Pay Attention to Geography (AKA The Quiet Kid in the Back)

Reading chapters 19, Geography Matters…, and 25, Don’t Read with Your Eyes, of How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, reminded me of a story my 8^th grade English teacher told my class one day. The scene went as follows:

Characters

Mr. Farrar – An 8^th grade English teacher attempting to educate America’s youth one class at a time

Class – A class of ignorant 8^th grade English students (the real definition of ignorance i.e. a state of being uninformed)

Setting: 3^rd period in Mr. Farrar’s classroom.

FARRAR. One day a girl walking home from school finds a bible. She picks it up and starts flipping through it. Then the girl proceeds to put the book in his backpack and head home. For the next few nights after that the girl finds time to get away from everyone and everything and read it.

                FARRAR then sits back at his desk and proceeds to do little mundane tasks

CLASS. Is that it? Doesn’t seem like much of a story to us.

FARRAR. (Pleased they took the bait) What do you mean?

CLASS. It was just kind of lame and commonplace.

FARRAR. That’s where perspective comes into play. Show of hands, when I told the story how many of you imagined the girl as yourself or someone like you? An average American middle school student headed home finding this bible.

                CLASS raise their hands

FARRAR. There you go! Here in America, a Christian nation that promotes educational equality, this can be a normal situation with no consequence.

                CLASS still seems perplexed

FARRAR.  However, imagine if we were to move his story to a Middle Eastern nation. One in a time where the government enforces stringent religious control on its citizens along with laws against literacy in women. The stakes of that ordinary story have been bumped up to potentially a matter of life and death if she gets caught, yet the only thing that’s changed is the geography. This new location now gives you a completely different perspective of this tale of a girl and a bible. Now it’s a compelling story!

               

Obviously I probably paraphrased some parts because this all happened about 3½ years ago, but the main points were there. Up until that point, my sentiment towards geography as it pertains to literature was like that of a normal person in response to a quiet kid; they just kind of exist around you, but no special attention should be paid to them. However, just as you notice when the quiet kid goes on a random killing rampage and his/her presence is made know, when geography was thrust in my face like this, I couldn't help but pay attention to it. This lesson was the first time I really thought about the effect a change in setting could have on a literary work. He also managed to broaden the way I approached reading. All of us in the class, rather than asking for more context, assumed the story took place in the environment we experienced on a daily basis. I became more aware of searching for context when reading text. This also led me start researching authors in order to understand where books I read come from. Even the writer’s geography in his/her background influences the way they write. Not knowing an author’s history won’t be the difference in making a book good or bad, it could just make a good book even better.