Awakening

I just finished Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

Denise and I were talking the other day about how students might find non-fiction easier than fiction. I guess this is because it tends to be a little more straightforward and less picturesque. Of course, that's a huge overgeneralization. Anyway, back to Chopin. In one respect I think this book will be easier than others for students: there are moments where Chopin just comes out and says specifically what is going on with Edna in very quotable chunks. It seems like every other page has underlining in it in my book and I am a very picky underliner.

One thing I did not notice or take the time to notate in my first read(s) of the book was the use of two words: awakening and possession. These words are all over the place in the whole book but particularly in the last chapters.

That begs an interesting question about love and possession. Is to love and be loved a form of possession? We feel entitled to something when we love someone and they love us back, so I guess that would be a form of ownership. I got into a conversation with my mom about how some people are so hard to be around because they seem to think popularity and love are areas for competition. They have a need to be loved the most or more than someone else. I think Edna was the opposite of this. She loved very deeply but found that love took more from her than it gave. She was very sensitive to the level of sacrifice she had to attain to be around her loved ones. I do not question whether or not she loved her kids. She loved them but found it difficult to be around them because of all that she had to do for them out of that love and nurturing. It is difficult to love halfway.

Last summer, I was able to stay home with my kids full-time. Elizabeth was born in June. Nate was almost 3. I enjoyed watching Ellie grow from a sleepy infant to a cooing baby. I loved watching Nate grow and watching his mind work through things. I cuddled with them. I read to them. I watched Nathan run around. But by the end of the day when my husband came home, I had had enough. I not only needed adult conversation; I needed to have moments where I was not needed. This is the sticking point. This is what some fathers fail to understand and what a lot of pet-owners don't seem to get when they compare their pets to children. You cannot tell the kids, "Go away for two hours" or 'Take care of yourself for a couple of minutes so I can think about such and such issue fully instead of multi-tasking yet again." I found myself changing a diaper while talking on the phone and mentally planning dinner while keeping one eye and ear on a busy toddler. That's exhausting.

I think mothers also have a more physical connection with their children. For nine months, they knew my heartbeat as a constant sound. My kids come to me for snuggling and for comfort. When they want a hug or a comfy pillow, it is mommy they come running to. This is wonderful. But it too is draining. Last summer, when my husband would walk in the door, I would ask him, "Please hold them. Let me have half an hour where I do not hold a kid." It wasn't like I held them all day long, either. It was just that throughout the day, they would need me, and that need was such a physical need. I needed to recharge somehow, and that only seems to come from being away from them for a little bit.

In the book, that image of the sea seemed so appropriate. That ebb and flow of water under the sway of something so powerful and mysterious. I could see any love relationship as having that pull. There should be an equal balance there. Something giving but also taking, something taking but also giving. My children take some of my energy but they give it back to in the weirdest and sweetest of ways. Edna got to a point where she the kids were just a reminder of everything in her life that was always pulling, pulling. With that association made, it was hard to see them as anything else. That was particularly clear to me when she was with Adele Ratignolle as Adele gave birth. Edna could focus only on the pain and "torture." To miss the wonder of it all: that a little person is now in the world and that little person is part you and part of your husband. The little person has ten fingers and ten toes and fingerprints and tiny little fingernails! She was right. She wasn't awake for it all. I don't know if that was a result of the chloroform or whatever they used on women back then, but...to only focus on the pain and the sacrifice means she missed out on much that was good. The awakening she had seemed to close her off to that possibility.

This all puts me in mind of Virgina Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Right now, I am home alone. I have been home alone all day, trying to get rid of a sinus headache. I'm supposed to be grading papers. Oops. It is amazing how much of a difference it makes to have some time to myself. Right now I am feeling the ebb and flow of teaching: good moments in the classroom vs. weekend hours spent grading papers!

Second seminar-- 9/12

At the beginning of the second seminar, I asked students to take out their seminar papers and their textbooks and open to the text. I also asked if they would like me to interrupt if they strayed off topic or allow them to handle it themselves; they said they would prefer to be gently guided back to topic. This reminder and discussion at the front end seemed to emphasize the importance of both staying on topic and remaining close to the text. They succeeded on both accounts and made very good connections and observations. It was wonderful to observe, and again I am amazed at what students are capable of if given the opportunity to shine on their own without constant hovering.

Denise and I had talked about the last seminar debriefing and decided it was just plain awakward. Students talked around things and ended up dwelling on topics a little removed from the text's main points with one student trying his darnedest (is that a word?) to get them to see what they were doing. We decided a big part of the problem was the awkwardness of the large group size (20) and how that made some students hesitant to talk and other students all too willing to fill the void. We discussed and determined it was important to us to have students spend some time in individual writing (that did not go well, but I think it was because Denise and I created some sort of a distraction...perhaps just me. I don't specifically recall what happened). Then we asked students to break into their clans and get with a clan they had not been with at 8 a.m. Then, the two small clans together would have to share with each other the highlights of what happened in their seminars. This was ideally what we wanted to happen last time too. Instead, it actually happened this time.

But something unanticipated happened too. Two clans took too much pride in what they had accomplished in seminar and seemed to battle it out over who had the "right" approach. The funny thing is at 9 a.m. when Denise and I got together, we talked about how our different groups had done and bragged on each one a bit to talk about what they had talked about. We were pleased with the different topics covered and thought that sharing all of that would give students more to talk about. We never dreamt it would be divisive!

It's kind of like when two kids fight over who loves mommy more. On the one hand, the mom is upset because they are fighting. On the other, she's pleased that she's loved enough to be fought over. I'm glad that the students are taking pride in what they accomplish in seminars. I'm exceedingly glad with what they are actually learning and the connections they are making in the seminars. The next task is to try to get that to transfer over to the paper writing.

Movie: Zodiac

What an interesting movie! It's dark, but that's to be expected from a movie about a serial killer. What surprised me was the humor. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but there are little moments sprinkled throughout that make you go, "Heh." There was one part where a guy has been contacted by the killer and he tells the police the Zodiac kept calling but never left a number, and the policeman responded, 'Yeah, he's kind of crafty like that." What's interesting to me is at first I thought it was kind of strange that there was so much humor, but then I got to thinking how real it is that the humor is there...because that's what we do in situations like those. In order to persevere, we use humor to lighten the mood and make it seem like it isn't as bad as it is.

The whole movie is a great study in realism. It's about a serial killer, but what it is really about is obsession with the serial killer and one man's pursuit of the guy. The direction is fantastic. At first I was a little dismayed by how long the movie is, but the length helps reinforce how much time went by without the Zodiac being captured. That element of time is necessary for us to come to the same conclusions that the people in the movie are coming to. The whole thing was very artfully crafted for very particular reasons and to create a certain affect.

So many movies are done a little haphazardly. There's a lack of connection in the plotline and the characters seem to do things in a random way. Not so here. The big difference is the amount of detail used. The writers and the director seemed to intentionally go for substance over using tried and true strategies. I noticed they didn't over-rely on certain shots and soundtrack and things like that. Don't get me wrong, they did very artful shots and also had a soundtrack, but they didn't use it like so many others do. It wasn't there as a shortcut; it was there for a reason. They didn't always play the "the killer is coming" music. They didn't stage those cheesy "dunt dunt dunhnh" moments all the time, so when those moments actually came, they were more significant. I got chills, honest-to-goodness-full-body-goosebumps. Twice! That only happened because I was so fully sucked into the story and what had happened. I was invested in it. I felt like I was viewing it all happen first person. The story was mine.

There's a message here for writers too. All of this stuff with intentional movie-making and how this impacted me is true for good writing. Don't rely on cliches. Don't do the tried and true stuff all the time or it will become cliched. Go for substance and take your time. Get the reader to care. The details in this movie paid off. They are what allowed me to experience it as it happened. One example here. There are multiple scenes that happen where the cartoonist and the newspaper reporter have desks. I have no idea what the San Francisco Chronicle work area looked like in the late sixties and early seventies. No idea. But in this movie, there was a huge room, the size of a school cafeteria, and it had fifty desks in it, all cluttered with paper and the debris of working. I didn't look at each desk, but I'd venture a guess that each one was slightly different in terms of how much clutter and personalization. The movie-makers didn't have to go to that effort. How many people actually look at a desk that is fifteen rows from the main desk where the two characters are talking? Probably none. But...rather than have the set be a smaller area with just enough detail for them to shoot the two characters around one desk, the movie-makers went through the effort of constructing the whole room and each individual desk with its own clutter. That's what makes it real. I believe that is what the SF Chronicle area looked like during that time period. That belief and that trust allow me to believe all of the rest of it.