E N G L I S H 1 0 4

Sandra Cisneros: The House on Mango Street
Don Delillo: White Noise
Tony Hoagland: What Narcissism Means to Me
Highly recommended: The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing or another writing handbook

The Course Texts:

All three of the texts for this course are, in one way or another, critical of turn-of-the-century American culture. You should recognize cultural “issues” related to such things as racial and gender inequality, environmental decay, and consumerism in all three books. Hopefully, the visibility of these issues (or “themes”) in the texts will help you to feel critically engaged in the reading process from the outset. All three books also have unique voices and personalities.

Set in urban Chicago, The House on Mango Street is narrated by a young Latina girl named Esperanza. Esperanza’s family and neighborhood are the central subjects of the book, which consists of a sequence of very short stories, or vignettes. There is a plot to the whole book, sort of: we see Esperanza, her family, and her friends go through some good times and bad times, and we see Esperanza mature. But the plot isn’t like a traditional novel or movie, where one main problem develops in a straightforward fashion, leading up to a climactic scene, in which the problem is resolved. Because each vignette shows us a different scene, the book’s main effect is to create the atmosphere of Mango Street, and to create a memorable voice in the character of Esperanza. The book’s author, Sandra Cisneros, does a remarkable job of creating this wise child; Esperanza is imaginative and playful, but also clear-sighted in a way that children can sometimes be—like many children, Esperanza seems to readily recognize when things aren’t fair, and this helps her to tell the story of her neighborhood with a keen, sharp eye.
What Narcissism Means to Me is a witty, pointed collection of poems by Tony Hoagland. Each poem has a life of its own, and the collection as a whole also builds a number of themes. Hoagland writes in the first person, so we are invited to think of the central voice of each poem as “Tony Hoagland,” though we have no way of knowing how auto-biographical any of the poems actually are (it’s not against the rules for poets to make up things, or, to “fictionalize”). Frequently, Hoagland presents his own character in an unflattering light—revealing selfishness and vanity as motivating factors in many of his important human decisions. Sometimes, when we read about Hoagland’s ethical failings, prejudices, and perversions, we cringe: “too much information!” we might say. Often, though, the poems can deliver a little jolt of personal recognition—we can see a version of ourselves in Hoagland. And, quite frequently, the poems are funny—in the way that he uses mundane observations to create humorous, pointed poems, Hoagland might be the Jerry Seinfeld of poets. Hoagland’s skillful self-representations help us to realize things about our culture, our nation, and our selves.
Don Delillo’s White Noise is widely regarded as one of the most significant novels of the late twentieth century. The book focuses on a single family, the Gladney family, and all of the action of the book is told by the father of the family, Jack Gladney. Before you start imagining the Brady Bunch, or some other traditional, American nuclear family, you should understand that the Gladney’s are a particularly non-traditional bunch. The four Gladney children are the product of multiple marriages by both Jack and his wife, Babette. More than that, though, all of the children and the adults of the Gladney family are, to say the least, quirky—neurotic might be a better word. Their phobias, their bad habits, and their bumbling efforts to do the right thing drive the main action of the book. However, their slightly dysfunctional routine is interrupted, right in the middle of the novel, by an environmental calamity: a toxic waste spill. The end result is a story of American strangeness—the Gladney’s are as oddly hilarious as tabloid television, but, at the same time, they represent some of the serious dilemmas of contemporary living.

Reading the Course Texts:

As you may already be able to sense, these readings will spark discussions about our own contemporary culture and our selves as individuals who help to create that culture by participating in it. Some quizzes and assignments will test your ability to formulate thought-provoking arguments about issues of gender, socio-economic status, environment, etc., as they relate to these texts. If you can successfully read texts on this level, and clearly articulate those readings, you’ll be able to earn a C or possibly a B in the course.

To earn a strong B or A in the course, though, you’ll need to gain a sense of how literary texts work. It’s definitely important to think about personal and cultural elements of meaning in literature, but the discipline of literary studies involves formal analysis. One of the key functions of this course is to introduce analysis by showing you how to isolate certain elements of a text and think about how they work with other elements to create a story’s or a poem’s main effects. This kind of learning represents the technical “tools of the trade” of literary study. Because each of you will be required to take an upper division literary course, these tools will be useful to you at least one more time, after this English 104 course, during your studies at Viterbo. More than that, though, the mental discipline of critical reading is useful in almost all courses of study. And many of the specific terms of literary study translate into other disciplines, as well: “Plot” and “Character” for instance, are crucial concepts to psychological and legal studies.

I highly recommend chapter 64, especially section c, of The St. Martin’s Handbook for its useful description of the process of “Reading and Writing about Literature.” The chapter offers many useful instructions and definitions of terms.

This list of terms represents some of the elements of literature that you’ll learn to recognize (you won’t need to master them—just gain a beginner’s sense of how they work).

Plot—the sequence of events or main action of a text, isolated from the characters and the setting of the text
Character—the physical, psychological, and ethical make-up of the people in the text, isolated from the main action and setting of the text
Setting—the natural and cultural surroundings of the text, isolated from the plot and characters
Point-of-view—where the story or poem is coming from, i.e., who is telling the story, and what influence on the story does their particular perspective have. All of our main texts come from a “First Person” point-of-view; in other words, one of the characters in the story is telling us what’s happening, using the first-person pronoun, “I”. In the case of White Noise, this “First Person Narrator” is a fictional creation of the book’s author. In both of the other books, the narrator is at least somewhat autobiographical. We’ll discuss the affect this slight distinction has on our reading of the books. Incidentally, none of these books are told from the “Third Person” point-of-view, in which a storytelling voice from outside the book’s plot tells the story using lots of third-person pronouns like “he,” “she,” and “it.”
Detail—literature is like painting, or film, in some ways. Though it uses words to tell its stories, it doesn’t explain those stories in a mundane fashion. Instead, it uses a heightened sense of immediate detail to try to create a sense that the action of the story is happening right as you’re reading it. Often, the best literary writers are the ones who can choose the most surprising, precise details of plot, setting, and character to really create the illusion of life on the page.
Image—image is closely related to detail. In a way, image is the poetic counterpart of detail. In poetry an image, a rose, a mountain meadow, or a man huddled under a tarp, on a street corner, can create a couple of effects. It can be symbolic of a feeling or an ethical principle, as a rose often symbolizes true love. It can also, in a way, stop time in a poem. A well-crafted image can be so startling that the mind of the reader remains occupied with it even after the poem is complete. So, images can be functioning parts of the overall effect of a piece of literature (that’s the image as symbol), and they can be shining literary moments all on their own.
Figurative language—as I mentioned, literature is often symbolic, and uses metaphors and similes for a variety of reasons. They can be used very simply, in descriptive writing, to create a momentary effect: “the fighter came at him like a whirlwind.” Here, the simile, “like a whirlwind” creates a figure for a boxer’s attack. Or, metaphors can be large, and established throughout a whiole text. For example, the repeated use of snake images, metaphors, and similes in Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen” helps create a religious metaphor; the story’s main character is tormented by clinical depression as if that syndrome were a kind of devil.
Tone—story tellers can be earnest, caring, ironic, or sarcastic. Often, their fluctuations of temperament can rest on subtle elements of writing—choosing “shower” to describe a rain instead of “storm,” for instance, creates a different mood and therefore a different expectation on the part of the reader. Particularly in texts with first person narrators, readers can learn a lot by paying close attention to tone.
Message (theme)—often, poems and stories make arguments on overt and subtle levels. Often, depending on what evidence you gather from the text, you can see a number of arguments, sometimes contradictory ones, being made in a text. Probably the classic example of “messages” or “arguments” in written texts are the parables of Jesus as they’re rendered by the various gospel writers. These brief stories contain moral, symbolic messages about how people should live. Often, these messages are simple and clear, but sometimes they’re debatable.

In addition to these terms, it’s important to establish a solid reading process. “Active Reading” is a way of describing the mindset of a good, critical reader. At all times, the active reader brings his or her own ideas, associations, and questions to the text, enabling him or her to see many possible ways that the text may have meaning. This may sound like an unfamiliar process to you. If you’re a heavy consumer of television, for instance, you may be used to the experience of viewing visual texts in a passive way, for entertainment purposes only. Or you may just be accustomed to the idea that reading is an automatic process—that words travel from the page, through your eyes, into your brain where they naturally trigger their simple, literal meanings. If that’s the case, then you may find the following outline of an active reading process useful. One disclaimer: the reading process can be very idiosyncratic. I mean, each individual reader can and should nurture his or her own process of reading—you should pay attention to what works best for you in terms of study times and places, and you should pay attention to how your brain is working when you read. When you feel yourself “tune out” from the reading, then you know you need to do something different to help you concentrate.

Here’s a general outline of a process of active reading.

Get comfortable but not too comfortable: find a space that seems studious, to you, an environment that’s pleasant but not distracting. Bring your tools, too: you’ll need a pen and notebook.
Once you’re all set, sit down and read for at least fifteen minutes without stopping. Often, the process of beginning to read gets interrupted (we all like to find ways to procrastinate, don’t we?), and it becomes more and more difficult just to get started. So, make sure that you’re ready to begin, and when you begin, make sure that you don’t get up for coffee, stop to make your grocery list, or decide to send some emails instead.
The first time you read a story or a novel, or a poem longer than two pages, make summary notes in the margins of your book. Summary notes are short phrases that announce important events in the text. These will help you, when you go back to look at the text in more detail. On page 35 of White Noise, for instance, an environmental hazard is introduced in the book; a school is evacuated due to noxious odor and eye irritation. This seemed like an important detail, to me, so I wrote, at the top of the page: “Environmental hazard: school evacuation.” As it turned out, environmental issues become one of the most significant themes in the novel, so my margin note helped me to track the progress of that theme. On your first reading, though, keep the notes brief, and only note things that seem really important—major plot events, events that show a new aspect of a character, or events that develop a main theme.
As you read, recognize some of the basic elements of the text: what’s the genre? is it a poem? a story? some combination of the two? who is telling the story? is it a character in the book? is he or she telling the story “straight,” or is there a slant to the way events are being described?
As you recognize these elements, try to anticipate the directions that the text is moving. Knowing what you know about how stories work (and we’ve all heard and read and watched lots of stories in our lives), what do you think is going to happen to these characters? If it’s a poem, what kind of images are being used? What’s the overall tone? Is there a story behind the poem, and what can you tell about it?
Think about the cultural context of the text: are there specific references to historical events? Does it seem influenced by the cultural details of a specific era, or geographical region?
Think about the text’s messages: is this writer trying to get something across to me? What seem to be the goals of this? Obviously, it’s art, so it has an element of beauty, fascination, or entertainment behind it, but is there also an element of persuasiveness? Is the text making any arguments, overt or subtle?
Also, think about the text’s form: White Noise is a straightforward novel, with chapters, continuing characters, etc., but The House on Mango Street uses a non-traditional form. What are the purposes behind the decisions these writers have made about how their texts will look? In particular, when we read poems, those choices will have a serious impact on how we perceive the work.
Once you’ve read the work through, thoroughly, think about the assignments for this course. What is your teacher (that’s me) asking you to do with your reading of the text? How do your responses and your preliminary notes relate to those assignments?
Do some writing about the book: in this class, the discussion group forums and the response essays will give you a chance to explore your thinking about your readings. I would also encourage you to keep a response journal, where you can write down your more extended ideas about the texts. These preliminary writings will help you to articulate the things that you sense and feel about the books.
If you like, read some book reviews. Hearing other writers’ takes on a book may help you to see your responses in a context. Make sure, though, that you don’t plagiarize from these sources when you write your own essays. It’s fine to use material from other texts in your writing, but, as you know from English 103, it’s imperative that you cite those sources correctly, using MLA style.