Reading Apprenticeship Goals in Literature

In April Oliver’s high school AP Literature and Composition classroom, students read to understand the art, craft, and varied purposes of literature.

As April’s students discuss the novel Invisible Man (Classroom Close-Up 8.14), they demonstrate many of the practices of literary readers. They recognize and discuss literary themes, conceptualize literature as commentary, attend to (but don’t fully understand) the narrative voice and its relationship to the authorial voice, and participate in literary inquiry by making evidence-based inferences and interpretations and responding to those of their classmates.

The literary practices demonstrated by April’s students are among those described as disciplinary student goals for apprenticeship into the literary community in Box 8.21.

Students in April Oliver’s grade 12 AP Literature and Composition class are reading Ralph Ellison’s 1953 novel Invisible Man. For homework, they have read an article conceptualizing six aspects of alien-ation. In small groups assigned to different chapters of the novel, students are now discussing quotes from their chapter that illustrate concepts about alienation and how the narrator is changing or growing. They are also generating questions to use when they disperse to new groups, where each member of the new group will be an “expert” on a different chapter and will lead the discussion of that chapter.

In the following excerpt from one group’s discussion of Chapter Eight, students are being deliberately apprenticed into a disciplinary community that knows how to read and discuss literature by citing evidence, incorporating ideas such as alienation and individual responsibility into consideration of theme and character development, and exploring various roles of the novel, including as social and cultural commentary and “lessons” to live by.

Steve: On page 164, a quarter of the way down, “Of course you couldn’t speak that way in the South. The white folks wouldn’t like it, and the Negroes would say that you were putting on. But here in the North I would slough off my southern ways of speech. Indeed, I would have one way of speaking in the North and another in the South.” So this goes into like how he changes himself, to put it in terms of the article, he socially and culturally estranges himself and is thus alienated. ‘Cause he changes his speech.

Christopher: It’s like he is culturally estranged.

Julia: And socially.

Christopher: He’s pretty smart, I think. His like language and stuff.

Julia: He’s not unintelligent.

Steve: He’s very unintelligent.

Christopher: You think he’s unintelligent?

Julia: I think he’s kind of naïve, but I don’t think he’s unintelligent.

Christopher: Intelligent, but naïve. Kind of drives me nuts.

Julia: But it’s kind of hard to blame him, too. He gets so much conflicting advice.

Christopher: Yeah.

Steve: I have no pity for him, though, ‘cause he has no sense of self.

Julia: That’s something I wrote down, too. He calls himself “invisible man” but doesn’t do anything about it. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t appreciate [being invisible], but he doesn’t do anything about it.

Christopher: It’s kind of weird to think about, like why?

Julia: So a discussion question could be like, Why doesn’t he do anything about his invisibility?

Christopher: So, do you guys think this book is more about society, or just him, or like blacks or something in this time period?

Maribel: I think it’s supposed to be about society. That is why we are reading it in English. There’s supposed to be a larger message.

Julia: I think that is an interesting question, though. Because even though it is supposed to be a commentary about society, he’s very egocentric, for lack of a better word. He talks about himself and his own invisibility a lot, but he doesn’t really seem to talk about if anybody else feels like that or if anybody else has the same situation.

Students return to scanning the text.

Maribel: On page 170 he says, “My doubts grew. Perhaps all was not well. I remained in my room all the next day. I grew conscious that I was afraid; more afraid here in my room than I had ever been in the South.” He’s like just sitting in his room scared of what’s going to happen next. He’s almost like a kid, you know.

Julia: That could be part of the commentary, though, that the black people can’t properly be themselves and they’re always confined to this childish behavior or whatnot because society has alienated them.

Steve: No, ‘cause if you look at the other people, like Bledsoe, who’s in a position of power, and he’s black, so I don’t think it’s that.

Julia: Yeah, that’s true.

Maribel: We need more discussion questions.

Christopher: Well, I kind of wrote down the questions we had, like, Why is he such a self-estranged dude?

Julia: Is it really the narrator being estranged, or is he estranging himself?

Christopher: Is it just me or is most of the books we read here supposed to teach us psychologically or something? I feel like each one has to sort of be like lessons.

Maribel: There is always a deeper meaning.

In a literature classroom, students learn about the discipline of literature and themselves as readers and writers of literary forms by way of the following discipline-specific goals.

LITERARY GENRES

I can identify and use diverse literary genres and subgenres. I use my knowledge of genres and subgenres to predict how ideas are organized.

LITERARY THEMES

I recognize universal literary themes—such as good versus evil, ideal versus flawed behavior, and psychological growth and change—and how to trace their development.

LITERARY STRUCTURES

I understand how different literary structures—such as plot, stanza, and act—organize and contribute to the meaning of a piece of literature.

LITERARY COMMENTARY

I recognize how literature may incorporate or promote social, historical, economic, political, and cultural commentary, either transparently or through figuration such as irony, allegory, and symbolism.

LITERARY MOVEMENTS

I can identify how a piece of literature is affected by literary movements such as transcendentalism, romanticism, realism, and feminism.

NARRATIVE VOICE

I understand narrative voice (first-person, third-person, third-person omniscient, unreliable narrator) and authorial voice, including relationships between author and narrator.

LANGUAGE CHOICES

I can identify and use imagery, tone, dialogue, rhythm, and syntax to shape meaning.

LITERARY INQUIRY

I understand that literature invites inference and interpretation within and across texts and experiences. I offer and also consider others’ evidence—based inferences and interpretations.

LITERARY IDENTITY

I am aware of my evolving identity as a reader and writer of literary forms.

From Reading for Understanding, pp 279-282