A Vermont teacher gave a demo this summer that helped me connect Faulkner’s writing, the film The Dark Knight, and pedagogy for writing. She didn’t mention the first two topics, but she did give a sequence from educational theorist Ruby Payne that goes as follows (my notes, not quoted):
Inability to plan → cannot predict → cannot identify cause and effect → cannot identify consequence → cannot control impulsivity → will have an inclination toward criminal behavior (That is, if a student cannot plan, he/she will not be able to predict. If he/she cannot predict, he/she will not be able to identify cause and effect, etc.)
The teacher used the sequence to emphasize the importance of teaching structured, ordered writing. Though the teacher’s focus was on the style of writing and the thinking it required, Payne’s argument states that criminal behavior may result if students can’t plan and give structure to memories. Implied in this is that “good” behavior, unlike the end result of Payne’s sequence, relies on linear thinking and trust in cause and effect.
Ideally, a teacher will work with students at a young age to help them develop the skills – the way of thinking – necessary to avoid Payne’s sequence. The child will learn to create ordered stories, and in turn that will help them to see and fit in with the order that society creates. Specific to their trust in cause and effect is that good action will result in reward, and bad action will result in punishment. But what happens when the system doesn’t work? When good things happen to bad people, and vice versa? Since this system is how we create order out of the seeming chaos around us, chaos is all we are left with when the system fails. Insanity.
In The Dark Knight, the Joker tells different, conflicting stories to explain the scars on his mouth. There’s no cohesive background to him. No clear motivation. That’s what Batman struggles to understand, with Alfred eventually helping to explain. The Joker isn’t a criminal looking for money or power. He just wants chaos. He wants to see the world burn, as Alfred puts it. As for his background, it’s left to the audience’s imagination, with no rational way of pinpointing what made him who he is.
We do, however, know a fair amount about Harvey, the man who later becomes Two Face. He trusted the system, and its collapse, pushed by the Joker, makes him insane. All he has left is the flip of a coin, showing that the only fairness in the world is chance. Heads you live, tails you die. Justice, as he sees it, must come from his own vendetta. Starting out as a hero for the city, a man who defends the system and stands as one of its leaders, he ends up a villain.
The Joker argues, and convinces Harvey, that this imposed system belies human nature. Betrays the universe. As I understand his work, having read only As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner presented the universe in much the same way. His writing is dark, violent, and real. Particularly interesting, and often challenging, is his decision to reflect this chaos in his prose. Not on the sentence level – though they too can stand against the demands for clear, concise statements – but with his shifts in time and perspective. Often abrupt and unexplained, the reader grapples with uncertainty. Faulkner’s writing does not fit the mold of structured, ordered writing. The reader wants to impose order, but Faulkner’s point is that he has written the universe as it is. As the Joker would have it. As students shouldn't see it
NECA TMNT Toon “Binky’s Day Out” Slash V2
17 hours ago
2 comments:
Shawn, Kev here. Coming at you from Sky Harbor International Airport.
Regarding Faulker: I think his writing illuminates the problem of structure on more levels than you've touched upon here. While his novels do appear to have a lack of structure that mirrors "real life" more closely than more conventional narrative styles, it is misleading to say that the works are in any sense chaotic. Rather, they show how people (characters in the story) attempt to create order and meaning (including notions of cause, agency, or a lacking of either) out of the world, which is chaotic until viewed in the past tense by an observer. What Faulkner does so well is show how events can be construed by different obsevers in completely separate and at times even contradictory ways. Once students read the text with this in mind, it begins to seem much less impenetrable, much less chaotic and random.
Move up one level, and you can look at the work in terms of how it was constructed by its author. Is it truly chaotic? How doe Faulkner achieve this appearance of disconnectedness? How does this type of structure work to create narrative force in lieu of the typical plot "events" of more conventional forms of narrative, e.g. movies, stories, etc.? In other words, Faulkner's lack of structure is in fact a structure itself. You can look at the characters ad how they attempt to weave events into cohesive forms, and at the same time consider how the author of the work is doing the same thing in creating it.
So, I don't know if your Faulkner example supports your point as well as your Batman one. Or I've simply misunderstood your point completely, or just made one of my own that's not really related at all.
Kev -
I agree with everything you wrote about Faulkner, and wish I could have put it as eloquently. Not sure how long it took you to write that comment out, but I really struggled to write this post. That's part of the plan in keeping a blog - becoming a better writer by challenging myself.
By describing his writing as "chaotic," I was referring to how it doesn't fit the traditional sequence and organization of narrative. However, it's exactly that aspect of his writing, in addition to lush prose (no pun intended), that gets me excited.
My connection to Payne's sequence and the teacher's demo - my point, as you call it (helping me realize that this writing doesn't really have a point but does more raising of ideas and connections) - lies in her idea that students need to learn how to turn memories, as Faulkner sees us attempting to connect and give meaning to them, into traditionally sequenced and organized writing. Jeez, that last sentence was an example of why people shouldn’t attempt to imitate Faulkner’s prose. I need to get more concise in my writing. More like Hemingway.
The Joker and Faulkner suggest that meaning and order are imposed on a chaotic, violent world. Payne thinks that lacking this imposition, in both writing and thinking, can lead to criminal behavior. I think that when people suddenly look, willfully or by force, at the raw level of life, especially after developing trust and an understanding of the world through Payne’s impositions, they can go insane. At least feel that the foundation is hollow. But I’m not suggesting that this imposition is negative. I think it’s necessary in many ways. It just sets people up for a long fall.
Post a Comment