Our English Class Blog

I try to show the kids the simple fact that much of what we write can feel iambic even when we’re speaking normally.

In the hush of the classroom we read all the lines of the ages, and marvel that “anapest” is a dactyl and that “trochee” is one while “iambic” isn’t. We scan the lines, apply the labels, and admire the Bard for all he did for the iamb.

The sun rises these days with a brilliant luminescence behind our home. All our trees and those of our neighbors positively glow with the soft morning light.

Cool mornings slide into temperate afternoons, and we spend every moment possible outside, as soon, it will be impossible to sit on the front stoop, color, and press leaves.

The cat senses this, too. She constantly searches for a warm patch of sun or companionship. In the late afternoon, she can find both when she’s lucky.

Our daughter, growing, with ever-expanding interests, begins to discover the pleasures of sitting calmly in the warm sun with a creative task to occupy one’s mind and hands.

In the back yard, the tired afternoon sun creates a softer, more mature glow in the autumn leaves.

And in the midst of all this settling down, this approaching hibernation that will eventually grow tiresome as we long for the blooms of spring, the camellia blooms.

At first I thought Krzysztof Kononowicz was a joke. “Some clever Polish YouTuber has done some video editing and acting and created an idiot,” I thought. Apparently I’m not the only one. In comments posted about the video on YouTube, someone wrote,

ENGLISH: this is a hilarious electoral TV ad of a guy running for mayor of a town in Poland. The ad, which, incredibly, is NOT a joke, contains a huge amount of unintended humor. The cheesy jingle, the studio’s awful colors, the candidate’s look, and, last but not least, his horribly mangled and heavily accented Polish plus his dumbass ideas have made this video an instant classic of political humor. I’ll be posting my translation on my profile soon.

I even said as much on a web site in a post that I removed as I thought about it and realized Kononowicz is not a joke, not even unintentionally.Kononowicz was a candidate for the mayor of Bia?ystok. Elections were held Sunday, November 12. He didn’t win. Watch the video, and even non-Polish speakers would have thought there was little chance he could win. But he did garner 3.5% of the votes.

What makes Kononowicz’s candidacy seem like a joke is his naivety. His platform is simple, Catholic, and slightly nationalistic: stop underage drinking and underage smoking; get rid of crime; protect Poland’s Belarusian border against smuggling; improve the transportation infrastructure. They are all very practical political goals, from an obviously practical man.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kononowicz is not an eloquent speaker. He mumbles as if his mouth is filled with marbles and cotton. He begins by discussing his family, touching briefly on his mother, then speaking of his father (who fought bravely in the war but no longer lives with the Kononowicz family because “he relocated. He’s in heaven now.”), he refers to him as “Daddy.”

He concludes that it’s very much worth it to vote for him because “I am person truly honest, truly fair.” He is not all talk, he assures voters:

“Other parties talk. They talk, and they do nothing. They did nothing for the city of Bialystok. And what I said, I will accomplish everything. Because I am a faithful person and a practicing [Catholic]. And I know how to do it. How to fix the roads. How to do everything. How to eliminate cigarettes. How to eliminate everything!”

A simple man. With simple ideas. But necessary ideas.

There is indeed a lot of underage drinking in Poland, as everywhere. Indeed, there’s just a lot of drinking, period, in Poland. Frigid winters and a 19% unemployment rate will do that to a country.

While I’ve only passed through Bialystok’s train station on my way to the northeastern corner of Poland, I’m sure the roads there are just as bad as everywhere else in Poland. Poles like to joke that their roads are so bad that even the holes in the road have holes.

I can’t comment on the smuggling on the eastern border more than to say it makes the news regularly. Having lived on the southern border, I know there was a significant amount of smuggling things to the west — cheap alcohol mainly.

These are important concerns, but I never really heard politicians talk about them as directly as Mr. Kononowicz did. And that’s why I’ve come to admire the man. Simple though he is, he decided to try to do something about the problems he sees his fellow Bialystokites face. I can almost see him sitting at a table with his friends, probably over a bottle of vodka, saying, “Dang it, I’m going to do something about this! I’m going to stop sitting at this table complaining and go out and do something.”

A heavily-edited version of the video itself is available here.

Cynthia Rylant’s “Papa’s Parrot” tells the story of Harry and the changes he experiences as he begins junior high school. We see a completely different character at the end of the story, and we learn the same lesson that Harry learns. Harry learns that the things he places importance in are not in fact the most important things in his life.

At the beginning of the story, Harry often goes to visit his father at the store, revealing a close relationship. He helps out at the store, and his friends come along with him, buying candies and nuts. Everyone enjoys the afternoon. Harry is a happy child.

When Harry begins junior high, he and his friends have more spending money and different interests. They are no longer children: they’re becoming more interested in spending time with each other than with a parent. Their primary reference group is their peers, not their parents. It is during this time that Harry’s father gets the parrot, adding to Harry’s embarrassment.

The turning point of the story comes when Harry’s father gets sick and Harry must go to his father’s store to accept deliveries and do some organizing. The parrot begins saying the oddest things: “Where’s Harry?” and “Miss him.” Harry, eventually realizing the parrot is only repeating things it heard his father say, realizes that perhaps the change are too drastic: he understands the importance of the relationship with his father. The story explains this change of heart by ending with Harry heading to the hospital to visit his father.

Irony is one of the hallmarks of the short story form. Almost every story has at least a trace of irony, and many stories could not survive the removal of their ironic elements. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” and O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” are two such stories: irony is so integral to the plot and theme of these stories that we could justly say that without irony, these stories would likely never have been published. Irony, in these two stories, is the foundation of the stories’ memorial twists, serving also to anchor and develop the theme.

Both  “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi” have plots that depend in large measure on the use of situational irony to create a surprise ending. “The Necklace” tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loise, a lowly clerk’s wife, who, in an effort to appear more debonaire than she is, borrows expensive jewels from Madame Jeanne Forestier, a wealthy friend. After the inevitable loss of the jewels, Madame Loisel and her husband secretly replace the jewels. Years later, Madame Loise, now impoverished, encounters Madame Forestier on the streets of Paris and admits to the secret. Madame Forestier, shocked by the change in Loise, explains that the necklace was merely costume jewelry. The situational irony — that both the reader and Madame Loise experience simultaneously — is the twist, the unexpected turn of events that is both a perfect example of irony and the very element that makes the plot so original and memorable.

Similarly, “The Gift of the Magi” employs irony to provide the unexpected ending. A young couple, barely able to feed and house themselves, sell their most valuable possessions to buy presents for each other. In an ironic catch typical of O’Henry, Della sells her hair to buy a watch fob for Jim, her husband; Jim, in turn has secretly sold his watch to buy the tortoise-shell combs Della dreamed of running through her long, dark hair. The story makes use of both dramatic irony (readers know that that Della has sold her hair to buy the fob) and situational irony (like Della, readers learn only at the end that Jim has sold the watch to buy the combs) to create the literally-doubly ironic ending: both “sacrifice for each other the greatest treasures of their house.”

Yet the irony in the stories does more than simply provide an unexpected epiphany for characters and readers alike. It also is at the heart of the themes of both stories. With its theme of the futility of pride, “The Necklace’s” theme only appears with the unexpected ending. Had the diamonds been real and therefore the replacements valid, Madame Forestier would simply have thanked Madame Loise and perhaps expressed some pity. Nothing would have been lost. As it is,the Loises lost literally everything because of Madame Loise’s pride, which forced her to suffer “endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury” but unable to attain them. Once she is able to attain the status she feels she deserves, she is unable to lower herself yet again to admit to Madame Forestier that she and her husband don’t have the money to cover the loss immediately.

Likewise in “The Gift of the Magi,” we find a theme that is intricately bound to the irony of the story. Jim’s and Della’s love lead them to sacrifice all for the other, only to find that their sacrifice renders the other’s gift relatively useless. Yet because of their sacrifice, the narrator points out that, far from being foolish, “of all who give gifts these two [are] the wisest.” Their giving meant sacrificing; it meant putting the other’s happiness above their own. It is only through the double irony of the story that this is possible.

While most short stories have some element of irony in them, few have the degree that “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi” contain. Fewer still depend so heavily on irony to make a memorable story with a equally memorable theme.

She stands, balled fists on slightly swaying hips,
her small feet beating a rhythm
of the double-time Sousa
that propels her through breakfast,
a morning fuss, the afternoon walk to the car,
and an evening story.
Her nerves, tingling and twitching
through a lengthening track
of muscle and worry,
bone and discovery,
send an imperative
we hope transforms
into a first conditional,
lacking the shadow of subjunctive regret.
A divine command plants her heel,
draws her foot up,
drops it for a tap,
draws it up again.
I look to the future
and a size seven shoe,
and the corners of my mouth drop
just a bit.

This second draft is very similar to the first. The professor suggested some changes, so the main difference you’ll notice between this and the first draft is omission.

T minus three. A packet of lists: names that spill down the page in the promise of a new year. I flip through the rosters, comparing my schedule with the previous year’s, seeing that with the exception of one or two changes, it’s the same. There aren’t many surprises for an eighth-grade teacher, and there’s certainly something comforting about that.

I make up my seating chart: a simple alphabetical arrangement for simplicity’s sake. Control-P and the spreadsheet unrolls. A visit to the laminator (a teacher’s best friend), and soon, I’m snipping and taping patterns of names that I hope — I know — I’ll come to look upon with affection and admiration. Sure, there will be the one or two thorns, but sharp edges can be smoothed, and I’m confident in my soft answers’ ability to turn away the occasional frustration.

Day zero. Rather, evening zero. I stand at my door, waiting for the students with parents tagging along (and vice versa), hordes (or a trickle), all come to meet their teachers. All come to meet their English teacher. To meet me.

What a thought.

I stand at my doorway, shaking hands, discussing the coming year.  ”What will we need the first day of school?’ this one asks. “What will be be learning?” asks another. I offer answers, ask questions of my own, and resist the urge to invite them in and simply begin teaching now.

Day one. A room of thirty friends, acquaintances, enemies and complete strangers. Eyes dart around as each student enters, both seeking out familiar faces and looking to avoid conflicts. Yet there’s a familiarity implicit in this. After all, most of them have been attending school together two, four, even eight years together. To me, all the faces are new. Sure, I’ve seen them around the school before, but I’ve virtually never had a name to go with the faces.

“Take the paper I handed out,” I instruct a few moments into the first meeting, “and fold it hot dog style.” Glancing around the room, I see that some misunderstood me. “No, that’s hamburger style. Hot dog style.” Perhaps they didn’t hear me: everyone knows hot dog and hamburger folding. I smile and guide them to make a name tag. “Make sure you write in large, dark letters,” I urge them.

The tags become a legend to the map of faces that fills the seats for fifty minutes before being replaced with a new group, who will in turn be replaced. And the nameless faces will become partners in the daily adventure of education.

She stands, balled fists on slightly swaying hips,
her small feet beating a rhythm
of the double-time Sousa
that propels her through breakfast,
a morning fuss, the afternoon walk to the car,
and an evening story.
Her nerves, tingling and twitching
through a lengthening track of
muscle and worry,
bone and discovery,
send a message, a prophecy, an imperative
that, as we age,
we hope to see transformed
into a first conditional,
lacking the shadow of subjunctive regret.
A divine imperative plants her heel,
draws her foot up,
drops it for a tap,
draws it up again.
I look to the future
and a size seven shoe,
and the corners of my mouth drop
just a bit.

One of Langston Hughes’s most enduring works, “Thank You, M’am” presents one of the most memorable characters in the protagonist, Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones. The victim of an attempted purse-snatching, Mrs. Jones moves through anger to compassion, forgiving and teaching her would-be assailant, Roger, with her forward, seemingly-gruff manner. A woman wise from experience, Mrs. Jones shows herself to be an astute, compassionate, yet firm judge of character.

As the story opens, Mrs. Jones must make a decision: the mugging a failure, Mrs. Jones picks “the boy up by his shirt front” and demands to know if he’s ashamed of himself. His simple, monosyllabic response—a plaintive “Yes’m”—forces Mrs. Jones to make a decision about Roger’s, her attempted assailant’s, character: is he a delinquent past all hope, or is he a misguided youth with potential? Mrs. Jones infers, as does the reader, that Roger is not simply a ruffian: he is a boy who knows right from wrong, knows how to speak to his elders, yet has slipped. This act, this betray of all Roger has obviously been taught, is a turning point in his life, a fork in his life’s narrative, and Mrs. Jones sees that she has the power to guide him down one path or another. A less astute individual might not have seen past the transgression and might have sought simple revenge by dragging Roger off to the police. Mrs. Jones, however, hears Roger’s simple answer and knows she stands at a decisive moment in the boy’s life.

Yet it’s not only that Mrs. Bates realizes the significance of Roger’s attempted theft. Any number of individuals could realize this, but it takes a unique kind of temperament to move past one’s sense of betrayal and anger—after all, she was to be robbed—and let compassion rule one’s actions. This is precisely what Mrs. Jones does, though. Lamenting that she would like to “teach [Roger] right from wrong,” she settles for washing his face and feeding him.

Here, her wisdom resurfaces, for once she gains Roger’s trust, she lets him know that he now has her trust by leaving him a clear escape route, with the very prize he sought sitting by the door, unguarded. In doing so, she is showing (as opposed to telling) Roger that she sees the promise in him and that she trusts he will now seek to improve based on that potential. He, in turn, catches a bit of Mrs. Jones’ plain astute wisdom and shows his appreciation for the trust given by taking “care to sit on the far side of the room where he [thinks] she [can] easily see him out of the corner other eye, if she [wants] to.”

Through all of her interactions with Roger, Mrs. Jones remains firm, stern even. She endures no nonsense, and she insists on being respected. The sternness begins with a kick in the pants and continues even when she has begun warming up to the boy. She reads his mind unapologetically, suggesting he “thought [she] was going to say, but ‘I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks,’” without even a hint of uncertainty. She sends him on his way unceremoniously, with a gruff, “Behave yourself, boy!”

To examine this piece more closely, download the annotated version.

Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper” explores the violence of the beginning of the Irish Civil War. An unnamed Republican sniper shoots an informant and an Irish Free State soldier, only to be fired upon by another sniper on another roof. The protagonist eventually shoots and kills the enemy sniper only to realize it is his brother.

In many ways, the setting is the most important element of the story, and it is critical to the conflict. The characters are nameless individuals, undeveloped and only barely described. It is the setting, a darkening evening in war-torn Dublin, that makes the characters. It is only in terms of the war that we get much description of the protagonist:   his eyes have “the cold gleam of the fanatic,” we learn, and they are “the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.” The dismal setting also sets the mood: we read of the “beleaguered Four Courts” and gun shots that “spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms” break the silence. It is a mood of apprehension about the unexpected. Most importantly, though, the setting makes possible the entire story. Only in an environment ravaged with a war that divides — the American Revolution, the War of Secession, and the current conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya —  can a conflict of two brothers unknowingly shooting at each other seem realistic.

This was to be a short analysis of  how the setting for “The Sniper” contributes to the conflict of the story.