Sunday 10 March 2024

Symbolism, structure and chat

It is that annual time of year where I teach Question 3, the structure question, to students. The more I teach this question, the more I think we need to work more on symbolism in English. And, to an extent teach them the background knowledge to identify those symbols. Symbolism is what we think we do a lot in lessons. We look at poems and explore the symbols through similes, metaphors and personification in them. Yet, when we take out metaphorical language, students find it really hard to spot and discuss them. 


Every play studied has lots of symbolism embedded in it yet symbolism tends to be isolated to the language. A character giving a soliloquy on stage on their own is a symbol of isolation. A scene set inside can be a symbol of secrecy and a lack of transparency. A scene set at night symbolises something bad, sinister or that something is ending. An Inspector Calls being set at night is symbolic. It is all leading to a new ‘dawn’. There’s a reason it is set at night. The end of the old ideology.   


The problem we have is that students can’t get their head around the idea that symbolism is often not linguistic or figurative. It is structural. I think over the years we have become too focused on identifying techniques to the point that we have missed something powerful within our subject. The meaning around all choices a writer makes.  Over time, we have subconsciously created a hierarchy around choices that sensible choices around structure, positioning or content are neglected for something with a name. Something easily nameable. Something easily tested. Something easily taught. In fairness, something that is easily explained, but not something that is easily explored. 


Symbolism is fuzzy. In one context, an object can symbolise and then in another it can symbolise something completely different. Take the colour red. It can symbolise paradoxically positive and negative things. It can represent love and passion, but also it can symbolise death and danger. Our job is to help students see that duality and how it fits in the context of things at the moment. 


The reason Question 3 is such a difficult question is that you cannot explain it fully, because it is a question about exploring. It is why we see so many people tripping up on it. Let’s teach them about cyclic structures because we can explain that. That generates lots of students explaining a cyclic but not of them explore it.  


Let’s have a look at things in one of the past papers. The following images are from the ‘Labyrinth’ paper. 

The bottle of water is often skipped when students read this paper. However, structurally the bottle symbolises so much about the character. Water is a symbol of life. Here we see that character’s full potential and her hope at the beginning. At the end of the extract, we see how that hope and potential is running and at risk. One last drop represents her one last hope that she has in the situation. Yes, there is a cyclic structure, but in terms of storytelling there is so much going on here. The bottle is a symbol of her hope. The story is structured around her lack of hope or the slow dwindling hope she had. 


We can take that further in looking at other things described. 



Each one connects to the character’s personal journey. Usually students focus on the reader and how the reader feels, when actually they’ve missed the character and forgotten about the reader’s interaction with the character. The images above are all about lots of big things. They symbolise how things are against Alice. She is looking for something small and the odds are stacked against her. The plane is a symbol of her imminent journey home. The mountain is a symbol of the challenge before her. The flowers are a symbol of her but also her hope: small, delicate and time-sensitive. The boulders are a symbol of another obstacle, like the mountain, that is in her way. 


Then, we can see how the whole thing is put together. She starts with optimism, but that is slowly dwindling as the story progresses. 


That exploration is really important, but we aren’t allowing students to do it enough. Here is another example I used with students. This goes alongside the ‘Silk Factory’ paper. Here what is interesting is the use of domestic imagery and symbolism. It is used in the story to convey a sense of safety. We have repeated references to domesticity which provides us with comfort and a level of expectation. That is contrasted with the dangerous elements in the garden. 




I think we need to get exploration back into the classroom. We’ve become too obsessed with explaining that we’ve got ourselves in knots over it. Look at how our analysis has become knotted with paragraph structures. PEEL. PEE. PEETAL. What/How/ Why. Our discussion in the lessons has placed emphasis on the concrete. What technique does the writer use? Why has the writer used it? We’ve moved away from abstract thinking and that’s where symbolism comes in. You can teach explanations, but the student independently explores in English - with a little direction from the teacher. 


Building confidence in exploration starts with talking. Getting students to talk about images amongst themselves and exploring what they could mean is paramount. That talk gives them experience and confidence. The melting pot of ideas. Here’s a little discussion sheet I have created for Year 10 as we explore this question.




It isn’t a writing frame, but a discussion tool for them to articulate what they notice about images, symbolism and storytelling. It isn’t  perfect. It isn’t definitive. But, it is something to latch ideas onto. Let’s take a break from explaining and let’s open our lessons to exploring. 




Thanks for reading, 


Xris 


Sunday 18 February 2024

Being precise around the writer’s intention

One of the biggest areas for English teachers is the ‘why’ aspect of analysis. Why does the writer do this? Over the years, we have seen paragraph structures to address this and we even seen lists of verbs to address this issue. The problem is that whatever way we approach things we are using a pneumatic drill to open a flower. Things are usually more subtle, nuanced and complex than seems on appearance. Take the verb ‘challenges’. Yes, Dickens does challenge quite a few things in ‘A Christmas Carol’, but a word like challenge is such a blunt word to describe a complex situation. 


‘A Christmas Carol’ was written to be sold as a book. The people who could afford it would be rich. The book was in a funny place. If it insults or attacks (or overtly challenges) the rich, then not many people would buy it. Therefore, the book doesn’t attack the rich in general. If we are honest, the book is designed to provoke emotions in the Victorian reader to feel good about themselves when they are kinder and charitable towards other people. If we look at the book, it isn’t ‘anti-rich’. Scrooge at the end of the story doesn’t stop being rich. He stays rich, but shares some of his money, time and company with others. So, in effect, the book is flattering the rich who behave like this, but at the same time subtly guilt tripping those that don’t behave like this. We often place a lot of effort on the redemption arc of Scrooge when, in fact, Scrooge represents varying parts of the readership. Of course, we boil this down to a simple soundbite like: Dickens challenges how the rich treated the poor. 


When we look at analysis of texts, there are four main areas of inferences we make: 

  • Character inferences - Scrooge feels X

  • Reader inferences  - The reader feels X towards Y 

  • Writer’s inferences  - The writer wants to X

  • Context inferences  - The attitude to Y at that time was X 


Of course, there are loads more, but these are the general ones that students need some understanding to write a decent analysis paragraph. Character inferences are often the easiest for students because that skill is very much what they have done their whole life: reading tone and body language to work out what a person thinks or feels. The other three areas are the tricky ones.They are the ones that, often or not, we provide set statements /facts to form those inferences. Or, we provide them with words or phrases that imitates the act of making an inference. Throw in the word ‘challenge’ and you get something that sounds like a student making an inference around the writer’s intention. 


So, how do we get students better at making inferences around the writer and his /her intentions? Well, for a start, we move away from presenting the writer’s intention ideas as fact and as something to be taught rather than found. All inferences around a writer’s thoughts and feelings are guesswork and conjecture. The best ones are rationalised inferences based on several points in the text. This is where I think we have a large problem. We expect students to be able to find and explore a writer’s thoughts and feelings in non-fiction texts, yet in Literature texts we expect the opposite. Let me tell you what Shakespeare is thinking here. Things are disjointed. We tell students a writer’s attitude towards themes, ideas, people and characters in a novel or play yet in non-fiction we are frustrated when students can’t find these inferences themselves. 


The key thing then is our relationship with a text. Yes, exams have warped the curriculum, but so too have we to the extent that the text is secondary to the learning process. We teach the plot, characters, quotations and techniques and yet the key thing in all this is the text. The vehicle for the ideas. We need students to get better at finding those inferences themselves and that involves them exploring texts better. 



Recently, I’ve been studying ‘A Christmas Carol’ with a Year 10 class. We had finished reading the text and were pulling things together. Together, we looked at the character of Bob Cratchit and I gave the class the following table:



The result was a heated debate about whether Dickens likes or dislikes Bob Cratchit. Some were saying that Dickens likes his ability to be happy in the face of adversity. Others said that Dickens dislikes how much a pushover he is. A few said he was too good to be true that they thought Dickens was taking the mick with him. All comments, however, were grounded with evidence in the text. Then, we related it to the context. Why should Dickens be taking the mick out of him at that time? 


We repeated this again with several characters including Scrooge, Mrs Dilbur, Tiny Tim and so on. Each discussion built up ideas about the writer and what he was intending to do. Students were making comments about how Dickens likes Mrs Dilbur’s strength and ability to survive but dislikes her lack of respect to the dead. From it, students were exploring in detail what the writer is doing and why he is doing it. A character’s behaviour and background were separated because Dickens liked one and not the other and so on.  

We need to help students co-construct a mental image of the writer when reading. We present writers as behemoths when they are thinking and feeling people (regardless if they are alive or not). In most, analysis structures the writer’s thoughts and feelings are an afterthought. They are the last E in PEE. They are the Why in the ‘What How Why’. And, if we are honest, they are the last thought when it comes to explanations. 


It is almost like we need to treat the writer like we treat characters in a story. In the same way we co-construct inferences around a character in a story, such as Scrooge’s redemption, we need to do the same for the writer. What is the writer’s arc across the text? You only get to that by talking about the writer throughout the reading and through exploring what the writer thinks or feels. There needs to be an ongoing lesson narrative around this co-construction of the writer’s views and perspective. Working together to build that understanding. 


If we want students to get better about talking about the writer’s intention, we need to start at the beginning and focus on helping students make inferences about the writer from the start. Who does Dickens like on page 1? How do you know?  


Thanks for reading, 


Xris