The Case for Literary Analysis in ENGL1020
04.27.19
Students need more practice in research, in the application of knowledge to real life problems. In our current world, more than ever, students need to be able to create logical arguments rooted in evidence. We teach them that in our ENGL1010 Composition 1 classes, and I am not opposed to that as part of our ENGL1020 Composition 2 classes. They will also receive that experience in their sociology classes, their psychology classes, even their history classes. What they will not receive in those other classes is an understanding of and appreciation for the artistry, the beauty, the significance of language as an expression of the human heart.
So many of my students do not read, read superficially, have never read a book all the way through, do not like to read, see no value in literature. ENGL1020 is not just a composition class—although it is that. It is also a literature appreciation class. My students hated to have to read The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. But they read it, and more importantly, they liked it. The novel and the stories that they read for class, the poems that we explored, spoke to them, reached them on a level that goes beyond the academic to the very heart and soul of what the humanities mean and what our mission states.
We hear so much about the irrelevance of the humanities, the pragmatism that suggests that education has no purpose other than to prepare people for the practicality of the workforce, that every effort should be made to create students shaped to the needs of their employment. Many of the classes that students take do just that. But there is more to an education than the pragmatic. Education opens people to the possibilities of life. Education awakens the mind and the heart. There is more to life than the drone of the worker bee gathering honey for the honey pot that someone else will eat and enjoy.
If someone needs a pragmatic reason for the study of literary analysis, let it be this. The core of the scientific method is the systematic observation of data, the search for patterns of meaning, and the application of those patterns to the data for the purpose of directing human efforts toward understanding and control. Rarely do students engage in unfettered application of the scientific method at the freshman/sophomore level. Instead, they are taught the basic formulations, language, and discoveries of science with some practice in applying those methods in limited, experimental settings.
In ENGL1020, focused on literature, students are taught to engage in close reading of a text, to tease out of the text the relevant details, to search for the patterns that stitch those details into meaning, and to weave those details into a pattern of explanation that reveals the significance and meaning of the work. Every assignment immerses them in this methodology that is analogous to the scientific method. The data that students explore is different, but the methodology is the same. More than any science class, they are immersed in the practical application of the scientific method.
But, while the scientific method is a tool for understanding and appreciating the complexity of the world around us, the study of literature opens us to the realities and complexities of the human mind and heart. When Oppenheimer declared at the successful testing of the first atomic bomb, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he was not speaking from the domain of science but the wisdom of literature. Two years later, his explanation of that comment was not one rooted in science, but one rooted in the realization of the implications of science drawn from the revelations of literature. “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatements can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose” (Temperton). The humanities stand as the counterbalance, the reminder that our actions have consequences, that there is more to this world than just existing.
Temperton, James. “’Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ The Story of Oppenheimer’s Infamous Quote.” Wired, 9 Aug. 2017, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/manhattan-project-robert-oppenheimer. Accessed: 25 Apr. 2019.