To Die is Gain

Primarily, three pertinent opportunities exist for teachers to incorporate the idea of the immersive world into textual analysis and enrichment of literary texts: blog-journals, webquests, and online literary games.  All three of these venues offer particularly enriching means to heighten characterization awareness and empathy.  Just as relevant paintings and photographs offer means to augment our understanding of the setting of a story, blog-journals and webquests offer opportunities to put ourselves in the character’s shoes, try to think like them, or even act like them in a game like Thought Crime.

Yet, an even greater opportunity avails itself through the blog entries, which is the opportunity for dialogue between students.  Journal entries often remain personal, but creating reading groups that share their ideas and findings generates multifaceted approaches to grasping the material and interacting with others.  The opportunity to discuss, even debate, the actions, thoughts and ideas of characters spawns wonderful class discussions and a hearty online pedagogical environment.  Such entries internalize information and inspire thoughtful, careful analysis of texts in order to more fully understand the characters you study, the peers you evaluate and the self which you scrutinize.  The fantastic element of stories is that they ask us to engage ourselves: who we are and what we want to be.

Having read over and over again about the Kola Nut and other various cultural and environmental oriented objects and ideas in Things Fall Apart, I thought I’d do some research upon them.

The Kola Nut itself has a number of medicinal purposes which Africans, particularly those of Western Africa, use as stimulants because of the caffeine present and also as an anti-depressant, aphrodisiac, reducer of fatigue and hunger, and considered to aid digestion.  It also was one of the sources of the beverage revolution: Coca-Cola. 

“In some parts of Africa, kola nuts are given as gifts to visitors entering a home, usually with some formal ceremony. Offering the kola nut is a gesture of friendship and hospitality. The kola nut ceremony is similar to the traditional American Indian peace pipe or breaking bread in a religious context.” 

On another site I found that yam foofoo and other fufus (another spelling) are favorites in Western African cuisine and are served in a variety of ways.  Yam foofoo is kind of like sweet mashed potatoes.

 “Conventional West African fufu is made by boiling such starchy foods as cassava, yam, plantain or rice, then pounding them into a glutinous mass, usually in a giant, wooden mortar and pestle. This adaptation for North Americans may trouble you if you try to stick to minimally processed foods. But it's worth trying at least once with West African groundnut stews.” 

For more on fufu this was a great site: http://www.congocookbook.com/c0042.html 

Here’s a link to a picture and scientific description of the raffia palm, which is mentioned in the story as a source for tapping and producing a “sweet wine.”  The picture helps to capture the sheer wilderness so depicted by the setting of the story, yet fails to capture the darkness foreboding throughout the story.  The setting of an ‘evil forest’ and people who practice ‘wicked ways’ must be tamed by the conquests of the Europeans and Christendom (145, 148 respectively.)

Though the darkness of imperial conquest has Westernized most of Africa, thankfully some of cultural traditions remain.  The Kola Nut is still used as a welcoming gesture to travelers, strangers and tribesman.

The teaching of reading within the English Language Arts classroom necessitates the greatest care because the power to unlock the mystery, enchantment, and insights of great literary works comes through effectual and aesthetic engagement of texts.  If literary reading truly is a part of what makes us human, specifically seeing oneself, one’s culture or people, or humanity in general as part of a surviving narrative, then proper instruction into this aspect of life must be made soberly yet joyfully, diligently yet meticulously, fervently yet prudently.

Some say that life is a game, a quest, a dance, a test, a mystery, a text, a stage or a journey.  Undoubtedly, all such aspects characterize life’s essence, yet life inextricably relates to us as humans through language in the form of story.  Life is a story; a story we tell, chant, sing and shout.  Life is a story with laughing, praising, aching and crying.  Life is drama, tragedy and comedy interwoven with heroes and villains, comrades and traitors.  Life is a story spoken with reverence, respect, gratitude and blessing.  Life is a story of revelations, histories, origins and destinies.  Life is a story of faith, worship and regard for the unknown, unseen, and intangible.  Life is a story of hope, heartache, hurting and healing.  Life is a story of darkness, despair and death, but also light, anticipation and glory.  Throughout time people have told stories in order for life to have purpose, meaning and fulfillment.  Thus, it is with the utmost consideration that teachers must ponder, deliberate, prepare and instruct the storytellers of humanity’s future. 

If the means to aesthetically engaged literary reading is slowly being eroded by opposing pleasures and pastimes, making reading undesirable, boring and inconsequential, then the role of the teacher is to guide students back to the joys, exuberance and valuable experiences reading the lives of others in narrative offers.  If the teachers job is not to tell but rather to demonstrate and reveal, then the process of instruction is one of deliberate liberation and awakening, not repression and constriction.  Thus if reading is viewed by students as merely a chore or a task then the capacity to discern, absorb and empathize with the significant experiences of others in literary form dwindles away.  The teacher must actively build bridges in order for students to see more, feel more, identify more and move away from the desire to isolate, hide from or repress the thoughts, concerns, pains and woes of oneself or those of the other.