 6th at 10:15.  I know that Mr. Kearns is running his History meeting earlier in the day, and I'm sorry if you'll be experiencing AP fatigue.  I'll let you know of any changes.  The standard quotation response journal will be due on that day for chapts. sixteen to the end.  Ten quotations.  Thanks, Mr. Telles.

July 9th, Invisible Cities.

We started this meeting by sharing some first impressions of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, moved on to discuss our goals for the summer, and then started to try to establish some essential conflicts that are present in the "novel," if we can call it that.  It would be best here to start with repeating our goals:

a) we will practice the skill of connecting the parts of work of literature to what we determine to be its whole.  By "parts," I mean both discreet elements such as language from passages and plot details, but also elements such as tone, shifts in tone, the structure of the literature, literary and rhetorical devices, and any other significant element of the language.  By "whole," I mean that you must have a sense of what the whole piece of literature is concerned with, what the literature is revealing to you, or what really matters at the core of the piece.  Ultimately, you should be able to identify the parts of a piece of literature and demonstrate how they contribute to the essence of the whole.

b) we will practice moving beyond the stage of observing (I see this in the literature, I see that in the literature) and pushing ourselves to make a bold assertion about what all these details are leading to.  Try doing this in your quotation response journals.  Basically, we are going to practice moving from pointing out parts to establishing the whole.

One of the students asked a very sharp question yesterday: she was wondering what is ultimately the difference between AP Lit and AP Language as far as what is expected as an outcome -- in an essay, for instance.  In general, this comes down to what your bold assertion (or thesis) will look like.  In AP Language students will often read speeches, memoirs, researched arguments etc., and explore the rhetorical strategies used by the authors to make a point or argument.  In AP Lit, you will often be dealing with a work of literature that does not necessarily have an argument, but drops you on the doorstep of a deep and insoluble human conflict.  Your assertion, therefore, will identify the conflict and communicate why it is deep, meaningful and significant, but it will not try to simplify and solve the problem.  The AP exam wants you to explore the complexity of the problem.

** Invisible Cities**

First impressions of this book were mixed.  Some of the students enjoyed its meditative quality and seemed to be interested in the book's freedom from narrative conventions.  Some really enjoyed the vividness of the details of each city.  One student found the book's repetitions and apparent contradictions frustrating and not particularly illuminating, and another found the individual descriptions of the cities to be too short for the reader to become absorbed in anything.  Another really enjoyed the dialogue between Polo and Khan the best.

I next asked the class to try to decide, in pairs, what fundamental conflict or problematic idea haunts the book.  One pair decided that there seemed to be a conflict between practicality and purpose on one hand (Khan) and a total absorption in details on the other (Polo).  One group noted a conflict between memory and language, with language often warping or obliterating memory.  One student noted that the prospect of unlimited creativity and imaginative possibility is inherently destructive and needs boundaries.  Another student noted that there seemed to be a problem of "knowing": Khan has a drive to know as much as he can about his kingdom, and Polo runs in the opposite direction, collapsing what can be known through ambiguity and mystery.  Communication, as one student remarked, seems to be at the heart of all of these problems. 

After this we shared some quotes and thought briefly about how they may connect to these fundamental conflicts, although we did not have enough time to connect them in a very satisfying way.  Some great quotes were shared: the two part city in which the circus is its only permanent element, the city that is always pushing its waste somewhere else, the city of consumers who are constantly disposing of one thing for the next, and the beautiful final paragraph about suffering.

It was a great start over all, especially nailing down what's essential about the book and the course. 

*** For Next Meeting ***

The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 23rd on the first 15 Chapters of Invisible Man (by Ralph Ellison).  You will need to turn in a quotation response journal with ten quotations on that date.  There will be ten more for the second half. 

If you missed the meeting for Invisible Man, please respond to some of the ideas in this blog post with a minimum 250 word response in the comment section.  This needs to be done before the next meeting time.

Thanks for reading, Mr. Telles.