The Human Condition
English 1301 (Freshman Composition 1) and Humanities 1301 (Introduction to Humanities)
Honors
Team-taught with Paula Lay (Fall 2007) and Samantha Lay (Fall 2008)
Gordon K. Lee
Portfolio
Faculty Learning Community
Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008
Table of Contents
Reflection Statement
3
Course Syllabus
6
Practice 1: Viewing Art: Thinking about Art for the Non-artist, or Art for Dummies
15
Practice 2: Viewing Film: Through the Lens to Meaning (Man of La Mancha): Using Plato to
View a Film
17
Practice 3: Reading a Novel: James Welch’s Winter in the Blood: How to Kill a Culture, or
Thinking Like a Marxist
20
Introduction—My Thoughts on Critical Thinking in the Classroom
My approach to teaching has long involved using the principles of critical thinking, even before I
had the vocabulary for my primary objectives of what I wanted students to get out of my classes.
My approach to teaching composition, literature, and humanities has been to help students
understand themselves better in relation to the social, cultural, political, and economic forces
acting upon them; by understanding these forces, students will become empowered to be selfdetermining in ways that they could not without the recognition of these environmental forces.
My goal has been to help students read, see, listen to themselves in the literature they read, the
paintings and sculpture they look at, the films they watch, the music they listen to. To this end, I
have attempted to find ways of getting the students to talk about the material rather than my
doing the talking. To facilitate these student discussions, I depend heavily on asking questions
so that the students will be arriving at conclusions on their own rather than my telling them what
they should think about material.
To accomplish this goal of having students recognize for themselves those forces that shape their
world, I have begun using a “lens,” another work through which to view the course material. In
literature courses, composition courses, and The Human Condition, I have used Plato’s “The
Allegory of the Cave” and various sociological pieces giving students the apparatus to examine
gender identity construction. In The Human Condition, in addition to Plato and gender identity
selections, I have also used various creation myths, Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto,
and “Existentialism” by Jean-Paul Sartre. I have, on occasion used Sartre’s essay in composition
and literature, but the results were less positive because some students are unable to get past
“there is no God” to get to the tools that Sartre gives us for examining personal responsibility for
our choices. These lenses give the students a tool for looking at the art, thus a means of
examining the medium without feeling that they are not literary critics, art critics, film critics.
The lens enables them to analyze, one of the higher orders of thinking, without having been
trained particularly in examining the medium. On the surface, writing assignments look
complicated: How does Plato’s allegory inform your understanding the Kafka’s “The
Metamorphosis,” for instance. Some students are intimidated by this assignment, obviously
something I need to work on. I have found, however, that most students become much better at
analyzing material because the lens provides context and point of view, two difficult areas for
novice thinkers.
This technique requires students to abstract the information in the work of art, thus looking at the
material at a level beyond the literal. They can now generalize about the material to reach
conclusions about the human condition itself. Toni Cade Bambara’s story “The Lesson” is no
longer just a story about adolescents leaving the ghetto to visit an expensive toy store; it is the
story of all adolescents’ limitations and the danger of presuming that the world they know is
reality because they cannot see beyond their own block. Plato and Marx help students recognize
not just the limitations of the way the adolescents define their world, but it helps them
understand the way we are easily hoodwinked into propping up the power structure that
subjugates us without our even realizing we are being subjugated. Until we can identify the
social, economic, political, and gender markers, we are as much victims of the power structure as
the adolescents in Bambara’s story.
One of the assignments I use to get students started in Introduction to Humanities and The
Human Condition is an examination of several paintings, applying three levels of thinking:
description, interpretation, and evaluation. (See Practice One.) While this practice does not use
one of the lenses (generally, I will not have introduced a lens at this point), it does give students
practice using various orders of thought, according to Bloom’s hierarchy, description being the
lowest order and analysis and evaluation among the higher orders. I have been using something
like this practice for about twelve years, and I have found that students almost always find it both
engaging and empowering. Typically, student responses suggest elation: “I never liked art
before”; “I didn’t know that I could analyze a work of art”; “I will never be able to look at a
painting the same!”
Students have similar reactions after watching a film. One of my favorite nicknames, given by a
student, is The Movie Assassin. Sometimes students complain that they can no longer just watch
a movie but have to analyze it. Critical thinkers malgre lui! An essential part of presenting a
film in class is making sure the students have a handout, a teaching strategy I learned from Dale
Adams, a strategy that reinforces that watching a film is an intellectual exercise, not a day off
when the instructor did not know what else to do. These handouts, though they may contain
some historical or contextual or technical information, are largely comprised of questions that
focus on the essential concepts of the unit the film applies to. These questions require the
students to apply the concepts we have been discussing in class to the film, showing that these
concepts have broad application and that films are not just entertainment; like serious literature,
the value of the film is in the student’s ability to abstract the ideas from the specific. For
instance, in The Human Condition, the first film we show is The Man of La Mancha, which sets
up a debate regarding Plato’s concept of reality: which is more real, the life of the mind and
ideals or the life of the biological organism, the physical? (See Practice 2.) After having
examined fiction, poetry, and drama in relation to Plato’s allegory, watching the film in those
terms prepares the students to begin working on their seminar paper, which will generally be the
examination of a work of literature, of a film, or of an artist, and apply the elements of Plato’s
allegory on their own. In addition to watching the film in terms of the concepts of the unit we are
just completing, we choose the films also on the basis of setting up the next unit, to get the
students to begin thinking of the next set of concepts. For instance, with Man of La Mancha, I
also introduce elements related to creation myths, our second major unit of the fall semester. In
addition to watching the film in relation to Plato’s allegory, which students are already familiar
with, they will also be introduced to some of the religious arguments that will shape the next
unit.
Beginning the semester with Plato gives us a tool to examine the other issues that the class will
tackle in terms of “what is real?” the question that provides the primary focus for the
examination of material in relation to Plato’s allegory. From this point, we examine the role of
religion (where did we come from?) from the standpoint of creation myths and the social,
economic, and political divides (what divides us?), using Marx’s Manifesto. This idea extends
into the second semester where we explore gender identity construction (who are we?), using
William Pollack and Naomi Wolf as lenses to examine male and female identity construction;
faith (what do we believe?), using Sartre’s “Existentialism” as a lens; and values (how does one
live authentically?), which is the only unit for which we have no explicit lens, but we ask
students to consider all of the lenses that have been included. Structurally, the two-semester
sequence challenges much that students have brought to class (belief, faith, values, and
tradition), then ends with the recognition of the importance to have faith, values, belief. This
process should lead students to a recognition of the way their actions demonstrate what they truly
believe, not just what they profess. Ideally, their values will now be earned rather than received.
Socratic dialogue is the primary method of exploring these issues. Essential to the success of
each class session is the framing of several questions that help get to the heart of the material to
help the students begin to recognize general principles, not just specific details. This ability to
abstract ideas is, in my mind, the heart of critical thinking, being able to move from the specific
to the general and to reach conclusions based on that abstraction. Whether Gregor Samsa does
or does not turn into a giant insect is of itself little consequence; Gregor is a fictional character
who appears to have a rather unique malady. However, once students recognize that Gregor is
an Everyman, Kafka’s story takes on new and relevant meaning: What can we do to keep our
insect selves from dominating our human selves? What are the forces that lead to the dominance
of the insect self and the loss of our humanity? How does Plato’s allegory help us understand the
forces operating on Gregor? In relation to Plato’s allegory, students need to consider what
correspondences are operating within Kafka’s story: What are the shadows? Who are the
puppeteers? What forces keep the prisoners chained in the cave? Are any characters within the
story enlightened? What evidence can we find in the story? What are the implications if there
are no enlightened characters? This process leads students from the specific (Gregor Samsa
awoke one morning to discover he was an insect) to the general: what are the social, political,
and economic forces that threaten each of us to lose our humanity and to become insects? What
can we do to prevent the manifestation of our insect selves?
Coming up with these essential questions is part of what makes Socratic questioning difficult.
One never knows which direction the class discussion will go. One must recognize when the
direction has value or meaning and when it is not relevant. This style of teaching, therefore, has
a great deal of risk because it requires the instructor to give up control of the classroom.
However, this absence of control also has its rewards because this environment has continual
surprises that energize the teaching as well. While we want students to discover underlying
principles and not focus on specifics, we must also keep bringing the students back to the text to
identify evidence for their conclusions. This process becomes a reminder that we are examining
ideas, not individual belief systems of class members. This process also helps us help students
recognize the assumptions they are working with. If students approach every problem from a
single point of view (Christianity, for instance), we challenge students to identify inconsistencies
in their point of view so that they can begin to consider the value of multiple points of views. In
addition to recognizing their own points of view and assumptions, they should also be able to
recognize the points of view and underlying assumptions of others, including the instructors’.
In addition to Paul and Elder’s elements of reasoning, Bloom’s taxonomy also helps me define
the kinds of questions I need to ask. While my introduction to different types of criticism
(Practice 1) is a good start, I have also been working on asking the higher order questions as
defined by Bloom’s taxonomy, the areas of interpretation, evaluation, and synthesis being the
focus. Based on the elements of thought and Bloom’s taxonomy, students learn to provide
evidence for their opinions.
Construction of knowledge:
The goal of helping students become better critical thinkers is so that they themselves become
participants in the construction of knowledge. This participation in the construction of
knowledge is the essence of “thinking like a ___________,” whose essence is participating in the
development of knowledge in the particular discipline. This point is the one at which students
should recognize that the instructor is a participant more than an authority in the discipline, a
mentor rather than a sage, and that they themselves are viable contributors to this body of
understanding. This process may be more apparent in humanities courses than in science
courses, courses that demand a solid knowledge base before one becomes a participant in the
construction of knowledge. We can all read a story or a poem; we can all watch a film; we can
all look at a painting. The construction of knowledge begins when we discover new ideas, which
includes a new way to read a story, for instance, arriving at an insight that no one else has had,
one of the real pleasures of teaching literature because students help me discover new insights,
making me a better reader, a better participant in the construction of knowledge.
This stage of intellectual development, the stage at which one becomes a participant in the
construction of knowledge, is one of the biggest hurdles that instructors have in helping students
become better critical thinkers. My experience is that many students do not recognize the value
of sitting in a classroom in which the instructor is asking students a series of questions, asking
them to develop their own ideas, to explain the basis for their opinions, to justify their responses
because it does not fit the model of instruction they are used to, which, for our students, is
endless preparation for TAKS, getting ready for the test, learning factoid after factoid, rather
than learning to think about ideas. While students seem bored by lecture, they have difficulty
identifying what is valuable in discussion with the instructor as a facilitator rather than a fountain
of knowledge. William G. Perry’s Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College
Years helps me understand the process. Most of the students seem somewhere between Perry’s
Position 1 and Position 2, believing the either/or of absolute positions, learning to play the
“game” of looking at different views but with the full expectation that the “absolute” will be
arrived at and explained at some meaningful point, depending on the instructor’s discretion. It is
Perry’s Position 3, however, at which the students begin to recognize their own role in this
construction, the point where the rapid development of critical thinking can take place, because
this position is the first at which students are going to recognize the instructor as a participant
rather than a figure of authority. As long as the instructor is seen as authority figure rather than
as a participant in the construction of knowledge, I think, true intellectual development cannot
occur. Perhaps this becomes an excuse for my own lack of success in getting students to become
critical thinkers, but recognizing this process as intellectual development helps me understand
students’ readiness and reluctance. Now, if I could only figure out how to get students through
Position 2 so that they can become true critical thinkers participating in the construction of
knowledge . . . .
An Exploration of
The Human Condition
Honors English Composition & Introduction to Humanities
Dare to Question
Contact Information
Samantha Lay
Social Science 104
281-425-6531
[email protected]
Office Hours: MW: TBA (SS 104)
TT: 10:45-11:45 (SS 118)
CAO
Dr. Doug Crawford
TV 1
281-425-6440
Gordon Lee
Bonner Hall 235
281-425-6417
[email protected]
Office Hours: MW 9:00-10:00; 12:30-1:30
(BH 235)
TT: 10:45-11:45 (SS 118)
Division Secretary
Susan Keith
Bonner Hall 245
281-425-6503
Fax: 281-425-6228
Honors Coordinator
John Britt
Social Science, Honors Suite
281-425-6438
Texts and Materials:
The Little, Brown Handbook. H. Ramsay Fowler, Jane E. Aaron, Rebecca
Brittenham. 10th ed.
The Human Condition. Ed. Joseph Trimmer
The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams
Winter in the Blood. James Welch
Frankenstein. Mary Shelley (1818 edition preferred)
A college-level dictionary (such as The American Heritage Dictionary)
Course Objectives:
<
To provide students with concentrated study of the fundamentals of English
usage, training in accurate and effective reading and writing of prose, study of
principles of library research.
<
To provide a framework for understanding and analyzing the development of
arts and ideas in relation to the human condition and to investigate these
relationships in regard to one's own understanding and experience.
<
To understand the evolution of ideas and the development of arts and ideas in
our culture and to be able to think, discuss, and write critically about these
issues and ideas.
"The purpose of education is, finally, to create in a person the ability to
look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to
himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there
is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then
learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own
identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person
around." --James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers”
Course Requirements
Minimum Time Obligation: This course is based on the precept that students will
have to spend for each hour in class a minimum of two hours outside of class
reading, writing, or researching. Only the very best students should be able to get by
with this minimum expectation.
“Certainty is the luxury of the unthinking; it’s the things that don’t make sense that we
live with.”
Attendance: Attendance is required. Because this class is primarily a discussion
class, students must be present to receive credit. Students may miss up to two classes
without a penalty to their grade. After three absences, students may be dropped from
the course. Students are responsible for dropping this class should it become
necessary.
Assignments and Grade Distribution:
Essays 1, 2, & 5
15% (5% each)
Essays 3 & 4
20% (10% each)
Seminar Paper
15%
Seminar Paper, Revision
15%
Reading Journal
15%
Daily Work and Quizzes
5%
Oral Report
5%
10%
Participation
Instructor Prerogative: In the case of serious problems, students may be required to meet
with one or both of the instructors with intermediary drafts of out-of-class essays and the
seminar paper.
Essays: Essays will be assigned at specified times during the semester. Essays will
focus on issues that we have been discussing in class and will require that you use
reading assignments as points of reference. Essays must have a thesis statement and
must present a coherent argument. They must be presented using MLA format and
MLA documentation style.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”--Plutarch
Seminar Paper: The seminar paper should be a humanities-related project of eight to
ten pages. The subject will be of the student’s choosing but must be approved by both
instructors. (No project will be accepted that has not been previously approved.)
Students will need to submit an informal proposal to have their project approved.
Students are expected to meet at least twice and as often as necessary with the
instructors to discuss and evaluate progress and direction of the project. The seminar
paper will provide the basis of the oral report, which will be presented to the class at
the end of the semester. You will be required to revise the seminar paper after it has
been graded by the instructors.
Reading Journal: The reading/discussion journal should respond to the assigned
readings and to the classroom discussions, reflecting about ideas, events, or selections
of fine arts. The purpose of the reading/discussion journal is to make the material
your own. The journal should not be a summary of either the reading material or the
classroom discussion, but reflection about that material. The journal is not classroom
notes. Journals are an opportunity for you to individualize the material in terms of
what you think is interesting or important and should be pursued seriously.
You should have at least one page (typed, double-spaced, 12-point font) that you
write before you come to class in responding to the reading assignments and a
minimum of one page following each class discussion. (In other words, the entry
should have both before and after.) Entries should be dated. For films, you should
have one entry after watching and another after the discussion.
On selected days, the journals will be collected; they should be submitted in a flat
paper folder with pockets or brads (no three-ring binders or spiral notebooks, please).
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed
his grasp,
Else what’s a heaven for?”
--Robert Browning, “Andrea del
Sarto”
Late Paper Policy: Essays, journals, and the seminar paper will be graded down 10
points (one full-letter grade) for each class day they are late. Missed quizzes cannot
be made up.
Daily Work and Quizzes: Daily work and quizzes may include reading quizzes,
group work, and theater and museum reports.
Oral Report: The oral report will be seven- to eight-minute presentation to the class
on your seminar paper and may include visual and/or audio aids. A copy of the
outline should be provided for class members.
Participation: Participation will be a subjective evaluation of each student’s
contribution to the success of classroom discussion. Students are expected to share
their own ideas, to listen to the ideas of others (participate in but not dominate the
discussion), and to respond to the ideas of others. Students who choose not to
participate regularly will receive a failing grade for this component.
“It is on passion that intelligence is grafted.”—George Santayana
Museum of Fine Arts: We have scheduled a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in
Houston on Friday morning, September 26. We will leave LC campus at 9:00 a.m.
The report that you will be asked to write will count as several daily grades.
Theater: We will attend the Alley Theatre performance of Cyrano de Bergerac on
Sunday, October 19. The performance begins at 2:30 pm. We will leave campus at
1:00. You will also be asked to write a response to this production, which will count
as several daily grades. Tickets for this performance will be $13.50. Bring your
money, cash preferable, by September 23. You may bring a guest, but you may be
responsible for your own transportation if there is not room in the LC vans.
Academic Honesty: We will follow Lee College policy, which is outlined in the Lee
College Catalog, page 35. Essentially, students are expected to do their own work
and are expected to acknowledge appropriately, following MLA style, the use of
other sources.
Classroom Courtesy: Please turn off or to the silent mode all technological devices.
Texting or answering a phone during class is an unacceptable disruption; violators
will require the consent of the instructors to return to class.
Special Note: Please inform one or both of the instructors if you are a student with a
disability and need accommodations for this class.
“Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the
shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer.”
--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Tentative Course Outline
Aug. 26
Introduction to course, policies, MLA form, etc.
Aug. 28
What Is Real?
Russell, “Education” (handout)
Plato, “Allegory of the Cave” (handout)
Assign: Essay #1
Sep. 2
Truth and Shadows: further implications of Plato’s allegory
Workshop
Sep. 4
Essay #1, In-class
Sep. 9
Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (1-42)
Sep. 11
Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott” (handout)
Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (43-44)
Journal #1
Sep. 16
Williams, The Glass Menagerie (the entire play should be read)
Film: The Glass Menagerie
Miller, “Tragedy and the Common Man” (handout)
Sep. 18
Discussion of The Glass Menagerie
Sep. 23
Looking at art (preparation for museum trip on Friday)
Workshop for Essay 2: Bring two typed copies of your introduction
and thesis, one to turn in to the instructors, one for you to keep. The
paper must be set up according to MLA guidelines (LBH 47c).
Seminar Paper Topic due: 50-100 word description—what, why, how
Money ($13.50 per ticket) due for Cyrano de Bergerac
Sep. 25
Scheduled Conferences to discuss Seminar Paper Topic
Journal #2 due
Sept 26
(Friday) Museum of Fine Arts
Leave campus at 9:00 a.m. Return about 2:00-2:30 p.m.
Sep. 30
Film: The Man of La Mancha
Essay #2 (by 8 pm at one of the instructors’ offices: SS 104, BH 235)
Oct. 2
Discuss The Man of La Mancha
Oct. 7
Where Did We Come From? Creation Myths
Genesis 1-3 (handout)
Prometheus and Pandora (handout)
Cheyenne Creation Myth (handout)
Oct. 9
Blake: “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” (45-48)
Hopkins, “Pied Beauty” (49-50)
Jewett, “A White Heron” (51-60)
Oct. 14
Journal #3
Shelley: Frankenstein (read entire novel)
Oct. 16
Shelley: Frankenstein (continued)
Sunday, October 19, 2:30 p.m., Alley Theatre: Cyrano de Bergerac
Leave campus at 1:00 pm.
Oct. 21
Discuss Cyrano de Bergerac
Film: The Truman Show
Oct. 23
Discussion of The Truman Show
Oct. 28
What Divides Us?
Marx and Engels, from The Communist Manifesto (handout)
Rossetti, “Goblin Market” (handout)
Essay #3 due (by 8 pm)
Oct. 30
Open Conference / Seminar Papers
Nov. 4
Film: The Battleship Potemkin
Seminar Paper due by 6:00 pm
Nov. 6
Faulkner, “Barn Burning” (61-76)
Porter, “Flowering Judas” (handout)
Ellison, “Battle Royal” (77-90)
Journal #4
Nov. 11
Film: Modern Times
Nov. 13
Discuss Modern Times
Silko, “Lullaby
Introduce Welch, Winter in the Blood
Nov. 18
Scheduled conference time to discuss Seminar Paper and revision
Nov. 20
Welch, Winter in the Blood
Nov. 25
Welch, Winter in the Blood
Essay #4 due (by 8 pm)
Dec. 2
Journal #5
Workshop: Oral reports and outlines for Essay #5
Dec. 4
Oral Reports
Seminar paper Revision due
Dec. 9
(8:00-10:00 a.m.)
In-class Essay on Winter in the Blood
Gordon Lee
Faculty Learning Community
Fall 2007
Practice One:
The Human Condition and Humanities 1301
First Class Day
Viewing Art: Thinking about Art for the Non-artist, or Thinking like a Critic for
Dummies
I show students a series of slides of paintings and ask them to apply the three types of
criticism: description, interpretation, and evaluation. While these types of criticism
are not identical to the terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, the principles are very similar
and are excellent ways of promoting critical thinking as well as introducing students
to concepts of looking at a painting, showing them that they already have the
principal tools for looking at a painting even if they have never looked at a painting
before. While these three modes of criticism are not necessarily distinct, I ask
students to separate them for the purposes of this exercise. Many students want to
start interpreting the paintings right away, but I ask them to resist until we have
described the painting, those physical elements of the painting that most viewers can
agree on.
Painting 1: Picasso’s The Lovers
I start with this painting because it is fairly simple in terms of colors and forms and
because most students readily recognize the basic situation. I do not reveal the
painting’s title, though, because I believe knowing the title would interfere with the
process of interpretation. Besides, students become confident in their abilities to
interpret when they realize they were right on track once they learn the title of the
painting.
As we go through the process of description—the colors, the forms, the relationship
of the hands, the tilt of the heads, eye contact, body gestures—the students add to the
concreteness of the detail about what all of us (or most) can agree on. When students
say, “she is pregnant” or “he is sad,” I remind them that those are acts of
interpretation, not description. This focus helps the students delineate that which we
can all agree on and that which we may not agree on. This part of the exercise relates
to knowledge, comprehension, and, perhaps, application, on Bloom’s taxonomic
scale.
Interpretation, the second type of criticism that I identify, is obviously a higher order
of thinking and includes, from Bloom, application, analysis, and synthesis. Students
easily recognize that interpretation is what makes the painting interesting. But they
also see that good interpretation depends on being able to support one’s opinion
based on what is there, the description. Obviously, other factors contribute to
interpretation—education and experience (including cultural knowledge)—but all
good interpretation must be grounded on the physical qualities of the painting.
Students are generally impressed with the wide variety of opinions. They also
recognize the difference between a good interpretation, one that is well grounded in
what is there, and a weak interpretation, one that is not solidly supported by
“evidence” in the painting itself. This exercise also creates a tolerance for
disagreement and a recognition that it is not necessary to agree. They also recognize
that listening to the opinions of others helps us formulate or strengthen our own
opinions. This part of the exercise reinforces basic “knowledge” issues, such as
“warm” and “cool” colors—the differences between the red, yellow, green, and
blue—and traditional symbolic associations—red representing passion (among other
possibilities), white representing purity or innocence, green representing fertility or
reason (among other possibilities). Students also recognize how their own
experiences in love relationships or observations of love relationships shape their
interpretation. Only at the end of this portion of the exercise do I identify the
painting’s title, generally giving students permission to pat themselves on the back
for being so smart.
Evaluation is the most difficult part of this exercise, probably the reason Bloom lists
evaluation as the highest level of critical thinking. While on one level evaluation may
refer to dollar value, the level that matters for most of us is what the work of art says
to me about me or why does it matter? The most clever interpretation does not matter
a hill of beans if we have no emotional connection or reaction to the work of art. For
this level of criticism, I emphasize that the evaluation might be political, religious,
moral, psychological, social, or anything else that leads to our emotional response.
Why we value a painting or any other work of art is what ultimately matters in its
becoming a part of our lives. I model this part of the exercise for students, telling
them why I value this painting: it is a reminder that human sexual relationships are
inevitably much more complex for women than for men because the potential
consequences are more concrete for women than for men. I then ask students to
evaluate successive paintings.
Looking at Picasso’s painting takes 30-45 minutes. I generally follow it with two
more paintings with the same title, one by Rene Magritte and the other by Remedios
Varo. We do not spend nearly as much time with these paintings, but by the end of
the exercise, students feel comfortable examining a work of art on their own without
feeling the need for some greater authority to validate their responses. Later in the
semester, students must go to a museum, usually the MFAH, and choose one painting
or sculpture and write a report using the three types of criticism.
Practice 2:
Viewing Film: Through the Lens to Meaning (Man of La Mancha)
We view Man of La Mancha at the end of our first unit, the unit on Plato. Before this point,
students have examined Plato’s ideas in “The Allegory of the Cave” and have looked at various
pieces of literature using Plato’s ideas as a lens to examine and to discover meaning in the works
of literature (“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee
Williams). Before this point, few students have actually examined film for anything other than its
entertainment value, one of the reasons I think it essential that students have a handout with
questions, which we go over before they watch the film. With Plato’s allegory as background,
students immediately begin to see symbolism regarding shadow, chains, caves, and enlightenment,
which leads to a discussion of the place of art in helping reach enlightenment, including the irony
of Plato’s banishment of the poet/artist from his republic. Now, with William G. Perry’s book as
background, I am struck by the sheer genius of this assignment. It should help lead students from
Position 2 to Position 3 because Plato can be right (the path to enlightenment) and wrong
(banishing the artist), thereby helping the students recognize that Plato is in the process of
constructing knowledge rather than absolute authority.
After going over the handout and viewing the film, we hold a discussion about the film and its
ideas, using the handout as a guide. This guide should help students recognize the importance of
understanding various perspectives and to move into Perry’s “multiplicity”: while it is
Cervantes’s/Alonzo Quehan’s art that leads people to recognize the importance trying to change
the world to make it better (Plato’s enlightenment), people must continue to dwell in the “cave,” a
place where the Spanish Inquisition may destroy Cervantes and a place where people, no matter
how much they value the idealized vision of the world, are vulnerable to human self-centeredness,
which includes for women the horrible possibility of rape. No idealization is going to remove
these threats; not to idealize, however, permits and adds to the world as a “dung heap.”
This practice should, first of all, help students learn to apply the principles of critical thinking to
watching film. It should also help lead them to an examination of their own views, the limitations
and potential. It should also help them recognize the value of recognizing and understanding
multiple perspectives. In addition, the film raises questions about the roles of religion and the
church, challenging the concept of authority, which is essential for intellectual growth and
development.
Man of La Mancha (United Artists, 1972)
Director: Arthur Hiller
Stars: Peter O’Toole, Sophia Loren, James Coco
Screenplay: Dale Wasserman; based on musical play by Dale Wasserman
Music: Mitch Leigh; Lyrics: Joe Dorian
Based on “novel” Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; incorporates elements of Cervantes’s life
Man of La Mancha has a double plot, the plot of Cervantes’s run-in with the Inquisition and the play
which Cervantes creates in prison with Don Quixote. The Cervantes plot periodically impinges itself on
his fiction. The film examines those issues which Plato raises in his allegory and in his questions about
the relationship of art and truth. These eternal questions concern themselves both with “what is real?”
and with “what is the function of art?”
Consider the following:
• Why is the Church concerned with Cervantes’s street play?
• Why might authority in general prefer a world with no art?
• How is this potential “problem” of art reflected in Plato’s allegory?
• How do the trials become metaphoric, both the trials within the plays and the trials that Cervantes
must face?
• How is art itself on trial?
Throughout the play, note the use of film angles (high and low in particular) and the use of light and
shadow:
• What is the effect of these shadows?
• How are problems of blindness and sight/insight suggested?
• How do the shadows emphasize the conflict between Cervantes and authority?
Christian philosophers and theologians have from the beginning found Plato’s philosophy amenable to
their own.
• In addition to its obvious correspondence with Plato’s cave, what are some of the Christian
analogies suggested in the film?
• What are the film’s implications about what makes a good Christian?
• Is Cervantes or Quixote a Christ figure? (Note references to Christ when the issue of madness
arises.)
• How does the prison become a metaphor both for Plato’s cave and for life on this earth in Christian
terms?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant, who deals particularly with issues of morality, believed that moral
action or choice arises from reason. Kant’s axiom, which he referred to as the Categorical Imperative,
states that humans should behave as if every action were to become a general law for all human beings.
What Kant means by this axiom (which is not all that different from the Golden Rule of the New
Testament) is that all human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and that no human
being should be used as a means to an end.
• What does it mean to treat other humans with dignity and respect?
•
•
•
How are the principles of Kant’s Categorical Imperative implicit in the way people treat
each other in the movie? Consider both the way authority treats the prisoners and the
way prisoners themselves treat fellow prisoners.
In the prison, do you think the prisoners show more respect for each other by
acknowledging each other’s reality or by acknowledging their idealized potential? What
are the implications for our own responses to those around us?
How would Kant’s Categorical Imperative be reflected if it were extended to life outside
of the film—in the broad world of politics? in the classroom?
The way we recognize others and the way we recognize ourselves also leads to important
questions of identity and identity construction:
• How does Cervantes define himself? What is the importance of his manuscript for his
sense of self?
• Is Alonzo Quehan a madman for imagining himself a knight errant?
• Is Aldonza/Dulcinea the kitchen slut that she refers to herself as, or is she the pure virgin
of Quixote’s vision? Are these the wrong categories to use in thinking of her?
• How do the authority figures (both inside and outside the prison) define themselves?
• Does Quixote’s encounter with the Knight of Mirrors confirm the failure of idealism?
What does this encounter suggest about the nature of identity and Quixote’s identity
construction of himself? What does this encounter suggest about the nature of reality?
• What is the connection of mirrors and our sense of identity—the way we see ourselves?
Do mirrors reflect reality?
Consider the relationship of reality and the power of the imagination:
•
Do we have an obligation to try to transform the world if it is not as good as we think it
could be? (Think about Plato’s view of the enlightened ones.) Or are we perhaps
better served by recognizing the world as the “dung heap” that it is and just making the
most of it?
•
Are Quixote’s (and Cervantes’s) triumphs substantial or illusory?
•
What are elements of the world’s cruelty in the face of Quixote’s and Cervantes’s
attempts to insist on its beauty and nobility? (Consider particularly the rape of Aldonza
and the possibility that Cervantes himself will be executed for his art.)
•
What is the importance of imagination in attempting to transform the world? How is
this importance shown in the film? Does the film’s ending reinforce or undermine this
possibility?
•
What is the source of courage? Does courage require the power of imagination?
•
What does the prisoners’ reaction to Cervantes’s being led to his trial at the end of the
film suggest about the importance of or the power of the imagination?
Which art do you prefer, idealistic (also known as romantic) or realistic? life as it is or life as
it should be? If life in the cave is illusory, as Plato suggests, are we still better served
by embracing this false reality than by some ideal of what life could be?
In what ways do the song lyrics contribute to or reinforce these ideas or themes? Are there
ways the song lyrics detract?
Practice Three:
James Welch’s Winter in the Blood: How to Kill a Culture, or Thinking like a
Marxist
James Welch’s novel Winter in the Blood is the last reading assignment of the semester
and pulls together the various lenses that we have used during the semester, but it follows
immediately our unit on Marx and The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Students will
already have experience looking at various works of literature and film through the lens
of Marx, including Leslie Marmon Silko’s story “Lullaby,” which also deals with the
plight of the American Indian. In relation to Silko’s story, we will have already talked
about “How to Kill a Culture,” asking the students to come up with their own recipe.
(The creative delight students take in their groups can be disturbing.)
Activity 1: Review the students’ recipes for killing a culture, which should include
elements of religion, language, cultural rituals, illness, weaponry, and drugs (like alcohol
or opium). This activity will help student recognize the assumptions that they bring to
the work of literature.
Activity 2: I will read aloud the first paragraph of the novel. Ask the students to identify
images related to killing a culture and to identify elements that are particularly pertinent
to the situation of American Indians in the late 20th century. Based on this examination,
students should be able to identify assumptions on the part of the author, the implications
and consequences of the position of Native Americans, and the question at issue as far as
the significance of cultural continuity.
Activity 3: Ask the students to connect these elements to Manifesto of the Communist
Party, focusing especially on Marx’s observation of history and capitalism’s destruction
of human relationships:
• historical class conflict (relating that class conflict to American Indians and the
reservation system and its parallel with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat),
• fighting the enemies of one’s enemy (focusing on how all systems of colonization
lead to a destructive self-hatred),
• reducing family relations and all relations to monetary rather than human
relations.
This activity asks students to apply the principles of analysis and synthesis that we have
used throughout the semester.
Activity 4: Ask students to expand their discussion to the entire novel, looking at ways
these various recipes for killing a culture operate in relation to Marx’s critique of
capitalism. While I do not ask students specifically to identify the elements on Paul and
Elder’s Critical Thinking circle, they must, in fact, apply these elements of critical
thinking. In addition, all of these activities help students develop the higher level thought
processes, including analysis and evaluation, from Bloom’s taxonomy.