One of my 7th graders recently read of her own choice and did a book talk on A Wrinkle in Time. In her estimation, one of the themes was “Fighting is uncivilized” because Meg’s father’s fight against IT on Camazotz separated him from his family and that was wrong of him to do because his absence hurt his family.
I think this is a stunningly wrong reading of the book, and makes me wonder what exactly she DID get out of it. At the same time I’m wondering if it’s age appropriate for me to expect them to get that the theme of *A Wrinkle in Time * was about fighting conformity with free thought. Or, as it was suggested to me by a reading teacher, is it unreasonable for me to ask them to assess themes in literature at all in 7th grade?
What do you think? Should 7th graders be able to assess the themes of stories and books they read? Books on their grade level of course. Or is theme a concept too advanced for them at this age?
Theme is way too much for 7th grade. In 7th grade my English teacher was telling us the theme and we had to react to her reading of the story.
On the other hand, I never appreciated teachers who told us we were “wrong” in our thoughts on a topic if we had shown some evidence of how we got there. Immature 7th grade evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
No, but I think it’s unreasonable to expect them to think about those themes as an adult would, right off the bat. She’s in the right neighborhood, it seems to me, but hasn’t thought through her identification of the theme. She has identified love and responsibility as themes of the book, after all, and they certainly are. That she is interpreting them through her own thoughts and feelings about what they are and what they mean, as opposed to identifying the author’s position on them, measn that either she hasn’t thought it through or she hasn’t worked out how to do that just yet.
She is also somewhat handicapped, culturally, in that she is too young to remember the Cold War. So all the images of Evil = excessive bureaucracy, sameness, drabness, and mind control - which are all derived from Cold War imagery – are not necessarily images she would immediately have a feel for.
I would ask her a couple of leading questions about her theme to encourage her to think about it some more. But I think she’s making a good start which is about right for a twelve year old.
I think your identification of theme ignores struggles of the character of Calvin O’Keefe, for example, as well as the pain of the Murray children. Your student would not be the first to think that it is selfish for a person to go off fighting for an abstract concept when s/he has concrete people who need her/him at home.
It’s appropriate to ask seventh graders to think about theme, so they can learn how to do so. But they practically always get it wrong. If you want them analyzing a correct theme, one thing you can do is let them choose from a short list of themes that would work for the book.
I always hated questions like that when I was in school. I read for enjoyment, for the story, for the escape. I wasn’t interested in deeper messages and profundities. Come to think of it, for the most part, I’m still not. If it’s necessary to analyze a book for its deeper political, religious, social, or any other agenda, there’s got to be a way to teach it for those of us who don’t seek hidden meanings.
This brought to mind my 12th grade English teacher, who asked us, regarding one reading assignment, “What was the saddest line in the story?” Personally, I didn’t find any of it particularly sad, for all that the elderly character died. But I scribbled down something about it being sad when the old man died. Of course, I was wrong. She found some other comment to be the saddest, and that was the answer. :rolleyes: Way to go Mrs. W! Not only did you make us read that stupid story, but when we didn’t find it as poignant as you did, we were wrong. Good teaching.
I think if that’s the theme she got from the book, that’s the theme she got from the book. I once read a published paper on how Jay Gatsby is Jesus - not a reading I get from the Great Gatsby at all (and I’m a grown up with some graduate level literature deconstruction under my belt). If she can justify that as a book theme, then she knows what theme means and saw that and that is the part of the book that had meaning to her.
Themes are tough for seventh graders. You are better off asking for “the moral of the story.”
Seventh graders are old enough to be doing this sort of analysis, and I think it’s a good idea to do it instead of short-answer worksheets, but they’re not going to do it well. They need lots of practice. However, that’s what she got out of it and I think it would be a bad idea to say that she analyzed it “wrong.”
It’s true that she wouldn’t get the Cold War imagery of sameness, and she’s also probably been taught her whole life that fighting (and war) is wrong, period–she may not have gotten yet that there are some things you have to fight for if life is going to be worth living. I’d be interested in discussing that theme with a bunch of 12-yos, see what they think of it.
Well, from the perspective of a 7th grader, the idea of Dad going off and risking his life and leaving Mum and the kids behind to fend for themselves can seem pretty scary and selfish. From her perspective, I can see that as a natural reaction to that book.
But if you fundamentally disagree, go ahead and tell that she’s wrong and that the theme of the book is to fight conformity and to be a free thinker…
That’s like saything there’s got to be a way to teach math for people that don’t really care what the answer is. Teaching litererature is not just about encouraging reading–it’s about teaching analysis, how to see that many times in life there is more going on that there appears to be on the surface in any text. It’s true that some people are never really going to love doing that to literature–just as some people never learn to love solving math problems. Some will, and that love will shape their lives. Others won’t, but they still need to be able to do so with some basic competency.
As far as 7th graders and theme, it’s difficult because developmentally 7th graders are all over the place. It’s why many of them are absolutely LOST if you try to teach them algebra (though they have mastered arithmetic) but pick it up almost instictively if you teach it to them in a year or two. There are substantial cognitive changes having to do with abstract thought that occur around puberty, and 7th graders can be there already or nowhere close.
One thing that helps is to have the theme come AFTER the evidence. I teach them as a statement about a universal subject. In this case, the universal subject this girl finds interesting is "fighting’. Have her write “fighting” at the top of the page and list every example of anyone fighting for anything/against anyone in the book. Then have her read the examples and look for the connecting theme. (This works great with a large group at first) The nice thing about this approach is they aren’t as married to the theme so when she says “all these fights seem uncivilized” you can say “but what about Meg’s fight with the brain? Why was that uncivilized?” and ask them other questions until they get to a theme that fits all the examples. Now then, this is likely never going to get you to “fighting conformity with free thought”, but it will get you somewhere that is not inconsistient with what happens in the book. And if they really bungle the theme, you can at least give them credit for the universal issue and the examples, so that that final abstract leap is the difference between an A and a B, not passing and failing (which I think is appropriate for 7th graders)
I think there is more than one theme, and I’m not ignoring Calvin by stating one of them. The Murray kids have a hard time in school because they don’t conform to their peer’s expectations, which is part of their pain. Also, not having a dad makes them different, which is again a conformity issue.
As for Mr. Murray being “selfish,” I don’t see that. Meg’s father didn’t abandon his family and set out to fight IT; he tessered there and had to fight to resist conforming to that society and losing his identity-- he’d never have been able to go home to his family if he hadn’t fought. Once he was imprisoned by IT, the only thing that could get him out was the non-conformist thinking of his kids and Calvin. I can’t see how the father was doing something wrong by resisting IT. I can’t imagine any sort of meaningful reading of the story looks negatively on Mr. Murray for doing so. I shouldn’t point that out to the kid?
I have to ask about theme to some extent, because figuring out “the main idea” is on those damn standardized tests. They have to start thinking about the overarching messages in things they read. Even if they don’t quite get it yet, they can start challenging themselves to try.
Maybe I went to a bad middle school, but I didn’t start breaking down literature until the 8th grade. I didn’t learn about themes until 9th grade. Of course, in the seventh grade we read stories, mostly short stories from the reading book, but we were tested mainly on reading comprehension (“What happened to the main character when he did blankety-blank?”).
I’m sure some bright 12-year-olds can handle it, but not most of them.
What if the meanings aren’t hidden? What if they’re as obvious as the moral at the end of an Aesop’s fable?
I disagree with those who say pre-teens can only read for the story—that they can only talk about what happens and not about what the point is. Some stories just have more obvious themes than others. Take a classic children’s story like “The Ugly Duckling”: only the densest of children aren’t going to get the theme of that one.
Absolutely 7th graders can and should be finding themes in the novels they read. Do they need to find exactly the theme you want them to find? shrug I still have bitter memories of English classes in college where my reading was not the same as the professor’s reading.
I teach fifth graders. My students are expected to find themes in novels they read.
I tell them that any theme they find must be stated as a complete sentence, otherwise they just have an idea.
For example, they can’t tell me that “friendship” is a theme. That’s an idea. They would need to come up with something like “friends stick by each other.”
I tell them the easiest way to find themes in books is to ask what they think the author would like the reader to learn, and/or what did they learn from reading the book? I tell them to look for the preachy stuff
After they find three to five themes, they are expected to find examples in the book that show the theme. They simply have to describe a scene, and then explain how that scene shows the theme.
One other thing that helps is if we have read a book together as a class before they try this with a free choice novel. I’ll model searching for themes and examples up at the whiteboard first.
You shouldn’t point that out in any way that makes your view “right” and theirs “wrong.” You can point out that it seems necessary to you for Mr. Murray to fight (I can’t remember the story at all - something about tesseracts is all I get in my head) and have her think through her justification for the theme. The idea is to get her to think, right? To be able to explain what she saw. Not to judge her conclusions. Do it right and she’ll judge her own conclusions, without having that ‘I hated the teacher because she didn’t validate me’ sort of experience. And maybe she’ll change your mind.
(Which is the problem with standardized tests. My son just brought home homework he didn’t get right (3rd grade) the assignment was something like: put these numbers in order: 527, 396, 241, 954… Correct answer was 241, 396… He put them in order 257, 369, 124…We aren’t sure he was ‘wrong.’
He’d done it ‘right’ the first time, then erased it - he saw shades of meaning in the instructions that weren’t intended. But on a standardized test, you don’t get rewarded for seeing something other people don’t see.)
What she got out of it was the concept that fighting is wrong. It may not be what you got out of it, and it may not be the more commonly accepted interpretation, but it’s how she reacted from her perspective as a seventh grader. It may be a reasonable interpretation given her background, values, and the stories and moral lessons she’s been previously exposed to. It’s also worth noting that the student is at an age where a father running off and abandoning his family - for ANY reason - will be viewed as selfish and wrong.
You’re quite missing the point of instruction in literature to think that the process failed because a student came up with the “wrong” interpretation of a book you liked. The student read the book and divined a message from it. She used her brain, and that’s what English class is for. It wasn’t the same message you got out of it. Welcome to literature.
I oince suggested to my tenth grade English teacher that Shakespeare was slyly using Shylock as a bit of a tragic hero in “The Merchant of Venice.” He laughed, and said that was totally wrong. Then later he came to me and said “You’re still wrong, but I shouldn’t have dismissed you. That was a pretty neat insight and you made a good point. Keep thinking like that.” Best lesson I ever learned.
And if you read the book, really, the point is that fighting oppression is right and good. I didn’t decide that, and I’m not endorsing a viewpoint, but it’s really mising the point of the book to say that the people who were fighting the brain were “acting uncivilized.”
So what’s the point of teaching literature if every single interpretation, no matter how unsupported by the text, is correct and should not ever be discussed or contested? And that’s really the point here-- you can say anything you want about a book, as long as you can support it with evidence from the story. There isn’t any evidence that the theme of A Wrinkle in Time is that fighting is uncivilized. If I just let that slide, would I be doing the kid a service?
You’ve heard the saying, “You’re not entitled to your opinion-- you’re entitled to your INFORMED opinion.” That is the key to analyzing literature. Back up what you’re saying with evidence. I don’t think 7th grade is too young to start introducing that concept.
He didn’t run off and abandon his family. That’s what people in the novel thought who didn’t know what happened, in the beginning of the book. It was a wrong assumption. It’s revealed that he didn’t ever mean to leave them and in order to rejoin them… wait for it… he and his family had to FIGHT. What it seems like is that she didn’t finish the book and thus had the view that Mr. Murray abandoned his family, which is what everyone thought at first.
I think you’re way, way off base here. She couldn’t support her assertion with any backing from the story. I think she didn’t finish the book. I’m not sure you did either.
I’m so glad for you. This is not an analogous situation.
I think you might be wrong there (;)) Modern readers will have a hard time interpreting Shakespeare’s works the way they were meant without knowing the background in which they were written, due to how how social norms and morals have changed over time. If you think she missed the Cold War imagery*, then this might be a good opportunity to teach your class about context, and how works of art can be interpreted in ways that weren’t meant by the artist when the context in which they were created is ignored–something they will have to keep in mind when they get to Shakespeare in later years.
*I did as well, but still got the comfornity thing.
The problem is the very real chance that she’s imposing her own beliefs/expectations onto the text, regardless of what it actually said. Teaching kids not to do that is what English is for–we are teaching them to be critical readers, so that when they hear a speech by a politician they have a tendency to like, they will hear what he actually says and not just project their own values.
Furthermore, we want them to learn that when they read something, it’s not authoritative and they can see that a book has a theme/makes a point that to them is immoral and wrong. They need to discourse and argue with texts, not just emote. We want them to say “One important theme in the book is that fighting conformity is the most important thing in the universe, but I disagree: I think responsibility to your family is more important and Mr. Murrey had no business experimenting with a tesseract machine that could take him anywhere”. Being able to have that distance from the texts you read is the most vital skill a member of a democracy can have. And very young kids can do this.
This is why I think it’s so important to work theme from specific examples, as I said above. Figure out all the examples and then look at what they seem to being saying. Don’t make assumptions based on recieved wisdom–I call this “after school special syndrome” with my kids, when they assume the theme has to be the kind of cozy, solid-middle American values we learn on Very Special Episodes of television. You have to learn to see what’s actually there, and while there may be no one right answer, there are many wrong ones.
