Skills Attained

• Close reading and textual analysis
• Use of textual support for points raised
• Discussion skills
• Collaborative skills
• Make connections between seemingly disparate works

Lesson Outline

I. Anticipatory set

Classroom simulation

Simulate a classroom confrontation in which an administrator comes into the classroom and accuses a student of causing an accident in the parking lot. Secure the cooperation of the student to be accused in advance. Have the student react very indignantly and practically have to be dragged out of the room to the principal's office. Then have the rest of the students write about what they saw, heard, and their reactions to what they observed. Ask them to write three short responses, one as an observer, one imagining the incident as occurring to them but using the limited he perspective, and once more, after you let them in on what you were doing, as all-knowing partners in the simulation. Then have the class members share their responses. Note the differences in what they perceive when role-playing different points of view, even the differences in each individual's observations as an observer of the incident. In their journals, they will reflect on the results of this exercise.

II. The Lesson Plan

Teacher should give an overview of narrative point of view, as suggested below:

Most novels are narrated from one perspective, either the all-knowing author using the third person (he) or a major character using the first person limited (I), or a minor character also using a first person limited perspective (I). More recent novels have toyed with a stream of consciousness point of view, in which they get inside the character's mind and narrate as the person thinks, without worrying about time sequence or logical flow. The choice is usually dictated by how well the author wants us to know the workings of his character's mind. If he wishes to tell us what to think about his character, he will select the third person omniscient point of view. If he wants us to get to know the character gradually, as we would in real life or to make misjudgments about the character, he may choose a minor character narrating from the first person limited perspective. In James Agee's A Death in the Family, the author tells his story from multiple points of view and, as a result, we learn about the workings of each character's mind and also about his or her ability to cope with the loss of the father, Jay Follet. However, he chooses a limited 3^rd person (he) perspective rather than a more personal (I) viewpoint, putting us in the mind of one character or, at the most, two characters per chapter.

1. Place students in groups up to five so as to have a mix of academic talents; let them choose which character to study from the following:

Rufus, Catherine; Andrew; Mary; Father Kennedy, Ralph, Jay and Hannah...

Also discuss the foreshadowing given in this section.

Page 101: "He smelled like dry grass, leather, and tobacco, and sometimes a different smell, full of great energy and a fierce kind of fun but also a feeling that things might go wrong. He knew what that was because he heard them arguing. Whiskey."

Have them document the class discussion in their research journals, as pieces to the whole of their characters.

4. Have the expert groups meet and discuss the results of their research into their characters. Allow enough discussion time for the students to get to be true experts on their character, the perspective from which we get to know him or her, the reason for that perspective and its influence upon the theme(s). Use the journal questions as the basis for the discussion. Include discussion of similar characters in other works.

5. Jigsaw and reconfigure into the original groups, which should have one expert per character. Assign one student to be discussion facilitator, and one to be the recorder, although all members of the group should take extensive notes as they learn from each of the experts. Stress the responsibility of the experts to share their expertise with the group. Make each student accountable for knowing about all the major characters, themes, and connections.

III. Extension Activity

Assign a particularly strong student to lead a seminar on the effect of point of view on subtleties of character either The Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace.

The Catcher in the Rye

Focus on Holden's reaction to Allie's death, and what his reaction reveals about him (refer them to the end of Chapter 5, pages 38-39, where Holden tells of his reaction to Allie's death:

"I was only thirteen and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all of the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows in the station wagon we had that summer but my hand was already broken and everything by that time and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit but…you didn't know Allie."

Discuss with the class what the manner and nature of this action tells us about Holden's reaction to Allie's death that we couldn't have found out from his limited first person perspective alone. He is an unreliable narrator and JD Salinger, unlike James Agee, has chosen to have him tell the story in such a way that he as author cannot reflect on the significance of his action; he must rely on the perceptive reader for that.

A Separate Peace

Focus on Gene from his reaction to Finny falling out of the tree and later to Finny's death, and still later at the end of the book when he looks back as an adult on the whole experience (pages 50-52).

Also look at the section describing Gene's mock trial by the other boys, the second accident and Finny's death (Chapters ll-12) and note Gene's reaction to Finny's death on page 180:

"I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into the ground at his family's strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape the feeling that this was my own funeral and you don't cry in that case."

Lastly, look at page 196, the end of the book where Gene sums up the experience in retrospect:

"All of them,, all except Phineas, constructed, at infinite cost to themselves, Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy, who never attacked that way, if he ever attacked at all, if he was indeed the enemy."

Discuss what these sections of the book tell us about Gene and his understanding of himself and how the perspective of time has changed that understanding.

Discuss how these reactions differ from Rufus' in A Death in the Family. Discuss also how Agee's choice of a limited "he" perspective differs from the "I" point of view in the Salinger, and Knowles books? What may have influenced Agee's choice?

Assessment

1. Self-assessment: Have students rate how effectively their two groups worked and their own contributions to the group effort in a reflective piece in their journals. They can give each other and themselves a grade based on a teacher or student made rubric.

2. Have students write a character analysis essay in which they discuss three of the characters in the novel and focus on how the narrative perspectives used influenced their understanding of those characters.

3. Assign a creative piece in which students use at least two narrative points of view to tell a story from their own lives and create character.

4. Ask students to extend the ending and write one more scene in A Death in the Family.

5. Tell the story as the grown Rufus might have to his own children as he reminisces about his father. Use third person omniscient point of view. Discuss first with students the differences in perspective that a child would have as opposed to an adult, reflecting back on his childhood.

Suggested Related Works

The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Death of a A Salesman by Arthur Miller
The Catcher in The Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Marcia Lubell is an author, consultant, and veteran English teacher in New York.

RUFUS

1. What indications are there that Rufus has no idea what death means?
2. What is most important to Rufus, and how does that priority reveal how young he is?
3. What unreliable narrators in other books make similar mistakes? (Explore the connections with Huck Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, and A Separate Peace.)
4. Find passages that reveal Rufus' naiveté.
5. Why does the author choose the limited third person perspective instead of the first person?

CATHERINE

1. How does she reveal her lack of understanding of death and the permanence of what has occurred to her father?
2. Find passages that reveal her lack of understanding.
3. What is most important to her?
4. Why does the author choose the limited third person perspective instead of the first person?

MARY

1. Why does she respond to Jay's death as she does?
2. What is most important to her?
3. What is the most influential cause of her response?
4. Why do we see her continuing to pray after the funeral?
5. Why does the author choose the limited third person perspective instead of the first person?
6. What theme(s) are introduced as a result of MARY'S sections?
7. What comment on that theme can you make on her behalf?
8. Compare her to Linda in "Death of a Salesman" if that play has been read.
9. Find passages that clarify her perspective.

FATHER JACKSON

1. Why does the author choose not to tell the story from the Priest's point of view but to talk about him mostly as all-knowing author, the third-person omniscient, or to let us get to know him mostly through the reactions of the other characters to his words and actions?
2. What do we learn about him as a result?
3. What theme does his character reveal?
4. What comment is the author making about that theme through his portrayal of the Priest?
5. Cite passages that best reveal his personality.
6. What did he do at the funeral that outraged everyone there?
7. React personally to his behavior.

RALPH

1. What point of view is used to reveal Ralph's character? Why?
2. What do we learn about him as a result?
3. What is his role in the story?
4. Cite passages that re-enforce your judgment of his character.

ANDREW