For the past week or so I have been encountering a multitude of instances in which Professors are (in simple terms) being unhelpful and overly demanding. This ranges from poor instruction and a rejection of explaining further to assigning major projects with a day to complete them despite pleads for extensions. Though I realize that such experiences are no strangers to the life as a university student it has gotten me thinking: in a time when teachers are getting more overloaded by work how can we be sure that we are being helpful to students and not just overwhelming them?
I was thinking (I have seen some teachers in high schools do this) that perhaps a survey (ideally anonymous) could be used for students to vocalize their concerns, difficulties, things they enjoy, things they need help on, ect. Though in my imagination I can see this working well, the realistic side of my brain is skeptical (particularly considering the anonymity part, who knows what students would write if they knew their names would not be attached). But how else could a teacher effectively get feedback on if they were being helpful and meeting student's needs?
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
Whose responsibility is it: Keeping schools and students healthy in light of the Ebola cases
Last week in my Critical Literacies class we began by discussing the Ebola cases in the United States. Specifically considering the second nurse who boarded a flight despite her knowledge that she was displaying symptoms of Ebola (thus making her contagious). Naturally in the course of this conversation someone asked: "What was she thinking risking contracting it to the others on the plane?" we all nodded in agreement when another student responded: "But that is what we do all the time. We come to class sick and contagious." Since this discussion I have been wondering whose responsibility is it to keep others healthy and why do we as students and in the United States rarely consider our societal obligations when we are ill to not get others ill.
What I have concluded is that we are taught that even if we are sick that our obligations to school/ work/ what have you is more important than our own health and the health of others. In fact, we are told as a mild threat that not only will our school work suffer if we remain at home when sick but so will are grades. Something that has been bothering me since my entry into graduate school is the continual reminder that if more than a single class is missed then my grade will suffer and I could possibly even fail the class, unless a doctor's note is provided. Though often professors are often lenient regarding this rule the point is that the threat is still present in the syllabus making me fear even more than I already do (which seems impossible) getting sick and though over the years I have placed a higher value on my own health and maintaining the health of my classmates than attending class while sick this concern is still present.
In our society we seem to instill in children a sense of guilt about remaining home when sick so that instead of resting they drag their barely up to par bodies to school often times so congested and exhausted that they are not even able to pay attention in class. Then they return home sicker than before (since they were using all their energy to stay awake in class and deal with school rather than fighting their illness) and probably having given their illness to at least one other person. This then creates a domino effect, especially in elementary, middle, and high school. For example my first year of high school I got a terrible throat cold the week of finals and since it was finals I refused to stay home because I knew it would be a battle to get the school to allow me to make up my finals (the day of my physics final I was so sick I could barely see straight) so instead I went and since everyone else around me was sick and my immune system was shot I just kept getting sicker and sicker. This achieved nothing and though I passed all of my classes (which I am shocked I passed physics) nothing was gained or learned from going to school so sick.
The point that I am trying to get to with this blog is that we are looking at this woman who made the obviously irresponsible decision to fly while contagious but we are not often taught to act on our social responsibility and remain home (or go to the bleed'n hospital) when we are sick and contagious. We are instead taught to value work and school and whatever else over our health and the health of others and to feel guilty if we choose to nurse ourselves back to health rather than attend that 75 minute class in which we will learn little to nothing because we feel horrible.
So whose responsibility is it not only to teach children to consider their health and the health of others before school or work? As well as whose job is it to teach children the simple rules of how to stay well (wash your hands, don't share anything, cover your cough, ect.)? Obviously at the end of the day it is the individual's responsibility to be able to make the right call but how they make that call and for what reasons can be greatly effect by what they are taught.
What I have concluded is that we are taught that even if we are sick that our obligations to school/ work/ what have you is more important than our own health and the health of others. In fact, we are told as a mild threat that not only will our school work suffer if we remain at home when sick but so will are grades. Something that has been bothering me since my entry into graduate school is the continual reminder that if more than a single class is missed then my grade will suffer and I could possibly even fail the class, unless a doctor's note is provided. Though often professors are often lenient regarding this rule the point is that the threat is still present in the syllabus making me fear even more than I already do (which seems impossible) getting sick and though over the years I have placed a higher value on my own health and maintaining the health of my classmates than attending class while sick this concern is still present.
In our society we seem to instill in children a sense of guilt about remaining home when sick so that instead of resting they drag their barely up to par bodies to school often times so congested and exhausted that they are not even able to pay attention in class. Then they return home sicker than before (since they were using all their energy to stay awake in class and deal with school rather than fighting their illness) and probably having given their illness to at least one other person. This then creates a domino effect, especially in elementary, middle, and high school. For example my first year of high school I got a terrible throat cold the week of finals and since it was finals I refused to stay home because I knew it would be a battle to get the school to allow me to make up my finals (the day of my physics final I was so sick I could barely see straight) so instead I went and since everyone else around me was sick and my immune system was shot I just kept getting sicker and sicker. This achieved nothing and though I passed all of my classes (which I am shocked I passed physics) nothing was gained or learned from going to school so sick.
The point that I am trying to get to with this blog is that we are looking at this woman who made the obviously irresponsible decision to fly while contagious but we are not often taught to act on our social responsibility and remain home (or go to the bleed'n hospital) when we are sick and contagious. We are instead taught to value work and school and whatever else over our health and the health of others and to feel guilty if we choose to nurse ourselves back to health rather than attend that 75 minute class in which we will learn little to nothing because we feel horrible.
So whose responsibility is it not only to teach children to consider their health and the health of others before school or work? As well as whose job is it to teach children the simple rules of how to stay well (wash your hands, don't share anything, cover your cough, ect.)? Obviously at the end of the day it is the individual's responsibility to be able to make the right call but how they make that call and for what reasons can be greatly effect by what they are taught.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Ethnography with Indigenous Youth
Though I have not yet completed the Humanizing Research chapter "Activist Ethnography with Indigenous Youth" by McCarty, Wyman, and Nicholas I am struck by what they are exploring and my own experiences.
I was born and raised in the southwestern city of Durango right next to the Southern Ute Indian reservation in Ignacio (along with about 4 other reservations). Due to Durango's proximity to the reservation and the relative low economic status that was Ignacio many of the children from the reservation attended school with me. As a child I never really understood the tension that existed in the United States between Native Americans and what is easily defined as their Colonizers. So I did not get why as the years progressed those that I had been friends with in elementary school began to exclude themselves from all their other peers into a tight knit group. In fact, the majority of my peers did not understand why the Indian students did this either and rather than try to understand we ignored them, displayed obvious discomfort around them (for they were the obvious "other" to us) and titled them as stuck up, antisocial, and rude. As I have gotten older and thought on this more I begin to understand why they chose to isolate themselves but I can only make guesses. It is possible that it was a tool of self preservation and protection or an unspoken agreement to stick together. I do not know if any of them spoke their "heritage language" though I do remember learning that many of the tribes surrounding our area held onto their language by a string due to the elders (the only ones who knew the language) dying off and the youth no longer wanting to learn it. I recall the urgency of this problem even now and the unspoken message that if these languages died that was it.
More specifically I remember in elementary school we took a field trip to Ignacio to visit the KSUT station. The day that we were there the city had finally resolve to tear down the Indian Boarding School like the one Jonathan mentions on page 85. I remember vividly standing watching the wrecking ball decimate the prison-like concrete building with the images from the video that we had just been shown documenting the history of this building. A video that mirrored Jonathan's own descriptions of these places: "They [government officials] took the children away from their families at a young age, and they instilled this image that is still alive - this image of self-hate. To be ashamed of who you are ... Its all about survival since 1492 ... It's all about how far will you go to - to survive" (85). I felt overwhelmed while watching this building fall by emotions I did not understand then and are now too far removed from me to explore now. I do recall experiencing a misplaced feeling of regret (I did not understand) as I looked at the few metal framed beds that had been forgotten teetering on the edge of a broken floor and wondered at the angry words graffitied on the walls, regret at destroying something that I believed to be part of history but now understand to be a symbol of oppression and destruction of a fragile culture.
I now wonder as the oppression of Indian culture continues to this day how we as teachers can incorporate it into our classrooms? How can we bring these legends, songs, languages (many of which I grew up listening to myself) into the classroom not as remnants of ancient cultures but as parts of living cultures?
I was born and raised in the southwestern city of Durango right next to the Southern Ute Indian reservation in Ignacio (along with about 4 other reservations). Due to Durango's proximity to the reservation and the relative low economic status that was Ignacio many of the children from the reservation attended school with me. As a child I never really understood the tension that existed in the United States between Native Americans and what is easily defined as their Colonizers. So I did not get why as the years progressed those that I had been friends with in elementary school began to exclude themselves from all their other peers into a tight knit group. In fact, the majority of my peers did not understand why the Indian students did this either and rather than try to understand we ignored them, displayed obvious discomfort around them (for they were the obvious "other" to us) and titled them as stuck up, antisocial, and rude. As I have gotten older and thought on this more I begin to understand why they chose to isolate themselves but I can only make guesses. It is possible that it was a tool of self preservation and protection or an unspoken agreement to stick together. I do not know if any of them spoke their "heritage language" though I do remember learning that many of the tribes surrounding our area held onto their language by a string due to the elders (the only ones who knew the language) dying off and the youth no longer wanting to learn it. I recall the urgency of this problem even now and the unspoken message that if these languages died that was it.
More specifically I remember in elementary school we took a field trip to Ignacio to visit the KSUT station. The day that we were there the city had finally resolve to tear down the Indian Boarding School like the one Jonathan mentions on page 85. I remember vividly standing watching the wrecking ball decimate the prison-like concrete building with the images from the video that we had just been shown documenting the history of this building. A video that mirrored Jonathan's own descriptions of these places: "They [government officials] took the children away from their families at a young age, and they instilled this image that is still alive - this image of self-hate. To be ashamed of who you are ... Its all about survival since 1492 ... It's all about how far will you go to - to survive" (85). I felt overwhelmed while watching this building fall by emotions I did not understand then and are now too far removed from me to explore now. I do recall experiencing a misplaced feeling of regret (I did not understand) as I looked at the few metal framed beds that had been forgotten teetering on the edge of a broken floor and wondered at the angry words graffitied on the walls, regret at destroying something that I believed to be part of history but now understand to be a symbol of oppression and destruction of a fragile culture.
I now wonder as the oppression of Indian culture continues to this day how we as teachers can incorporate it into our classrooms? How can we bring these legends, songs, languages (many of which I grew up listening to myself) into the classroom not as remnants of ancient cultures but as parts of living cultures?
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Humanizing Research: Where do I go from here?
In a few days I am going to attempt to present chapter 3 ("Humanizing Research with LGBTQ Youth Through Dialogic Communication, Consciousness Raising, and Action") of the book Humanizing Research to life in my E632 class. Though I've read the chapter twice and read the other assigned reading sections I have become fixated on this chapter because I cannot decide what to take from it and what to bring to the E632 table.
I chose this chapter because the title spiked my interest and I was immediately sucked in when I began to read it. Though I found Mollie Blackburn's story interesting and her experience with the "women who love women" group I do not know what to take away from her story.
The main question that struck me while I read was: how do we participate and do research in a community that we are not part of? And how do we avoid dehumanizing this community?
Though Blackburn identifies as a lesbian she was at this time still a bit of an outsider in the LGBTQ community. She had recently changed her life: quite teaching, came out of the closet and started dating a woman and this change positioned her as a bit of a foreigner from the community that she entered as a researcher. Though overtime through volunteering at ATTIC and participating in the "women who love women" group Blackburn became part of the community I wonder how would I as a straight woman enter this type of community? Though Blackburn sort of confronts this issue with Justine, particularly in the journal swap, she already has a relationship with this girl that has been created while she participated in the "women who love women" community.
But I also wonder, with regards to my thesis interests; how can I enter into the conversation about the IB (international baccalaureate) program and consider the pros and cons of it when I am not part of that community?
Something else that I have been considering after reading this chapter is how do we avoid accidentally excluding/dehumanizing people because we do not understand where they are coming from? This question arose out of the issue that Blackburn presented regarding Steve and Shania. The solution for this issue as Blackburn explains was to learn about these individuals and how they identify while also further clarifying that the "women who love women" group is for those who identify as women who love women. In general the questions that arose out of this is just how do we confront and work with individuals that we do not understand and cannot connect with, without misrepresenting and dehumanizing them?
I chose this chapter because the title spiked my interest and I was immediately sucked in when I began to read it. Though I found Mollie Blackburn's story interesting and her experience with the "women who love women" group I do not know what to take away from her story.
The main question that struck me while I read was: how do we participate and do research in a community that we are not part of? And how do we avoid dehumanizing this community?
Though Blackburn identifies as a lesbian she was at this time still a bit of an outsider in the LGBTQ community. She had recently changed her life: quite teaching, came out of the closet and started dating a woman and this change positioned her as a bit of a foreigner from the community that she entered as a researcher. Though overtime through volunteering at ATTIC and participating in the "women who love women" group Blackburn became part of the community I wonder how would I as a straight woman enter this type of community? Though Blackburn sort of confronts this issue with Justine, particularly in the journal swap, she already has a relationship with this girl that has been created while she participated in the "women who love women" community.
But I also wonder, with regards to my thesis interests; how can I enter into the conversation about the IB (international baccalaureate) program and consider the pros and cons of it when I am not part of that community?
Something else that I have been considering after reading this chapter is how do we avoid accidentally excluding/dehumanizing people because we do not understand where they are coming from? This question arose out of the issue that Blackburn presented regarding Steve and Shania. The solution for this issue as Blackburn explains was to learn about these individuals and how they identify while also further clarifying that the "women who love women" group is for those who identify as women who love women. In general the questions that arose out of this is just how do we confront and work with individuals that we do not understand and cannot connect with, without misrepresenting and dehumanizing them?
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Critical Literacy, IB, and the Literature of the World
While reading Ernest Morrell's book Critical Literacy I kept thinking about the International Baccalaureate program which I am researching for my qualifying exam (thesis). Much of what Morrell discussed sparked realizations about the IB program.
Since my student teaching a year ago, in which I was fully immersed in the IB program I have been haunted by it and its execution in the US school system. From my research so far I have discovered a fairly matched set of pros and cons for the program, one of the major pros is that it is a global program which means it is not designed to adhere to one of the many standardized tests created as a result of Not Child Left Behind. However, after reading Morrell's argument about incorporating literature from other perspectives beyond the dead/alive white male/female into the classroom, I realized that though the IB program prides itself on being global the course readings still depend on the white author canon of literature. For instance, while student teaching I taught Harper Lee's phenomenal text To Kill a Mockingbird and though I believe this text to be riveting and important to read in school what student is connecting with it? How does it apply to students today? Well it does apply to some students in some parts of the United States because it deals with the dilemma of people who are different being treated differently but this message does not translate well to Loveland High School students who are predominantly white middle class. But it also does not teach students much about the rest of the world today. It tells them about being a child during the depression in the South, and maybe some of them can connect with Scout or Jem or Dill but with the rise of technology the number of students who connect with these characters will steadily decrease. What this all made me realize as I continued to read Morrell and consider the IB program is what if the literature and reading that students were assigned was not just the typical white male/female authors and texts like Hawthorne, Conrad, Steinbeck, Lee, ect but rather texts from famous authors from around the world both contemporary and not? For instance they could read some of the poems by the Persian poet Rumi who is argued to be one of the greatest love poets of all time and while they were reading him they could learn about arabic and the literature culture in the Middle East. Then they could read either short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or his famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude while learning about Columbia, magical realism and the literature that comes from there. And continued looking at Africa, Russia, and so on but also looking at literature closer to home for the students that they could connect with. I thought of this while reading Morrell also because he emphasizes the importance of students being able to leave school as engaged citizens and writers who are capable of being critical of the world around them by reading and experiencing texts from other cultures while interacting with aspects of those cultures the students would become more globalized and wiser about the world around them and the different perspectives. Rather than knowing and abiding to the American and British perspective while being otherwise ignorant of the rest of the world. Besides the best way to understand a country and its people is to read its literature.
Since my student teaching a year ago, in which I was fully immersed in the IB program I have been haunted by it and its execution in the US school system. From my research so far I have discovered a fairly matched set of pros and cons for the program, one of the major pros is that it is a global program which means it is not designed to adhere to one of the many standardized tests created as a result of Not Child Left Behind. However, after reading Morrell's argument about incorporating literature from other perspectives beyond the dead/alive white male/female into the classroom, I realized that though the IB program prides itself on being global the course readings still depend on the white author canon of literature. For instance, while student teaching I taught Harper Lee's phenomenal text To Kill a Mockingbird and though I believe this text to be riveting and important to read in school what student is connecting with it? How does it apply to students today? Well it does apply to some students in some parts of the United States because it deals with the dilemma of people who are different being treated differently but this message does not translate well to Loveland High School students who are predominantly white middle class. But it also does not teach students much about the rest of the world today. It tells them about being a child during the depression in the South, and maybe some of them can connect with Scout or Jem or Dill but with the rise of technology the number of students who connect with these characters will steadily decrease. What this all made me realize as I continued to read Morrell and consider the IB program is what if the literature and reading that students were assigned was not just the typical white male/female authors and texts like Hawthorne, Conrad, Steinbeck, Lee, ect but rather texts from famous authors from around the world both contemporary and not? For instance they could read some of the poems by the Persian poet Rumi who is argued to be one of the greatest love poets of all time and while they were reading him they could learn about arabic and the literature culture in the Middle East. Then they could read either short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or his famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude while learning about Columbia, magical realism and the literature that comes from there. And continued looking at Africa, Russia, and so on but also looking at literature closer to home for the students that they could connect with. I thought of this while reading Morrell also because he emphasizes the importance of students being able to leave school as engaged citizens and writers who are capable of being critical of the world around them by reading and experiencing texts from other cultures while interacting with aspects of those cultures the students would become more globalized and wiser about the world around them and the different perspectives. Rather than knowing and abiding to the American and British perspective while being otherwise ignorant of the rest of the world. Besides the best way to understand a country and its people is to read its literature.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Letters to Juliet + Romeo & Juliet
Around 1594 - 1595 William Shakespeare presented what is arguably his most famous play of all time: "Romeo & Juliet", a passionate play about true love and death (but don't all of Shakespeare's plays incorporate these two things?). Over the last 400 plus years of the 37 or so plays that hold Shakespeare's name, Romeo and Juliet has maintained, if not gained, popularity. In today's society we forget that Juliet was only about 13 and Romeo 16, we forget that their families literally hated each other to death and regularly tried to kill each other, and most importantly we forget that Romeo and Juliet had only known each other a single night before they decided that they would marry. All we focus on is the complete allure of a love that seems so strong and so pure that life without that other person would be so incredibly unbearable that the only option is to plea with an apothecary for poison or stab yourself with his blatantly obvious phallic sword. Despite the notable problems with the play and its details, it has been reproduced countless times, sometimes well (Baz Luhrmann's 1996 modern make Romeo + Juliet) and sometimes not so well namely Gary Winick's 2010 movie Letters to Juliet, starring Mamma Mia's Amanda Seyfried.My purpose in this blog is not to compare and contrast Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet to Letter's to Juliet (though Luhrmann's re-make of the play is absolutely phenomenal and I always get a little teary-eyed at the end), but rather to examine the minsconseptions presented in Letter's to Juliet.
So for those of you not familiar with Letter's to Juliet the basic plot this: girl living in New York hoping to be a journalist but her fat male boss just doesn't believe she has what it takes, she is engaged to a guy who is obviously not right for her and then everything changes when she and her fiancé go to Verona (the quote "City of Love" which I am right here and now calling BS on though Ill get back to that) and she discovers the wall of Letters to Juliet - oh and by the way she is a hopeless romantic. So she finds this wall and sits down observing all of the desperate weeping women writing sappy and ridiculous letters to Juliet (a 13 year old who married a boy she barely knew, lest we forget) when she suddenly spots a woman taking the letters. This woman ends up being a "Juliet Secretary", one of five or so, who take the letters and respond to them. Naturally girl (Sophia if we must have names) joins this little group because she is lonely, left all alone by her food and wine obsessed chief fiancé, and discovers a letter that is 50 years old (and naturally she responds to it). Her response brings the woman over from her home in London, and her dashing and appropriately aged grandson (who honestly looks like he could be Amanda Seyfried's brother) as an escort. Then after much arguing, mostly just by the grandson (Charlie), they all decide to go searching for the Grandmother (Claire's) lost love Lorenzo. Naturally during this adventure Charlie and Sophie begin to fall in love but once they finally find Lorenzo Charlie does not go after Sophie because of her fiancé and so she returns to New York and they completely disappear from each other's lives for a few months. But then the grand turn, Claire and Lorenzo are getting married and Sophie, discovering that she does not love her fiancé anymore, goes to the wedding in hopes of confessing her undying love to Charlie. But when she arrives he is with a girl but it turns out that this girl is just his cousin, but all of this (Sophie being single and Charlie bringing his cousin as a date) does not come out until Sophie - in the perfect image of Juliet- is on a balcony and they both confess their love for each other right before Charlie does a misstep on a vein and falls to the ground (possibly breaking or severely damaging his back but this of course is ignored). And so we get a happy ending (okay that was a much longer summary than I intended, I got carried away apparently).
Now that you have a general idea or reminder about Letters to Juliet I will move onto the bulk of this blog (I will not go into Romeo & Juliet if you are unfamiliar with it I hope that you have no other excuse than you grew up in a cave because beyond that there are no excuses as to why you are not familiar with it). One of the main problems, bypassing the obvious cliche character of Sophie as a hopeless romantic living in New York aspiring to be a journalist but not quite making it until a life changing adventure during which she finally finds love, is this wall of letters to Juliet. The biggest issue here is Juliet was 13, living a drastically different existence than we do today as a basically pampered princess, only daughter of one of the most powerful men in Verona, so why on earth would anyone every write a letter to her about their love life? I suppose to a degree I understand the lure of writing to a fictitious character who in some way represents your ideals or something but really the girl is so sheltered that she doesn't even consider that Romeo's love could only be temporary or that marrying Paris really is the thing to do. And building off of that, it has been noted by many scholars that Romeo's love is fickle; before he sees Juliet he is madly in love with Rosaline whom he simply cannot live without:
Benvolio: Good morrow, cousin.
Romeo: is the day so young?
Benvolio: But new struck nine.
Romeo: Ay me, sad hours seem long.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?
Benvolio: It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
Benvolio: In love?
Romeo: Out -
Benvolio: Of love?
Romeo: Out of her favour where I am in love.
(act I scene i lines 145 - 155)
And there is the suggestion later on in his conversation with Benvolio in act I scene i, that he is not actually in love but rather lust. He says Cupid's arrow but then immediately mentions that Rosaline holds tightly to her chastity:
Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit,
And in strong proof of chastity well armed,
From love's weak childish bow she lives uncharted
(lines 198 - 201)
So we have these women writing their every agony out about love - whether lost, gained or confused - to a girl whose brain is not nearly developed, who lives in a period when love and marriage were rarely one and the same thing, and who deciders within a few hours that she cannot live without a boy who up till this point has proven to be untrustworthy when it comes to his infatuations. I cannot imagine what type of advice one could expect from such a girl, not to mention she kills herself in the end.
In retrospect of writing all of that, that really is the bulk of my issue with this movie because it arises not just in the wall filled with letters to Juliet but throughout the whole movie. The movie presents Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as this beautiful and perfect example of unblemished love but the reality is that it is not that at all, rather it is a play that ends in completely unavoidable tragedy which makes it a near comedy; which I would argue all of Shakespeare's tragedies are near comedies because they are just so absurd in how they become tragedies (think of Hamlet for goodness sakes, he quite literally goes mad while playing that he is mad).
Though I enjoy the ridiculousness of romantic comedies (though I rarely buy into the possibility of falling in love with someone that you have known for three days, who you met in a beautiful country that is not your own; seriously it is a fairytale and the instant you step out of that setting it will fall to pieces) I found issue with how Letters to Juliet has in a sense "bastardized" Romeo & Juliet by skirting the reality that the character's were kids and their love, to be completely honest, probably had a 50/50 chance of survival. And there in lies the real question: if Romeo and Juliet had been able to survive the obvious doom of their love would they have survived or would Romeo's fickle nature cropped up again leaving Juliet weeping and Romeo delivering yet another set of beautiful but empty words to some new infatuation?
Saturday, April 19, 2014
The Lure of Anton Chekhov for an American Reader
- "Gooseberries" Chekhov
"There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, catastrophe will overtake him - sickness, poverty, loss"
"There is no such thing as happiness, nor ought there to be"
- "Gooseberries" Chekhov
Recently I came across the most recent list of the top 10 happiest countries in the world, as expected the all the Scandinavian countries were listed and Australia but one country that was not was the United States of American. This may seem odd to some because we live in the land of opportunity, the place where we can do anything we want and achieve anything as long as we work hard for it. This I believe is where the problem of our level of happiness comes in.
From a young age we are led to believe that we deserve and ultimately will achieve happiness (I am throwing my net broadly, fully aware that in many cases what I say does not apply). We are told that our perfect mate is out there, that we can and will get that dream job with the great pay, and ultimately we will live a happy life. But there is another part to this message and that is that sadness, depression and the like are abnormal and must be fixed, particularly with medication. So then those of us who suffer with such things become medicated and work to join the rest of the population in the search for that happiness but in that search we get lost sometimes and hit road bumps. We become so focused on achieving our happiness that when, for women for instance, the 'clock is ticking' we settle because we fear that we will die alone and childless. This then can lead to an unhappy marriage and divorce and weeks of anguish and wonder at why we are not happy. At these moments of gut wrenching and debilitating pain we feel gross and wrong because we do not believe that such feelings are normal and that something is wrong so we hide it. Even when we are not in these states do we hide things that give us a sinking feeling; we avoid the idea of death and though we are all aware of its presence we pretend that we are in fact immortal and we will not be touched by it. In essence, in the United States we do not have what Chekhov terms as the "man knocking on the door" but rather we ignore the unhappiness of the world and continue to believe that we deserve and will experience eternal happiness.
It is for this reason that I often feel so troubled with my fits of depression (here used loosely) because I believe that they are abnormal and must be done away with so that I can continue on my path of happiness. This struggle within myself causes me almost more agony than the fits and thoughts that come with those fits, this is why I am so drawn to the stories of Anton Chekhov.
Chekhov lived and wrote in the build up to the Russian revolution. He was the first Russian author to utilize the short story, before him there were just big novels like Tolstoy's masterpiece Anna Karenina. I started reading his stories for my Chekhov and Munro master's class and after reading them for three months I am finally able to put into words why I am so drawn to his work.
In his stories, Chekhov does not often present a 'happy' ending, rather his characters live more or less in a state of 'reality'. A reality in which people suffer, die, are perpetually unhappy and so on; though for many Americans I can see how his work would seem depressing, I find it liberating. Chekhov is my solace, he makes me understand that unhappiness is natural and that the acceptance of it and to a point embracing it is far better than pushing against it. The lines from the story "Gooseberries" - part of Chekhov's trilogy - are possibly some of the most important words I have ever come across in my life because they, in a way, give me permission to "throw off" this allusion that I must consistently be happy and allows me to accept the unhappiness, the "catastrophe" of life that is inevitable.
If this blog seems like a bit of a rant, I did not mean it to be, rather I mean it to be a chance for readers to look at how our society approaches the concept of happiness and then maybe consider experiencing how Russians approach that idea. Do I believe that the Russian concept of happiness is better than ours, no, but I do believe that a balance is necessary and Chekhov provides that balance.
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