This week with the 11th grade it's been all about Eveline, a short story from the Dubliners collection, by James Joyce. Eveline was the most frequently referred to story during the Oral Commentaries with last year's lit students. The students like the protagonist, the 19-year-old Eveline who has a chance to escape her abusive father and many domestic responsibilities (which fell to her when her mother died) to explore a new life with the kind, open-hearted and manly sailor Frank, who has a home for her in Buenos Aires. Here is the magnificent ending of the story:
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
"Come!"
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
"Come!"
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
"Eveline! Evvy!"
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
I wanted to explore the ambiguity here. Why does Joyce leave the ending open? What does he want us to think about? There are also very few details about Eveline's household - there is a reference to two children that she takes care of, but we never understand where they come from.
As always when important and subtle themes are at play, I wanted to turn to role play, and after discussing options with Monica, decided to have them act out the scene after the end of the story - what happens when she returns home from the dock where she parted with Frank?
The results were fascinating. Each household featured the drunk father and a timid Eveline who came home and mumbled excuses about where she had been and suffered her father's ire. The most poignant went like this:
The father was on stage, wavering back and forth in a clearly inebriated state. Suddenly four children come scampering through the door to the house, dash across the stage and past the wobbly father, and hide under the desk. Next Eveline comes through the door, and her father yells at her and slaps her. He grows violent and she hits him with a bottle (a frozen plastic water bottle in this case - perhaps standing in for his own liquor bottle?) and he falls unconscious to the floor. The young kids creep out and chatter around the fallen foe.
I was amazed at the impact of the children's anxious and hastened entrance. What an effective dramatic device to have their cowering presence first as foreshadowing of Eveline's fateful entrance and then of their father's clumsy wrath. I brought the class's attention to the effect of this decision afterward, and the back group beamed. Role play exposes genius in them they didn't even know they had.
Another golden moment for role play relating to this story this week was in made-up conversations they created between Eveline and her (deceased) mother. Monica and I had several exchanges about what role play scenario would help them analyse the strange and stifling nature of Eveline's relationship with her father (he has been tender at times, and somehow her sense of duty toward him and the family outweighs her desire to live free from his tyranny). We decided on the conversation between Eveline and her mother, thinking the dynamics of the complex father-daughter relationship might be revealed through that avenue. I went to bed on Tuesday not knowing what role play scenario to give the students (I was starting to consider reporters interviewing people who choose to live in a tornado zone!) At 5:35 a.m. on Wednesday I picked up my phone and saw an email response from Monica affirming that the mother-daughter conversation was a good idea. Hamdulilah!!
The role plays were indeed revealing. In one, Nour was Eveline and Sari was the mother, and they rather flapped and floated around the stage as if in a drama queen dream. The dialogue went like this:
Mother: How are you my daughter?
Eveline: Bad!
M: Why?
E: Because of Dad!
M: Why don't you leave?
E: I can't!
M: Why?
E: Because of Dad!
And there you have it - the paradox of Eveline's relationship with her father succinctly and perceptively conveyed in nearly improvised drama. The next day, when the students wrote the letter that Eveline writes to her father (mentioned in the story but whose contents are never disclosed) they expressed with uncanny ease the sense of anguish she feels in making the decision to leave her family, something native English speakers would be hard-pressed to convey in writing.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
"Come!"
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
"Come!"
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
"Eveline! Evvy!"
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
I wanted to explore the ambiguity here. Why does Joyce leave the ending open? What does he want us to think about? There are also very few details about Eveline's household - there is a reference to two children that she takes care of, but we never understand where they come from.
As always when important and subtle themes are at play, I wanted to turn to role play, and after discussing options with Monica, decided to have them act out the scene after the end of the story - what happens when she returns home from the dock where she parted with Frank?
The results were fascinating. Each household featured the drunk father and a timid Eveline who came home and mumbled excuses about where she had been and suffered her father's ire. The most poignant went like this:
The father was on stage, wavering back and forth in a clearly inebriated state. Suddenly four children come scampering through the door to the house, dash across the stage and past the wobbly father, and hide under the desk. Next Eveline comes through the door, and her father yells at her and slaps her. He grows violent and she hits him with a bottle (a frozen plastic water bottle in this case - perhaps standing in for his own liquor bottle?) and he falls unconscious to the floor. The young kids creep out and chatter around the fallen foe.
I was amazed at the impact of the children's anxious and hastened entrance. What an effective dramatic device to have their cowering presence first as foreshadowing of Eveline's fateful entrance and then of their father's clumsy wrath. I brought the class's attention to the effect of this decision afterward, and the back group beamed. Role play exposes genius in them they didn't even know they had.
Another golden moment for role play relating to this story this week was in made-up conversations they created between Eveline and her (deceased) mother. Monica and I had several exchanges about what role play scenario would help them analyse the strange and stifling nature of Eveline's relationship with her father (he has been tender at times, and somehow her sense of duty toward him and the family outweighs her desire to live free from his tyranny). We decided on the conversation between Eveline and her mother, thinking the dynamics of the complex father-daughter relationship might be revealed through that avenue. I went to bed on Tuesday not knowing what role play scenario to give the students (I was starting to consider reporters interviewing people who choose to live in a tornado zone!) At 5:35 a.m. on Wednesday I picked up my phone and saw an email response from Monica affirming that the mother-daughter conversation was a good idea. Hamdulilah!!
The role plays were indeed revealing. In one, Nour was Eveline and Sari was the mother, and they rather flapped and floated around the stage as if in a drama queen dream. The dialogue went like this:
Mother: How are you my daughter?
Eveline: Bad!
M: Why?
E: Because of Dad!
M: Why don't you leave?
E: I can't!
M: Why?
E: Because of Dad!
And there you have it - the paradox of Eveline's relationship with her father succinctly and perceptively conveyed in nearly improvised drama. The next day, when the students wrote the letter that Eveline writes to her father (mentioned in the story but whose contents are never disclosed) they expressed with uncanny ease the sense of anguish she feels in making the decision to leave her family, something native English speakers would be hard-pressed to convey in writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment