here's the weird part, the part students often find challenging, but it is also the most-important thing to consider when analyzing a story, poem, play, novel, even "arty" film:

This is often not something you just read like pop fiction (like an action/adventure novel, for example). It is very likely idea-rich, and likely requires you to consider IMPLICATIONS, not just the literal "who did what" questions. Yes, I know, ironically the questions I asked for Discussion 1 were just that: "Who did what?"

You might think that a bit mean of me, but I wanted some of you to have a moment of discovery: "THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT IN EITHER STORY!"

That was the correct answer (yes, there was indeed a correct answer).

So why did most everyone (this happens in every class I've ever taught; it's not you) come up with who did what?

It is what you expected to discover. Not only did I ask the questions, but readers want obvious answers. They ignore some details and hang on to other to FORCE the story to "work." Alas, reading literature (like reading a sophisticated work on physics or philosophy) requires more, and it really can be fun (depending on your idea of "fun"):

  1. You must read very closely

  2. You can't just choose the bits you like and ignore the other parts

  3. EXPECT the story to be about much more than just the plot (the story/events)

  4. EXPECT the story to be about something you do not already know/believe/think

For that last point I like to point to this week's readings. Yes, "Trifles" does indeed show a time/place when women and their lives/opinions were dismissed by men; you'll see; that much is obvious (though there is a lot more going on in that play). However, NONE of the other readings this week show that sort of sexism, and students often leap to the conclusion that they ARE about sexism becase, well, it's what we've grown up EXPECTING stories about men and women to reveal. By the way, that is an INCREDIBLY HUGE hint for this week's discussion. But that's looking ahead; let's go back to what we've already read and discussed.

So for Discussion 1 you had two stories to think about. Let's onsider the very short story called "All About Suicide," by Luisa Valenzuela.

NOTE: I have read this story many times; my notes on this half-page story take up about two pages. It is short, but there is much that is puzzling here and a LOT to pay attention to. It is like trying to unravel a mystery using tiny bits of forensic evidence, and this case is going to be a Cold Case.

who kills whom?

That seems like it should be simple enough. The story is short, and that's just a plot fact you are looking for.I open my face-to-face classes with this question, and typical answer look like this:

How can there be so many answers? This is so short that it should be obvious. What is causing the ambiguity? The answer to that is there are lots of tricky bits to look at in Valenzuela's story, and they are not there accidentally.

but wait! why are we doing this again? it's not like any of this is real!

Last week we puzzled over how humans pass along their story, their history, a sense of who they are so that their civilization(s) can be known by others that follow. We also noted just how hard that is since what gets passed along (over very long periods of time) is quite fragmentary. What would tell us more about a culture--a shopping list or box score from a newspaper or stock market readout or a weird short story like "All About Suicide"? Consider this:

You find a ledger from what was presumably a farm 5,000 years ago. You manage to decipher the language, and you discover that they presumably had 5 bushels of wheat one harvest.

Very cool, that is a SOLID FACT, HARD INFORMATION. But what does it mean?

Nothing. Out of context, that number and that crop mean nothing. Is that a lot? Was it a horrible year for them? There is nothing to relate it to. It's an isolated fact that reveals very little about culture.

Stories, poems, plays, music, art, architecture, mathematics, and so on--these are all forms of communication, and fiction (like Valenzuela's story) reveal theme. On our class home page, I mentioned that in literary analysis, the word theme has a very special meaning. A theme is a complete idea (not a single word); it is generally expressed in a sentence. It explores some subject (such as LOVE) and makes a conclusion about that subject, and it shows how a writer feels about a topic or has summed up a life's experience or expresses a set of beliefs and values. Here are some very different themes about LOVE:

  • Love is blind.
  • Love conquers all.
  • All you need is love.
  • Love makes fools of us all.
  • Love stinks.
  • etc.

Each one of those is a short, complete sentence/thought. The ideas do not all agree with one another (as there are many ways to look at love), but did you notice that all of those are cliches (cliche is another literary term)? Cliches are so over-used they have lost their impact; they feel like throwaway lines or thoughts. They become that way because the idea is written by writers over and over through the ages. That does not mean they are nonsense; it means they are common; it is how humans have experienced life consistently through the ages and across the globe. It is an essential human truth and is at the core of what a group of people believe, value, experience.

It is a lot more telling than "5 bushels of wheat."

And so, ultimately, we want to try to figure out why the author is making us puzzle over this and what it might all mean, because that will share something about this author's view of life, the universe, and everything.

But it really is a puzzle, like unraveling a mystery. We are looking at some examples of action, characters, places, things that express an idea to someone else from somewhere else, and we have to try to get into the head of that other (possibly long-dead) writer and figure out what the story suggests.

We do this by looking for unusual patterns (like the car engine that is going ker-THUMP ker-THUMP). We must look closely at all of the parts that might cause this confusion.

dissecting/diagnosing the story (in the process, you will see what looks a lot like an analytical essay :)

The title suggests that Ismael kills himself; that is what suicide means. However, there are many kinds of suicide (political suicide, business suicide), so that might be ambiguous. The first few sentences, though, describe a physical suicide: "Ismael grabbed the gun and slowly rubbed it across his face. Then he pulled the trigger and there was a shot. Bang. One more dead in the city. It's getting to be a vice" (Valenzuela). This is, in essence, the whole short story. It has a beginning; the action rises to a critical point; there is a climax (where Ismael pulls the trigger), and the short resolution is that he is dead. There is also the suggestion of a place (setting) where death is so common it is just considered "a vice," like smoking or drinking. A little research shows that the author is from Argentina, and her writing is rooted in the religoius and political unrest that has characterized certain periods in Central and South America. So far, the only name we have is Ismael, and when we look for a name to connect to "his" and "he" (this is called pronoun reference), all we have is Ismael killing himself.

Then the author decides to tell the story over. This seems redundant, but, really, a short story that is only a few lines long is not very satisfying. Readers like more detail, more dirt. The re-telling is not much longer, though: "First he grabbed the revolver that was in a desk drawer, rubbed it gentrly across his face, put it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. Without saying a word. Bang. Dead." There are some descriptive details now--where the gun (a revolver) was taken from, how it was rubbed across his face (gently), and where it was placed (the temple). Authors add detail to give the reader a clearer picture, to make the story feel more real. But, really, not much has been added, and we still have only Ismael named, so Ismael killed Ismael. It is not just planning a death, either; we have in both versions, so far, "Bang" and "dead."

The author decides to "recapitulate" (give the reader a re-cap, to go over it again). Certainly, a magazine is not likely to print a one-paragraph story, so she has to give the reader more. Paragraph two adds more details--the grand office, the sensuality of rubbing the gun across the face. We do have the word minister, but it only refers to an office, not a person, so all of the he, him, his pronouns still refer to Ismael. There are now three short versions of the story that all suggest Ismael killed himself.

Feeling that this does not really tell the whole story--"There's something missing"--Valenzuela sends the reader to a bar where Ismael is mulling over the consequences of his future actions, then further back to Ismael in the cradle being ignored, a bit further forward to Ismael in elementary school making friends with someone who will become "a minister...a traitor" and then to the decision that something unnamed is so horibble that it is better to accept death, but whose death? This longer section gives the reader much to think about. Was Ismael somehow warped because he was ignored as a baby? That sounds like the sort of psychological motive that might show up in a court case. If Ismael befriends someone who will later have political power and betray his authority/country, why wouldn't Ismael just go to the newspapers? The government likely controls the media, so if the government is corrupt, that will remain secret, and, likely, Ismael will be silenced with death, so it seems he feels it is his obligation to fix the problem by killing the minister. At this point, all of the he, his, him references in the story can be re-evaluated. Is Ismael rubbing the gun across "his" (the minister's) head?

There is now some background, and there are possible motives (psychological, political) for killing a traitor, but Valenzuela adds to the confusion.

Describing baby Ismael crying with his dirty diapers, the author follows with "Not that far." In other words, this is not something that the reader should consider.

It gets worse. Describing the most solid motive, the friend who becomes a traitor, Valenzuela follows with one word--"No." In other words, that would make sense, but it is off the table; it is not an explanation.

Going back, there are more (not fewer) problems. Is Ismael really rubbing the gun across the minister's temple? Did the minister say, "Oooo, Ismael, that feels so good. Could you rub my neck while you're at it?" Is Ismael slowly rubbing his own forehead? If so, why isn't the minister reacting? Then there is the final paragraph which suggests Ismael shoots the minister and then himself ("another act immediately following the previous one. Bang"). If he also shoots himself, how does he come out of the office "even though he can predict what awaits him"? Yes, this country would be predominantly Roman Catholic, and the consequence of suicide would be eternal damnation, so this could be a supernatural ending.

The problem is that it could be lots of things. That's ambiguity.

The retelling of the plot with additions and changes each time suggests that the story might have a different point altogether. If Ismael killed the minister or himself or both, and if the reader is trying to figure out what happened and why, that puts the reader in the position of a survivor looking at someone who was so desparate they actually killed. If it were a friend or family member the questions, "Why?" and "What could I have done?" would be examined and re-examined with different details and from different angles. In the end, the survivor would never really have an answer. In the end, perhaps, that is "All [that can be known] About Suicide."

ok, so what is the correct answer?

Now this is both the beauty and the madness that is literary analysis (really, all kinds of analysis). If it is a truly thought-provoking work, there probably are several ways to logically look at it. Your job is to back up your claims/conclusions with evidence (details from the literature). As long as your evidence is consistent and fairly represents what is in the story, it is a reasonable claim/conclusion. There are probably several reasonable ways to look at various works of literature. As long as you can back it up fully, logically, with evidence, then it is "right" (though likely not the only "right" way to look at the literature). This is an exercise in logic and evidence (and sometimes even research).

Oh, and just to blow your mind a little bit more, you might want to consider this:

The theme of Akutagawa's "In a Grove" may be very close to the same theme as Valenzuela's "All About Suicide."

Enjoy :)

wait! what? what does this teach us?

Quite possibly we learn lots of things, but the two ideas that I hope stand out most are:

  1. the stories (poems, plays, novels) that get shoved in these literature anthologies are not always simple; they contain ambiguity; they require reading, re-reading, note-taking, thinking.
  2. to try to make sense (get to the meaning or theme) of these stories, you need to read really, really closely, just as I went through "All About Suicide" almost sentence by sentence.

If you casually breeze through the stories, of course you are likely to throw up your hands and say, "I don't get it." If we go back to that car analogy from Lecture 1, it would be like going out to your car, turning the key, hearing the ker-THUMP, throwing up your hands, and saying, "Something's going on, but i don't know what it is" and then just driving away ignoring the (ominous) noise.

Analysis takes some time, but the good news is that there are certain elements you can look for to make the process easier. Your textbook breaks down several literary elements that may be significant in the story you are reading. For example, "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" (one of this week's discussion options), would not work if Ginny were born in 1995; time and place are important in that story, but sometimes setting is just setting and not particularly significant. We will be looking at some literary elements in an upcoming lecture, and that might help you, but here is a method that works pretty well and works quite often, and it's simpler than having to learn symbolism and figurative language and all that.

at this point, I am going to segue into next week's lecture which is about how to write about literature

Reading closely, looking for anything that seems like a pattern (such as repeating the story multiple times with different details each time), trying to spot anything that is peculiar (such as suggesting the story might relate to Ishmael's childhood friend and then dismissing that with the word, "No.") makes reading literature harder than reading Harry Potter and the Phillosopher's Stone; it just does.

Trying to figure out what the author might be trying to teach us (something we might not yet know or believe; after all, that IS what learning is) or even just reinforce as it relates to our life experience is challenging, but it is entirely doable if we put in the time, take the notes, read closely.

This is a class in solving mysteries, and the next lecture will explore how to articulate (write about) our understandinng of those mysteries.