Last week's lesson involved a response to the question:
IN HIS POETRY, HARRISON IS ALWAYS CRITICAL OF THE WAYS IN WHICH SOCIAL DIVISIONS ARE BOTH CONSTRUCTED AND MAINTAINED.
To what extent do you agree with this view?
Some people still owe me an essay. I want it asap.
Today's session considered SECTION C of the exam. The class discussion considered the 'REBELLION' question and we made some notes that may allow students to construct an introduction and a comparative paragraph. Here are some notes to accompany the OTHER question:
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROTEST WRITING SHOWS THAT, IF PEOPLE ARE TO EFFECT CHANGE, THEY NEED TO GROUP TOGETHER. Explore the significance of people joining together as it is presented in two political and social protest texts that you have studied.
- This question needs to begin with a brief introduction which serves to provide the examiner with an understanding of how you will approach this question. Obviously, with Harrison and Dickens political and social change is linked to the reader developing their own individual a sense of empathy and compassion in the hope that this level of individual awareness will be the catalyst for political and social change. Both authors are motivated by a didactic purpose to educate and inform. This could be linked to Orwell's comments that we discussed in today's session.
- The first argument could begin with an exploration of how Dickens illustrates the potential for the individual to change how they view the world. Gradgrind serves as a symbol for how it is possible for a powerful individual to realise that their life philosophy may be incorrect. Reference could be made to how Gradgrind initially views the purpose of education..REFERENCE TO BITZER AND HOW GRADGRIND IS UNABLE TO VIEW THE DEHUMANISING NATURE OF THE UTILITARIAN SYSTEM...BEFORE MOVING ONTO LOUISA/SISSY/BLACKPOOL illustrating the flaws in his ideology. Gradgrind moves from inflexible pedant to a compassionate politician who represents the 'people' and no longer views them as an 'abstraction'. Gradgrind's philosophical evolution is evidence that people DO NOT have to group together to effect change. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT STUDENTS REFER TO HOW THE SYMBOLIC NATURE OF GRADGRIND ALLOWS DICKENS TO SHAPE HIS FABLE. F.R.Leavis has described HARD TIMES as a 'perfect fable' and perhaps Gradgrind's ability to use his imagination to develop a greater sense empathy and compassion is one of Dickens most potent symbols.
- This could be linked to Harrison and the purpose of V. This is a poem that yearns for an end to the divisive nature of society and aims to represent working-class experience to a literary audience that may not be aware of the suffering and desensitising nature of unemployment. Reference could be made to the symbol of COAL that dominates the landscape of this poem and the idea that the potential of working-class youth to be useful members of a unified society is being squandered....like coal without a spark to release the energy beneath its surface. Harrison's V is a plea for the division to end. He wants society to be UNITED...he wants society to be entwined and unified like the notes of the beautiful classical music that provide him with such comfort when he returns home from Leeds. Similarly he wishes that the unity and connection that he feels with his wife can be experienced by the working-class culture he feels is being forgotten...'I KNOW WHAT UNITED THAT THE SKIN SPRAYED HAS TO MEAN..' Just as the Skin peppers the graveyard with words 'to shock the living'...SO DOES HARRISON! Perhaps Harrison represents the horrific nature of UNEMPLOYMENT in order to SHOCK an audience that is unfamiliar with this experience in the hope that they will sympathise and empathise with an experience that is rarely presented to a literary audience. Like Dickens, Harrison's am is to change the perception of the individual. These people are not 'SHIT', they are HUMAN...and they are suffering. The value of working-class experience could be linked to Harrison's use of iambic quatrain..a form used as a framework for some of the most canonical texts in English Literature. Working-class experience appears to be absent in literary culture and Harrison is using the form associated with the work of canonical poets to emphasise the relevance and value of working-class culture.
- The essay could then go on to discuss how Harrison attacks an EDUCATION system that perpetuates the idea of a cultural hierarchy with the aim, once more, of challenging the perception of an individual and link the UTILITARIAN PHILOSOPHY in HARD TIMES. Both are destructive in their different approaches to learning. Your task is to navigate through the argument and illustrate the difference between why Harrison attacks education and why Dickens attacks this inflexible approach to FACT based learning. Reference could also be made to Dickens' representation of the UNIONS. He is clearly criticising this form of people 'grouping together'..WHY is Slackbridge as grotesque as Bounderby? Both authors are offering an insight to the individual reader that may lead to the reader developing a philosophical sensibility that will encourage unity, equality and love...rather than division and hate. Both authors seem to encourage an individual revolution of the mind rather than a violent physical revolution similar to France in 1879!! They are not advocating violent uprising as a means of creating political and social change. Both authors suggest that a change in individual sensibility may inspire wider social and political change!
HOMEWORK: I expect students to provide an introduction and one comparative paragraph to ONE of the questions above. I expect the work to refer to at leat two critical comments. Orwell? G.B Shaw? Leavis? Macaulay? Check your notes. I expect this to be handed to me at the start of the next session. KEEP CHECKING EMAILS as I am going to send you some notes to help with this task.
