One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to Lord of the Rings: The Importance of Parental Involvement in Regards to Reading with their Adolescent Children

            The ability to read is essential in American society today as it can be difficult to go through one’s daily tasks without coming across print that needs to be deciphered.  Reading is one of the first educational subjects that parents begin to teach their children because it has such a grand impact on the rest of their lives.  Parents begin reading to their children as early as infancy—some begin reading to the mother’s belly before the baby is even born—and many continue up through elementary school.  However, experts have observed that at the end of elementary school—around grades fourth through sixth—this parental role seems to decline (Klauda, 332).  The interest that fourth through sixth grade students have in reading seems to be much less than that of previous grades, and this may be caused by the lack of parental involvement in their reading development because stereotypically students seem to get more involved with the learning process when their parents take an active role in their academic career (Klauda, 330).

            Many parents seem to believe that reading with their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students suffices for the learning support for the entirety of their children’s reading lives, but children need assistance while they are adolescents as well.  Dr. Penny Soboleski, head of the Clubhouse, a children’s literacy program at The University of Findlay, says, “Reading to children while they are adolescents is highly important because parents can read them a more complex text and help them understand it.” There is such a push in American society to concentrate on reading with children at an early age with programs like Your Baby Can Read that many parents seem to worry only about the young ages and once their child grows up they allow them to learn on their own (Klauda, 327).  Parents’ involvement in their children’s education is crucial when it comes to reading.  Soboleski says, “Parents must model what it means to be a reader as well as showcase the variety of reading materials available to their children.” This modeling can occur at any age, but studies show that one age is more important than the rest.  It is just as important to read to babies and toddlers as it is to read with elementary students and adolescents.  However, the decline in reading interest that is occurring at the end of elementary school makes it most important for parents to continue reading with their children as they become adolescents to ensure that children never lose their interest in reading.

            In order to understand the importance of parents reading to their adolescent children, one must first understand the importance of reading to children at a younger age.  Therefore, I will delve into reading with babies and toddlers and elementary school students before I get to my main focus of parents reading with their adolescent children.  By doing this, it will be easier to see how all three groups are similar as well as different.  The groups will be broken down specifically into baby/toddler years from birth to age four, elementary school years from age five to age twelve, and adolescent years from age thirteen to eighteen.  These groupings will allow for a clear distinction between the age groups that are being read to by parents the most and the age group that needs to be read to more.  In setting the argument up in this manner the importance of parents reading with their children at all ages will be seen with an emphasis on parents reading with their adolescent children.

            Reading with babies, children age birth to two, seems to be the easiest for parents to do because babies spend a lot more time with parents than older children and babies don’t have any responsibility, so the opportunity to start molding their mind is perfect at this time. Susan Straub, the developer of The Read to Me Program, agrees with this as she believes that having all this time allows for a system of familiarity to be set up with the child.  She states:

Babies often choose a favourite book and demand to hear it frequently. Why? Besides enjoying its familiarity, I suspect the repetition is akin to the practicing which leads to mastery. If the reader is the parent, the reader is helped to master the art of being a good parent. Additionally, because so much in a baby’s day is out of his control, even chaotic, I think the faithfulness of a favourite book is reassuring (Straub 350).

Straub’s idea of familiarity as the baby picks out their favorite book goes far beyond the fact that they have something they can recognize as their parents continue to read to them. Soboleski would agree with this idea of recognition in regards to the children recognizing their parent’s voice as she says, “Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read.”  Straub also relates this continuous reading with the child to practicing the skill of reading.  Mastering the skill of reading with their child is important when it comes to Straub viewing them as good parents. She asserts that parents who bring literacy into their children’s lives at an early age are only setting up their learning process for many more years of reading together.  Parents who continue to read with their children from infancy to adolescence are good parents in her view as they are taking the time and effort to read with their children in order to help strengthen their reading skills and motivation.  Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction research specialist, Susan Lutz Klauda, believes that babies don’t necessarily have the mindset to be motivated readers just yet, but if the parents are motivated to read to them this learning process will stick with them in following years as parental motivation is contagious (330).  This idea is one that is backed up by many theories and research studies while looking at a variety of age groups of children.  Parental motivation will get the child interested in the book, but still the process of the parents reading to their children is of the upmost importance.

            When it comes to reading with babies, the process is what matters most.  Obviously babies can’t read, but they’re able to gain knowledge from the books that their parents read to them because they remember the pictures and the words that go with them.  This sharing process helps set up the children’s reading ability early on because their brains start retaining all the information.  If a parent were to read a book such as Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to their baby, the child is going to remember the different fish in association with the number of them or their color because often times it only takes hearing the word for the baby to retain the action or description that goes with the word. At eighteen months, babies only need to hear one instance of a word to create a memory of its association with a specific event.  This is evident in studies that have shown that a researcher can play with a child in a room full of toys.  Then they leave the room, and someone else comes in and places another toy in the room.  If the researcher comes in and shouts, “Look!  A dax!” the baby will assume that the new toy is the dax (Curzan and Adams, 341).  The baby in the study has figured out that usually new things are talked about rather than familiar things, so when the word dax comes up again in dialogue they will remember that new toy and associate that word with the toy.  This brain activity also seem to be heightened when working with parents as research has also shown when babies hear a variety of words from their parents their brain development is enhanced, and, on the contrary, those children who are not read to at an early age enter school with a major deficit due to this lack of development (Straub 352).  Straub states, “The ‘reading’ babies are so far ahead and will continue to grow that the ‘nonreading’ babies really struggle to keep up.  Perhaps, then, this is the key to making school successful for all of our children:  get parents to read with their babies” (Straub 352).  This research, as Straub has described, aligns with the view that reading with children at all ages is important because learning how to reading and to continue reading is a building process. 

            The toddler years, when children are ages three and four, are just as important as the baby years because the minds of children are still growing and schedules for parents to read are still there.  Parents of toddlers may have more responsibilities and busier schedules than parents of babies as their children may start getting into daily activities such as dance classes and piano lessons, but they should still have time to sit down with their child to read a book. Parents should be able to talk with their children at this age after reading a book as their children will be verbal, and this will help convey that parents are interested in their children’s opinions (Layne, 34).  Many literary scholars believe when parents talk with their children about what they are reading, they are reestablishing the importance of literacy in their lives.  Isabel Schon, the director of the Isabel Schon Center for Spanish Books for Youth at the San Diego Public Library, states, “Children naturally respond to their parent’s tone, affection, and concern.  Books are a loving way to build that wonderful connection between parent and child that lasts a lifetime” (Schon, 35).  This connection that she is talking about in regards to parents reading with their children should be set up to last a lifetime like she suggests, but sadly many parents don’t stick with it when their children get older.  However, still more scholars advocate for parents to read to their children while young in order to prepare them for the future.  Michael Strickland, a reading and writing professor at College of South Idaho, states, “Children who come to school having rich experiences with oral language, storybooks, and print concepts will be better students…” (Strickland, 35).  Therefore, the toddler years are of high importance when it comes to parents reading with their children because they make up the last couple of years before children enter elementary school. 

            The elementary school years, when students are age five to twelve, are also very important as children are continuing to learn new literacy skills daily from their teachers.  Many parents might believe that the students have teachers in their lives now who can do the reading work with them, but it is just as important for parents to continue with their support.  Elementary schools have begun to set up programs in which teachers and parents do reading activities such as paired reading, reading discussions, and phonic awareness exercises just to name a few.  Frances Imperato is a reading specialist at Martin Luther King School, a K-5 school in Edison, New Jersey, and she has set up a program for kindergartners at her school in which parents and teachers read with children.  She has always suggested that parents simply read with their children, but due to the rise of English language learners in her school she knew that she had to try a different method.  After speaking to a presenter at workshop she was able to implement his ideas at her school as “he recommended a parental involvement and reading instruction routine that involves a daily rhyme that children read repeatedly with their parent and that is followed by one or more simple and quick phonics or phonemic awareness activities” (Imperato, 342).  She has high hopes of her program branching off to other grades at her school if it proves to be successful, and by the looks of her results this program will soon be implemented elsewhere.  During her first year of the study, 2007, she had a decrease of 66 percent of kindergartners not being able to read to only 19 percent not being able to, and this was due to their parents’ involvement in the reading process (Imperato, 344).  She also found the 89.5 percent of the students would leave kindergarten as readers if their parents were able to get involved with the reading program (Imperato, 344).  These numbers help show that programs like this are working in school systems today.  If parents work with their children as much as their teachers are, then there will be a positive influence on the reading abilities of the students.  Imperato states, “I have found that simple, at-home literacy programs that feature authentic and engaging reading activity and that are easily understood, implemented, and administered show positive results in literacy learning…” (344).  If students in every grade in elementary school were able to have dedicated parents, or other positive role models, like this, reading scores would continue to be high as Imperato’s study suggests, but near the end of elementary school the motivation of parents and students seems to decline.

            It has been suggested by students that the support of their parents seems to decline as they aren’t as involved in their academic and non-academic lives (Kluada, 327) starting at the end of their elementary years from grades fourth to sixth (Kluada, 332).  These years are crucial as they are the last years before the children reach adolescence, ages thirteen to eighteen, in which parental involvement seems to continue to decline.  The majority of children are used to their parents helping them with their reading assignments, and then many children go from getting a lot of parental support in elementary school to getting little to no support at all in middle school and high school. (Kluda, 327)  This leads to a lack of reading motivation and a decrease in reading activity for adolescent students, so it is important to change the way that many parents are acting at this stage of their children’s development in order to get their children’s reading processes back on track (Klauda, 330).

            Two theoretical models help back up the point that if parents continue to read with their children at this age the effects will be positive.  McKenna’s model for reading acquisition describes how reading attitude affects one’s decision to read, and Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading looks at the characteristics of people who are dedicated to reading (Klauda, 329-330).  By applying these models to adolescent students, it is easy to see that parents should continue to play supportive roles when it comes to their children’s reading.

            McKenna’s model shows that the students are going to have an attitude towards reading based on significant factors in their life, and these factors will either cause them to have a positive or negative outlook on reading.  The first factor includes how the student views their past reading experience.  This factor brings a lot to their attitude because they are going to be more familiar with what they know; their views on the past are going to produce an “immediate impact on attitude without cognitive meditation of belief change” (Klauda, 329).  The student will have a hard time thinking twice about changing their views on reading because they have already been set up; that is why it is important for parents to start reading to their children early and to continue throughout their childhood.  If a child has enjoyed being read to throughout life and their parents continue to read to them during adolescence then their positive views on their parents’ reading to them will be associated with the time in which their parents are presently reading to them.

The second factor looks into the student’s belief of the outcome of their reading. This connects with the first factor in that adolescent’s past reading experiences are going to influence whether they have a positive or negative view towards reading.  Likewise as with the first factor, it is important for parents to provide positive reading experiences for their children through life as their children’s attitude will continue to improve overtime, but if their experience is on the contrary their attitude towards reading will worsen as time goes by (Klauda, 329).  For example, if a child’s parent read to them in elementary school to help them prepare for reading tests and the child received high scores on those tests, then they are going to have a positive view on the outcome of their parent’s involvement in their reading process.  The child will be able to make a connection to that positive reading outcome, and, in turn, connect it with their parent reading to them during adolescence.  The idea of parental involvement in the first two factors also carries over to the third factor as it looks at how the student will view whether or not their significant others value reading. 

This last factor of McKenna’s model stresses that it is critical for parents to continue to read with the children as this repetition of reading will show that the parents hold reading in a high regard (Kluada, 331).  If parents model that reading is important, then it will resonate in their child’s mind that it is important as well.  Therefore, that is why it is important for parents to continue reading to their children when they are older.  If a parent were to just stop reading to their child because the child had reached middle school or high school, then the child is going to view that action as one that suggests their parent no longer values reading.  Soboleski would agree with this as she states, “Modeling reading is of the highest importance.  If a child grew up in a literary-rich environment in which their parents always read to them, they are going to view reading as a positive experience for the rest of their lives” (Soboleski).  The factors of McKenna’s model and along with Soboleski’s view point flow into the next model as students who have positive attitudes about reading can start to become engaged readers.

Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading sets up four characteristics of engaged readers.  Readers who are engaged know how to use reading comprehension strategies, are knowledge driven, are highly motivated, and regularly interact with peers, family members, and others with reading activities (Kluada, 330).  This model backs up the point that it is important for parents to read to their adolescent children because that interaction will keep their children motivated and engaged while reading.  Guthrie and Wigfield’s model is grounded in the self-determination theory because it looks at how individuals are motivated when they feel like intrinsic agents, such as their parents, are going to positively affect their work (Kluada, 330).  Adolescent students need this extra motivation from their parents.  When adolescents work with their parents on reading and see that their parents are mirroring that reading is a positive activity then they are more apt to be motivated to continue with the reading activity as these theories suggest.

The other characteristics of knowing how to use reading comprehension strategies, being knowledge driven, and being highly motivated also connect with the parental support in reading.  Parents and other agents of support such has teachers have done their part in reading to the children throughout life.  Therefore, stereotypically by the age of adolescence the children should have mastered how to comprehend the text in which they read although this can still be a growing process as literature gets tougher as the years go by.  Soboleski provides a side story to back this point up as she says, “When my boys were in high school, I would read Lord of the Rings to them.  It was a more complex text with tough vocabulary, so I was able to pause at places and provide them with help with the difficulties in the book” (Soboleski).  This constant learning of comprehension strategies based on this model suggests that the readers will become more engaged in the literature they are reading because they are learning how to understand it. 

Soboleski’s example can also be connected to the last two characteristics of being knowledge driven and highly motivated.  Students are going to become engaged readers after spending time reading with their parents because that model of reading is going to leave them craving more knowledge while motivating them to read more and more.  Soboleski says it best when she states, “No one can read to a child like a parent.  A parent and child have a connection like no other.  Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read.  Even reading with a great teacher can’t compare” (Soboleski).  Just as when they were babies, toddlers, and elementary school students and their parents would read to them, that connection needs to remain through adolescence to help motivate the children to continue to be engaged readers under Guthrie and Wigfield’s model.

Parents who read to their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students need to continue reading with their children into the age of adolescence.  The parent’s model of reading will help the child connect back to all of their positive reading experiences throughout the years.  As a parent of an adolescent sits down to read with their child, the child will be reminded of the literacy connection they have with parent as well as how much their parent values reading, and these combined motives will help the child continue to become an engaged reader.  As experts from each age group have suggested, reading is a growing and continuous process as the brain continues to gather new information, so when parents of adolescents take the time to sit down with their children to read a book they are making a large difference in their child’s life by giving them the gift of the importance and value of reading.

Works Cited

• Curzan, Anne and Michael Adams. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2009. Print.
• Imperato, Frances. “Getting Parents and Children Off to a Strong Start in Reading.” Reading Teacher 63.4 (2009):  342-344. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Klauda, Susan. “The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Reading Motivation and Activity.” Educational Psychology Review 21.4 (2009):  325-363. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Layne, Steven. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 34. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Schon, Isabel. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Soboleski, Penny. Personal Interview. 15 April 2011.
• Straub, Susan. “The Power of Reading with Babies.” Infant Observation 12.3 (2009):  349-352. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Strickland, Michael. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.

Education as a Cross-Cultural Theme: A Look at the Education System in Zimbabwe as Compared to the Education System in America Through the Lens of Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions tells the story of Tambu, a young teenage girl, as she lives a life of hardships, twists, and turns in the colonized state of Rhodesia, which is now present day Zimbabwe.  In the large picture the novel deals with how a negative, colonial influence can place a control over people causing them to develop illnesses, side effects, and mindsets that can last for many years.  However, the themes of the book go above and beyond those conditions in regards to freedom, identity, and the importance of education.

The idea of education was one that struck me as interesting because I believe it is a concept that is easy for many American readers to connect to while reading the novel.  Education is taken for granted in the United States because everyone is given free public education and many students continue at the university level because they have the financial means and opportunity to do so, but education in Zimbabwe is a different story, as the country suffered from years of colonial control that caused their people to have fewer opportunities in the field of learning and becoming educated. 

Nervous Conditions helps set up the idea that the importance of education is a universal theme because when readers from other countries see how much Tambu works in order to go to school they will be able to connect her journey to how hard they work in order to be successful in school.  Education serves as a way to gain a voice, an identity, and a place in the world in both societies, but a difference in opportunities makes it difficult for many people in Zimbabwe to continue to become educated as they don’t have all the resources that the people in America do.  I believe this novel offers a look into the worlds of both education systems in the United States and Zimbabwe showing that education is valued in both societies, but democracies have more opportunities for their people to continue their education as postcolonial countries are still suffering from years of being ruled and the transitions that have come after that colonization.

In the novel, Tambu’s brother, Nhamo, is the only member of the family that is being educated because most families could only afford to send one person to school at a time, and their parents raised funds for Nhamo being that he was the male of the family.  Even though it wasn’t fair that the system was set up that way being that Tambu didn’t get a chance to immediately go to school because she was a woman, education was still a whole family ordeal.  Babamukuru, the children’s uncle, is the head of the family because he is the most educated and successful.  Therefore, it is his job to make sure that he sets up the rest of the family with everything that they need in order to have productive and plentiful lives.  He does his part by offering Nhamo to come to his missionary school as it would be a better education than regular schools in Zimbabwe.  Meanwhile, Tambu is stuck at home wishing that she too could have the education that her brother was getting from her uncle.  Tambu works as hard as she can in order to reach this goal as she plants corn and tries to sell it at the marketplace to raise funds for school.  The selling process doesn’t go over too well, but eventually a white couple gives her enough money to pay for her education because they felt sorry for her.  However, she didn’t get her chance to go to school until Nhamo reached a sudden death because she was able to take his place for her family being that Babamukuru wanted to keep his promise of educated at least one person from each strand in his family.

The fact that Tambu was given the chance to have this education was quite shocking during this time period in this country because women weren’t looked at as equal to men.  When Tambu initially expressed her aspirations to attend school her father said, “Can you cook books and feed them to your husband?  Stay at home with your mother.  Learn to cook and clean.  Grow vegetables” (Dangarembga, 15).  His views go along with the common ideal that education was a man’s institution.  Her father believed that any education that she received would just benefit her husband’s family in the future and not hers, so he saw no use in providing money for her to learn when it could be allocated elsewhere in more useful ways.  Luckily, education was an “inherited tradition and a patriarchal investment in which it allowed the man to play the primary bread winner” (Nair, 133) because that allowed Tambu the privilege of attending the missionary school under the guidance of her uncle, Babamukuru, who is the headmaster of the school.

            This educational opportunity sets Tambu up for lifelong learning since Babamukuru’s devotion to his family overrides society’s view on women being educated.  It was rare for women to be highly educated at this time, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t happen.  Bababmukuru’s wife, Maiguru, holds a master’s degree, and she serves as an inspiration to Tambu throughout the story.  Tambu hopes to one day be as educated as her aunt, but she hopes that when that time comes she will have the ability to use that education.

            Although Maiguru is highly educated, she doesn’t have the privilege of using that education because she still has to play the role of a woman in society.  She is expected to cook, clean, and wait on the men of her household while at the mission and while at the family homestead.  This causes turmoil for her as she is trapped in this society where she can’t let her true identity show.  Literary theorist, Janice Hill, states, “colonial education, and the drive of the entire Sigauke family to educate themselves and each other through the colonial system, drive and complicate much of the action of the novel in ways that are directly connected to silencing…” (Hill, 79).  Maiguru is a character who is connected to that silencing as her role in society causes her to not be able to use her degree.  A person’s education is what defines who they are, and the fact that she doesn’t have that right leaves her as a silent character in this novel.  She conforms to her role of mother and wife and just lets her degree go to no use.  She was fortunate to have the opportunity to earn that degree in England while her husband and children were studying abroad, but back in the state of Rhodesia, she doesn’t have the opportunity to put the knowledge she gained to use. 

Tambu is aware that her aunt’s lifestyle could very well be her outcome in the future as the society she lives in is relatively static, but she hopes that through education and with time opportunities will arise for her.  Therefore she takes every chance she can get to keep learning.  When given the chance to possibly attend an esteemed mission school near the end of the novel Tambu says, “If you were clever, you slipped through any loophole you could find.  I for one was going to take any opportunity that came my way….going to the convent was a chance to lighten those burdens [of the women in my family] by entering a world where burdens were light” (Dangarembga, 182).  Although Tambu uttered this statement near end of the book, this seemed to be her motto throughout the novel.  She was aware that educational opportunities were scare for her people, especially women, so she took any chance that she could get to learn and, therefore, gain her own identity.

This educational adventure starts right after Tambu’s brother dies and she is offered his spot at Babamukuru’s mission school.  This step offers a whole new world for her as she goes from a simple school in her village to this mission school that is towns away.  Originally mission schools weren’t used to educate as much as they were to bring Africans to Christianity (Summers, 117), but they also served as a more effective form of education as their teachers were paid more than government schools (Summers, 132) because they held higher degrees and were educated in faraway lands just like Babamukuru. 

While at this mission school, Tambu is offered a variety of opportunities that wouldn’t necessarily be available to someone of her status, but because she has the connection with Babamukuru she is allowed the privilege to step inside his world.  She lives with Babamukuru’s family right on the mission grounds, and she is treated as if she were a daughter in the household.  The family gives her food, provides her with clothing, and sets her up with a bed.  Coming from a homestead where she was expected to wait on her family members and play the role of a woman in the home, this was a drastic change for her.  She was able to focus on her studies for once in her life while also forming connections with her cousins that had been educated in England.

Being that her cousins, Nyasha and Chido, had been educated in England they were different than most of her peers.  Living in a mansion that was as furnished as Babamukuru’s, and having a life as privileged as they had was very rare in Rhodesia at this time.  In fact, Tambu had mistaken Babamukuru’s garage for his house (Dangarembga, 64) because she had never dreamed that her uncle would be living in such an extravagant place as his white-walled mansion.  There had always been a since of disconnect between Tambu and her cousins because she was very used to her lifestyle on the homestead where things weren’t westernized at all.  However, once Tambu started living at the mission, she too started to become westernized just like her cousins.  She found in the mission a place that she didn’t want to leave.  It offered her a transformation and step into the direction of becoming the person that she wanted to be.  She said, “Babamukuru was God, therefore I had arrived in Heaven.  I was in danger of becoming an angel, or at the very least a saint, and forgetting how ordinary humans existed—from minute to minute and from hand to mouth” (Dangarembga, 70).  Through her time spent at the mission, Tambu was able to learn from scholars in a variety of fields while also living in this dream-like land so different from what the rest of her family was experiencing, and then one day she was offered an opportunity to attend an even higher esteemed mission school ran by nuns.

The day when the nuns came to the mission, Tambu tested high enough on her test that they administered that her next level of schooling could be taken at the covenant school that the nuns ran.  Originally, Tambu didn’t want this to happen because he feared that she would become too educated for her own good, but in the end he allowed her to go.  Tambu continues with her motto by taking any opportunity placed in front of her and jumping on it.  She finds it hard to leave her cousin Nyasha behind, but she knows that she has to do this for her in order to break out of the uneducated stigma that women are placed under in society.

The story ends with Tambu coming back to the mission school to visit Nyasha who is suffering from an eating disorder due to the control that she has been under from her father, her people, and the colonized government.  Nyasha’s issue is a separate theme within itself in the story, but it in fact connects with education because when Tambu comes back she sees what the colonized system has done to Nyasha, and she is able to reflect.  Tambu states, “I told myself I was a much more sensible person than Nyasha, because I knew what could or couldn’t be done.  In this way, I banished the suspicion, buried it in the depths of my subconscious, and happily went back to Sacred Heart” (Dangarembga, 208).  Tambu was able to see what a colonized system can do to a person who isn’t rebelling and taking chances to get out of it.  Tambu chose education as an escape from this system, and her reflections on how Nyasha turned out allowed her to write about all the aspects of this story in hopes that people could see that she had not gained the freedom to be a strong, independent woman who wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.  She was given opportunities unlike so many other people during this time, but she took them and allowed education to be her ticket to escape, freedom, and identity.
 

American readers should be able to connect with this idea that education can offer an escape because that is a very similar concept in The United States.  Students are told to stay in school because they can achieve their dreams with degrees.  High school diplomas used to offer a variety of job opportunities, but now it seems as if people have to have a college degree if they want to make a decent living.  Therefore, people are finding means of going to college to escape from the world of financial hardship in order to become the person they want to be.  This is similar to Tambu’s journey because in the end her education started to give her an identity and a voice. 

American readers should also be able to connect with the way education is set up in Zimbabwe.  Students who have the opportunity will attend a primary school for seven years, and then they will move on to secondary school consisting of six forms which are closely related to high school and college in The United States (Embassy of The United States).  The years are a little different as it only takes three years to earn a bachelor’s degree and five years to become a doctor, but their system is very much set up like the one that America has today. 

Both societies offer a variety of schools for their students to attend.  Whereas Tambu could attend a government school or a mission school, students in The United States have the chance to attend public school, private school, or charter school.  Although it is hard to associate the class system in America with the hardships that the people of Rhodesia suffered from, there can be a connect between the two systems.  Just as opportunities arose for Tambu to get a better education because of her family connections, schooling in America is related to income and success as well.  Although it is free to attend public school in The United States, many parents believe that private and charters schools are the better route to take, and they cost money.  There is much debate in America as to which school system is the most effective way for children to learn, but the connection to opportunity, financial opportunity, is still there.

This idea of opportunity is what divides the two cultures as well though because in America everyone has the chance to attend school through public school, but in Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) a student’s chance of being educated is in the fate of how much money their parents have to spend, who they are related to, and the chances that they take.  Tambu lucked out because she was given the chance to be educated by her uncle after her brother, unfortunately, passed away.  However, many people, especially girls, wouldn’t have gotten that chance because the colonized land offered many hardships for families—Tambu’s situation was a success story.  People had to worry about living from day to day.  Money was used for shelter and for food first off, and if any was left over then maybe one child could be supported to go to school. 

Education in America is taken for granted, but books like Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions help change this status.  This cross-cultural theme about the importance of education helps students from America relate to those in Zimbabwe, but it also helps them open their eyes to the hardships that take place for people living under colonized rule.  America was once a colonized state many years ago, but the way history turned out they became a democracy.  History could have taken another route though, and Americans would have been in the same situation that those in Rhodesia were facing.  Therefore, it is important for readers in America to read books like this in order to reflect on the life that they have and to connect with others as humans in this worldwide society.

Works Cited

• Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Banbury:  Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd., 2004. Print. Embassy of The United States. “Education in Zimbabwe.”
• Hill, Janice E. “Purging a Plate Full of Colonial History: The Nervous Conditions of Silent Girls.” College Literature 22.1 (1995): 78-91. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
• Nair, Supriya. “Melancholic Women:  The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in Nervous Conditions.” Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995): 130-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.
• Summers, Carol. “Demanding Schools:  The Umchigwe Project and African Men’s Struggles for Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1928-1934.” African Studies Review 40.2 (1997): 117-140. EBSCOhost. Web. 10 April 2011.

The Best of Both Worlds: What Happens When Anita Desai Sets Up Fasting, Feasting in Two Parts?

     Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting looks at the consumption of food between families in both India and the United States.  The first part of the novel is focused on the life of Uma, a daughter who is tied to her parents’ every want and need in India, while the second part of the novel looks at how her brother, Arun, in how he adapts to life in the American suburbs.  It’s interesting how Desai chose to put one family member, the one who has the most freedom to try new things, in American society to compare and contrast the two social systems.  Food is a central issue in this novel, and Desai does a remarkable job in showing how in both societies food takes precedence over everything else.  The way in which she set up her novel shows that the societies are both very different although the importance of food remains important in both.  Her formatting of the novel is up for interpretation though.  Does the dual structure of Fasting, Feasting allow for an easier comparison of consumption in India and the United States since they are separated in such a manner?  I believe that in separating the narratives written about India and America, Desai has made it easier for her readers to see how consumption takes place in both societies.

     Desai has her novel divided into two parts with the first part taking up almost three-fourths of the entire book and the last part taking up just one-fourth.  The way in which she formats the two sections helps her set up the distinctions between the societies that are worlds away from each other.  When it comes to the first part that is focused on India, the chapters are very long and drawn out, and overall it moves very slowly.  The second part, however, is quite the contrary.  Its chapters are very short and it seems to flow a lot quicker than the beginning of the book.  This is symbolic in the way that the two societies run.  America is a very fast paced society that never slows down while India seems to be a calming land with a flow of its own.  I believe that in separating the novel into two parts, Desai was able to focus more on each country at hand to develop a more detailed description of how life takes place there.  Literary scholar, Angelia Poon, agrees with my point here.  She says:

Thus, rather than interspersing Uma’s story with Arun’s narrative or splicing both stories, Desai realizes her insistence on an unequal world by literally dividing her novel into two parts. This bifurcated and bifocal narrative structure, part of the novel’s transnational politics, shows us two fairly circumscribed worlds where there is little room for border-crossing, seepage, and hybrid identities (Poon, 37). 

Poon believes that in focusing on the narrative as two separate structures, the readers are able to see Uma’s story and Arun’s narrative for themselves.  Although they are occurring simultaneously, their separation allows for no confusion as to which ideals belong to which society.  The reader is still able to juxtapose Indian society and American society in terms of consumption by reading the stories separately.

     It is a justifiable case that Poon states here as India and America do differ very much in regards to politics and power.  India was recently under control by the British colony while America has been a free country for many years.  It is important for readers to keep this in mind as they look at each part of the novel because it is easier to understand why people act a certain way in society due to how they are ruled.  Indian society, again, seems very old-fashioned with an easy pace because they’re used to following orders and living out their daily lives in a uniform manner.  American society is much quicker and more open because they have been a free country for quite some time.  She also brings up border-crossing and hybridity as ideas that don’t really come to focus too much because the societies are so separate.  Arun physically crosses a border as he moves from India to America and he could be faced with hybridity as he tried to merge the culture of his homeland with America, but being that these two sections are separate readers don’t concentrate on that aspect of the story as much.

     It is easy  to think of Arun as a hybrid character at the start because you can assume that he will merge the two cultures together, but in fact he becomes very caught up in the society in America and starts to lose his Indian ways for American traditions.  He struggles finding food to eat in this new society because everything seems to be very raw.  Arun was used to his vegetarian lifestyle in Indian, but that food choice in America is very different.  His host mother, Mrs. Patton, tried her best to make him meals with vegetables, but they were still very Americanized with raw vegetables.  Yet, he didn’t back down because they weren’t what he was used to.  He suffered through it and ate the food that she had made (Desai, 184-5) Although he is able to point out many American ways of life that are quite foreign to him, like buying food in bulk, he still falls into living that lifestyle when he is with the Patton family.  One may argue that he does let go of his Indian culture as he gives his shawl and tea to Mrs. Patton at the end as well (Desai, 228).  These are the only two pieces that Arun has to remind him of his homeland, and he realizes he doesn’t need them anymore.  Therefore, he makes the best use out of them and gives a little bit of his culture away.  Sybil Steinberg agrees in her book review of the novel because he says, “…his final act in the novel suggests both how far he has come and how much he has lost” (Steinberg, 56).  By living in American society for just a short while Arun was able to think, act, and eat American.  Anita Poon looks at this in a more theoretical way in connecting it with the separation aspect.

     Poon goes on to say, “The attempt to capture simultaneity and coevality, in order to suggest disjunction as well as possible connections between gendered subjects and different cultures, forms part of Desai’s novelistic vision or what we may call her ‘imagined world’” (Poon, 37).  This idea of an imagined world comes from the work of Arjun Appadurai, and it looks at the combined worlds of different cultures that come together to form another world that becomes a vital part of the global economy (Appadurai, 25).  This imagined world becomes real in Arun’s America as he joins in the Indian Diaspora and his home culture crosses the border into his new country.  By creating this imagined world, readers are able to look at the two societies and easily compare them in ways of consumption and beyond.

      As the title suggests, Desai sets up a very distinct food system in both parts of her novel.  In India, they seem to always be thinking about food and what they‘re going to be eating at the next dinner, but they don’t eat besides at dinner.  In America, food is bought in bulk so people can snack on it throughout the day.  Uma is part of a society that eats to live and Arun is living in a society that lives to eat.  This imagined world that Desai sets up with the two cultures could very well change the outlook on globalization, or at least it could help establish the fact that similarities can be found in areas of difference around the world.  Although America is more consumer-minded and food seems to be held on a higher scale than in India, food is just as important in Arun’s homeland as it is in the country he is now living in, and by placing these realizations at opposite ends of the novel it is easier for readers to understand that comparison.

      Along with food, the idea of consumption seems to be a large part of this novel.  Food is made to be consumed in both societies, but a different light is cast on the way it is consumed based on how the society is run.  As mentioned earlier, America is a very consumer-minded society while Indian society is very tradition in that they don’t have supermarkets on every corner.  The ways in which these societies have been run in the global world have a lot to do with this situation.  The freedom of American society has allowed for a capitalist system to be set up with a free market.  This is why America is full of so many restaurants and businesses.  When it comes to India though, just getting away from British rule, they’re working to build back their political power in the world.  Naturally, they wouldn’t have as big of a business industry to disperse on food.

    Interestingly enough, this idea of consumption goes beyond just the quantity of places in which you can get food in each country.  Dinner time is connected with consumption in a very close manner, and because of the way each society is set up dinner occurs very differently in each.  In India, the family sits down together and eats the same meal and overall the meal seems to be healthy mix.  There is a hierarchy at the table as the women have to help the man with different aspects of his meal such as peeling his orange, but I believe experiences like that really help the family bond and connect over dinner.  It is, in fact, much the contrary in American society.  As the Patton family doesn’t even eat with each other in the book.  Everyone seems to do their own thing as they pick what they would like to eat, but there is a large disconnect between the family.  Dinner time should be a time of collective consumption between families, but this isn’t so in America and problems occur because of it.  In the novel, the Patton’s daughter only eats certain foods and she is found to be bulimic because she doesn’t always keep her food down, on purpose, after eating it.  This is one of the largest issues of consumption in the book, and it happens because society in America is so open.  Once again, if these two families were side-by-side in the novel it would be hard to see this connection while hooking each individual case back to something in that society.

     I believe that while looking at consumption in regards to each society in this novel, it helps that Desai wrote two separate parts.  In connecting the idea in a postcolonial light while looking at the power in each country, the author was able to write vivid parts that could stand alone as single stories or move together as one.  It is interesting that consumption of food although very different in each society in quality and quantity, is actually a factor in India as well as American.  Having a little universality in the book helps connect the theme across borders for the two distinct parts, but making the two distinct parts really helps set apart the idea of consumption in both societies for readers to easily compare.

Work Cited

• Aldama, Fredrick Luis. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” World Literature Today 74.1 (2000): 240. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theorizing Diaspora. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 25-27. Print.
• Desai, Anita. Fasting, Feasting. New York: Mariner Books, 1999. Print.
• Moeller, Dianna. “Book Review-Fasting, Feasting.” Library Journal 125.2 (2000): 115.   EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Poon, Angelia. “In a Transnational World: Exploring Gendered Subjectivity, Mobility, and Consumption in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Ariel 37.2/3 (2006):  33-48. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.
• Ravichandran, T. “Entrapments at Home and Abroad in Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting.” Indian English  Literature:  A Post Colonial Response. Ed. Gajendra Kumar and Uday Shankar Ojha. Darya Ganj, New Delhi:  Sarup & Sons, 2005. 80-89. Print.
• Steinberg, Sybil. “Forecasts:  Fiction.” Publishers Weekly 246.49 (1999):  55. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 February 2011.

A Critical Self-Assessment and Application of My Literary Approach: How a Meshed Genetic/Reader Response Criticism Can Be Used on the Works of Truman Capote

            Literary criticism is a very broad topic that can be looked at using various perspectives.  There are many theories that can be used while reading a piece of literature because everyone reads texts differently.  Some people concentrate more on the story while others are concerned with the realism of the characters.  Others focus on the language and words found in the story, and even more focus on how readers would react to the work.  History, the current culture, and literature as a whole can come into play as well for many readers.  All these different perspectives make literary criticism a very diverse subject that allows each reader to read a piece the way they find best fit.  This makes the subject of literary criticism and theory appealing for many who study it because they don’t have to follow theory by the book and agree with everything that has been said and written about the different perspectives.  They can decide what they agree with and what they disagree with, and they can mesh different theories together to make their own literary approach. 

            Donald Keesey, author of Contexts for Criticism, has developed a graph of formal criticism that many place themselves on in order to understand how they read literature.  Keesey states, “Because criticism usually involves the interpretation of a particular work, it is logical that the work in question should hold the central place in the diagram” (Keesey 3).  Therefore the piece of literature remains in the middle and the various perspectives branch off to the sides for readers to apply to the work.  The graph is made up of an x-axis and a y-axis.  The top of the y-axis is concerned with the author and historic criticism, while the bottom is concerned with the audience and reader-response criticism.  The x-axis is made up of reality and mimetic criticism on the left and literature and intertextual criticism on the right.  When I first looked at the chart, I had difficulties trying to decide where I would place myself because one doesn’t always think about how they read until they are told to do so.  First, I thought that I just fit at the top of the y-axis because before I read a piece of literature I have to always read a biographical piece about the author so that I can connect the literary story to their life and the time in which they wrote the piece.  However, after some deeper thinking, I realized that I do more than that.  I also connect the story to myself and how I react to it as well as how other readers would respond to it.  Therefore, when looking at Keesey’s diagram, I fall on the entire y-axis.  Sometimes I spend more time on the top of the axis and other times I spend more time on the bottom, but usually I spend my time right in the middle so that I can move freely between historical criticism and reader-response criticism. 

            I feel at home on the y-axis because through all my work with the different theories, the historical and reader-response perspectives make the most sense to me.  I feel like I have gained the appropriate amount of knowledge of those theories, so I’m able to apply them to every work that I read and they work in helping me understand different pieces of literature.

            The historical context of criticism looks at a piece of text from the background of the past.  Those who concentrate on this theory mainly look at the author’s background, the author’s intention, and the mores and conventions that were in place in society at the time the piece was written or even at the time in which the story is based.  People who study this will look into the story to find different aspects that they can do further research on to derive some deeper meaning about the story. 

By looking at the author’s background they can see if the story is directly or partially based on something from his or her past or if something that occurred in his or her past caused the story to be written in that way.  By looking at the author’s intention they will be able to figure out what the author has planned to do in writing the story.  If they did some research and found out information about the author’s past then they would be able to connect that to the story and hypothesize why each aspect of the story was written a certain way.  In looking at the history of the time the story was written historical critics look at different scenes and actions in the story to decide where it is taking place.  They will also use what they know about what was going on in the life of the author and the society they were living in at the time that he or she wrote the piece.  This information will help them decide if different aspects of the story were put there on purpose because that is how things worked back then or if they were just coincidental.

E. D. Hirsch spent a lot of time with this theory.  He argued that coherence was not a quality that should be looked at fully to determine meaning, but that the context of the interpretation of the work should be evaluated.  In his essay, Objective Interpretation, he states, “It is natural to speak not of what a text says, but of what an author means, and this more natural locution is the more accurate one” (Keesey 27).  Therefore, he believes that doing research to decide what the author’s intention was is a more accurate way to understand a piece than just looking at it for its words in general.

After reading this quote by Hirsch, I knew that I agreed with his perspective of the historical context.  I too believe that readers are able to understand a text better by figuring out what the author is trying to say instead of just looking at the words.  This is why the formalist context doesn’t work for me because I’m more concerned with what the author is trying to get across in his work.  I spend time studying the history of the time when the piece was written and the life of the author, so that I can figure out what the author means by the piece.  A formalist critic is only going to look within the piece to find its true meaning, and this doesn’t always work.  Many times the author has an external motivator that he brings in from the outside to form meaning in his work.  I find this to be a positive aspect of historical criticism because it offers a different perspective in looking at a piece of literature.  I’m all for cognitive learning, and I feel that it is far less cognitive to search within a piece for meaning than it is to search outside a piece.  It takes some extra work and deeper thinking to find the meaning of a text outside of the text, but after all is said and done I feel like the reader is able to better understand the piece overall by using this literary context.

The reader-response context is made up of an umbrella of approaches to literature that focus on the responses that readers have about the text.  Someone who looks at a piece of text using a reader-response context combines the text with how they feel about it from a reader’s perspective to create a shared reaction.  By taking what they find in the text and combining it with what they know they are able to react to the text and understand it more deeply.

As I have already stated, this context is really made up of a series of different approaches that are interrelated, so to describe this context more clearly I will describe two perspectives that I agree with.  When it comes to reader-response criticism, I tend to follow what Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish have each developed.  I combine both of their theories together to make up my reader-response theory that I can use to apply to different pieces of literary work.

Wolfgang Iser came up with the concept of the implied reader.  This was broken down into two roles that the reader would have:  the role of a textual structure and the role of a structured act.  In the role of a textual structure the reader will be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to just based on what he was already aware of.  In the role of a structured act the reader will find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.

Stanley Fish believed that meaning was derived mostly from the experience of the reader.  The same aspect of a piece of text could be viewed many different ways depending on the prior knowledge that each reader has of the material.  In his article, Is There a Text in this Class, a girl asks her teacher if there is a text in the class that she is going to be in for the new semester.  The teacher replies that there is a textbook because based on his prior knowledge from when students usually asked that question he assumed she was talking about the textbook when she said text.  However, she wanted to know if the class was going to be one where the students believe in poems and other texts or if was just them and their own perspective.    Therefore, based on this example different readers are going to view aspects of a piece of writing in different ways based on their own personal lives.

I know that this context relies more on looking at the text to develop a reaction and then a meaning, and I just got done saying that I’m not too fond of formalism because it looks solely at the text.  However, I feel like the use of the text here is different.  The reader-response criticism doesn’t just look at the text, but it makes a connection with what the reader knows and doesn’t know to help guide them in the meaning.  I don’t like how formalists only use the text to find meaning, but here prior knowledge and experience, two outside sources, are used to help the reader develop meaning.

In regards to this perspective, it is hard for me to choose between the theories of Iser and Fish because I see the use in both of them.  Some critics who follow this context of criticism will only agree with Iser or only agree with Fish, but I can’t really argue that one theory is stronger than the other.  The implied reader idea is appealing to me because I like how a text can open doors and allow the reader to see ideas and perspectives that they haven’t been aware before through the textual structure.  I also find it to work positively through the use of the structured act because the reader is able to find meaning from the text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him, and this can relate to historical criticism in a way.  The perspective that guides the reader can be that of the author’s, and their perspective can be related to their own history.  Therefore, my two different approaches on the y-axis are able to find a connection here.

Fish’s theory also works well in my approach because it can connect the reader-response context with the historical one as well as work by itself.  Fish believed that readers are able to understand different pieces of text based on the experiences that they have had.  Therefore, if a reader has had much experience with the works of the writer they are reading then they will be able to understand the meaning of the piece better due to what they already know.  This works well outside the author realm as well though.  I find that when reading a piece of literature I begin to understand parts that I can relate to more.  I believe this is true for all readers.  No matter what piece of literature one is reading, they will always find a part of it that they can relate to.  This part will stick out most in their mind and allow them to derive meaning from the story based on that relatable aspect that they connected with.

The reader-response context works well overall because it allows for the reader to not only relate the text to what they know in order to respond to it, but it allows them to think about how other readers are going to relate to it as well.  I chose this theory as part of my approach based on this because I like the wide range of opportunity open for readers to use their cognitive minds.  I also find that the umbrella of perspectives allows for this context to be used in a variety of ways, and although I chose to only include two of those perspectives in my approach, just having those two allows for quite an expansive range for readers to use and apply to different pieces of literature.

I chose to mesh historical criticism with the reader-response context because I feel at home using both theories.  I find the connection to the outside world in both contexts to work towards that advantage of finding the true meaning of different pieces of literature.  I think that it can be difficult at times to use other theories that solely look at the text to find meaning because doing that uses more interpretation than my approach allows for, and in interpreting a piece of text it can be hard to know if what you are thinking is what you are supposed to be thinking.  At least with my approach, interpretation has outside sources to fall back on.  I value the fact that records can be looked at to see how the writer lived their life, and the fact that readers can take from their own experiences to react to a piece of literature and find its deeper meaning.

I will now take this time to show how my approach applies to a piece of literature using Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”.  I think this is a piece that I can really showcase my theory on because this piece was influential in helping me design my literary approach.  I read this piece after I began to figure out how I read pieces of literature.  Therefore, I feel like my approach shines brightly in this story.  Capote used different aspects of his childhood in the South to write the story, and I was reminded of my relationship with my maternal grandmother throughout the story.  Therefore, the historical and reader-response contexts show up strongly and can easily applied. 

            “A Christmas Memory” is a story about a little boy nicknamed Buddy and his elderly lady cousin who he refers to as his friend.  They live in a house with many other family members, but the rest of the family is very strict so Buddy and his friend keep to themselves along with their dog Queenie.  They are rather poor, but they save their money up over the year so they can use it around Christmastime.  Starting in late November, they get their money out and go out and buy supplies to make fruitcakes.  They make about thirty fruitcakes a year for people that they have met once or twice or even for those they haven’t met at all.  They make one for a couple whose car broke down in front of their place a few years back, missionaries who lectured in their town the previous year, the bus driver, the reverend, and even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Making the fruitcakes for those people allows Buddy and his friend to feel special because they’re doing something for people who are much more well-to-do than themselves.

            They spend a good portion of the story gathering supplies for and then making the fruitcakes.  They pick pecans from an orchard that isn’t theirs, gather different fruits from town, and purchase whiskey, the key ingredient, from an Indian bootlegger named Haha.  After the cakes have been made and mailed out, Buddy and his cousin finish off the whiskey with their dog.  The other family members in the house ridicule the elderly woman for allowing a child to get drunk.  This brings her to tears, but Buddy cheers her up by reminding her that they will soon get a Christmas tree to decorate and have presents to make.

            The next day Buddy and his friend go out and chop down a very large tree and bring it home.  Then they spend many hours creating ornaments for the tree and making gifts for each other and the rest of the family.  Buddy suspects that his cousin is making him a kite just like she did the previous year, so he does them same.  On Christmas day, the two go out and fly the kites that they made each other and have a joyous time.

            Sadly, Buddy says at the end of the story that this was the last Christmas that he got to spend with his cousin because he got sent to military school.  They still wrote each other letters, but she started to get dementia so she wasn’t the same friend that he held all those fond Christmas memories with.  He ends the story by telling the readers how he knew of her death before he was even told, and he looked to the sky expecting to see a lost pair of kites, like hearts, sailing to Heaven.

            In regards to my literary approach, I always start with the historical aspect first.  Therefore, readers of this piece would have to read a short biographical piece of Truman Capote first or even look into records of his childhood before actually reading the story.  In doing this, they would be able to see that much of the story is taken from his childhood.  He in fact had an elderly cousin that he was very fond of, and they spent a lot of time together because the rest of the family was very strict just like the family in the story is.  However, after getting past this simple fact, the readers would have to explore the reason why Capote wrote this piece.  Did he want his readers to get a glimpse of his childhood life even though it might be a little fabricated?  Did he want to showcase the love between family members, showing that he had at least one person who cared for him?  Did he write accurately about the South in the 1930’s?  Did he actually make fruitcakes with his cousin, or is the fruitcake symbolic of another aspect of his childhood?  Did he actually exchange kites with his cousin?  These are all questions that could be asked dealing with this part of my approach.  The readers are going to want to look at every aspect of Capote’s life including his childhood which he uses for this piece and his mindset around 1956 when the piece as written because it could be just as much about his past as it is about the current state he was in when he wrote the piece.  Readers could look back at records to see where Capote was living while he wrote the piece, who he was living with, and how he was spending his days.  They might also want to look farther back to see what life was like in the 1930’s for a boy in the South or if the other people in the story actually existed.  They could find out if there was a Indian bootlegger at that time who resembled Haha, if a couple’s car had actually broken down in front of Capote’s house, or if missionaries had lectured in his town.  Evaluating every piece of the story for its connection to the writer’s past is essential with the first part of my literary approach because using the outside material connected with the author can help the readers better understand the meaning of the piece overall.

After the historical context has been dealt with then my approach requires readers to travel down the y-axis of Keesey’s chart to reader-response criticism.  Being that this is my approach, first off I would concentrate on the concept of the implied reader, looking at the textual structure and the structured act.  The textual structure would allow the reader to be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to see before just based on what he was already aware of.  For instance the reader might not have been aware of the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other patrons who received the fruitcakes were higher up on the social ladder than Buddy and his cousin, so this part of the story would allow the reader to see that Buddy and his cousin feel like they are important because they get to make the desserts for those people.  Likewise, this story introduces a diverse family connection that many readers might not be aware of.  I remember after reading this that I thought for the longest time that his friend was his grandmother, not his cousin.  Therefore, this story introduces readers to the fact that different family members can have strong emotional connections with one another, and they can take this knowledge and run with it in order to find a deeper meaning in the relationship between Buddy and his elderly friend.  The structured act would have the reader find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.  This means that the reader is going to take what they know in life and bring that to the story.  Based on what they bring, the text is going to mean different things to different people because their perspectives are going to be different.  A young boy might connect with Buddy in the story and see the friend as his grandmother while an elderly woman is more apt to connect to the cousin in the story and view Buddy has her grandson or possibly her neighbor boy.  Also, one has to take in to account that various people are going to be educated differently and be at different maturity levels.  The young boy who reads the story is going to find more meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are playing together and spending time with one another.  While the elderly lady who reads the piece is going to be more apt to see the deeper meaning and connection that Buddy has with his cousin.  They are both lost souls who are found when they are with each other, so when the cousin dies at the end Buddy feels like he has died as well.  That is why he looks up to the sky as if he is going to see two kites sailing to Heaven.  It all depends on what type of perspective a person brings to the story as to what type of perspective they get out of the story.  I think that it is also important to know what each type of reader will bring to the story as I have demonstrated here.  Readers not only have to show how they will react to a piece, but they should also know how other people will as well. 

Stanley Fish’s context falls in closely with this as well.  It all depends on what the reader brings to the text as to how much they understand it and what they get out of it.  If someone has a close relationship with an elderly family member like Buddy does, then they might be able to see the connection that the two characters have.  Likewise, anyone who has experienced the hustle, bustle, and excitement of Christmas time would be able to connect with that aspect of the story and find some meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are participating in the festivities together.  There has to be a least one aspect of the story that each reader has some experience in, and that way they are able to connect themselves to that part of the story and find some meaning from the piece overall.

Using historical criticism and reader-response criticism together on a piece literature has a very positive effect in my eyes.  I believe that bringing in outside sources connected to the life and times of the writer as well as having readers bring in their own experiences to connect to the piece allows for a better understanding overall, and when readers understand a piece of literature they are able to get to its deeper meaning.  Using my literary approach, I have found that I can connect parts of the writer’s life with parts of my life in order to find true meaning in pieces of literature.  Therefore, I believe that my approach works because it brings forth two literary theories that involve cognitive thinking and bringing in aspects of the outside world.  The y-axis on Keesey’s chart is the right place to be because readers are able to make connections and reactions that will help them in discovering the true meaning of every literary piece that they read.

Works Cited

• Capote, Truman.  A Christmas Memory.  New York:  Random House, 1956.
• Fish, Stanley. “Is There a Text in This Class?”.  Is There a Text in This Class?:  The Authority of Interpretive Communties.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1980. 678-693.
• Hirsch, Jr., E. D.  “Objective Interpretation”.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 17-33.
• Iser, Wolfgang.  “Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader”. Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 140-147.
• Keesey, Donald.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003.