Axes for the Frozen Seas

Axes for the Frozen Seas within Us:

Therapeutic, Literature-Based Writing Prompts in the Classroom

By Roy F. Fox and Russell Greinke, University of Missouri-Columbia

Does fiction matter to our students? In a recent profile, the prolific author Philip Roth reflects back on a time when “there was a sense among us, to put it very squarely, that literature mattered.” He contrasts that with the current belief system, which, in his view, “is informally ignorant of this aspect of life: literature. It doesn’t care. It’s just a tiny distraction, and not an interesting one” (Marbella, 2001, p. I9). In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts released a study titled, “Reading at Risk,” which spotlights a sharp decline in American reading habits, a decline that is most pronounced in literature. Such a disconnect between who we teach and what we teach cannot be comforting to those of us in Literacy education. Although it would be consoling to believe that students form a special bond with assigned works, such romantic assumptions dare not be taken for granted.

For help in making an authentic student engagement with literature a reality, language arts teachers can turn to research psychologists. The field of psychotherapy, known as “bibliotherapy,” or “literatherapy,” has gauged, through long-term studies, what impact the study of literature can have on the intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual lives of individuals. As Wendell Berry once noted, perhaps it is time we learn from literature and not just about it. Writing, for example, has potential therapeutic value, a concept that has been explored in more fields than English and Literacy (e.g., Smyth, Stone, Hurewitz, & Kaell, 1999; Koopman, Ismailji, Holmes, Classen, Palesh, & Wales, 2005). This paper reviews the findings of bibliotherapists and examines what insights they offer Literacy teachers regarding the creation of meaningful writing prompts, using literature as a springboard. The potential value for the classroom would be to maximize the impact literary studies can have on students' lives, and move away from what one therapist suggests is the standard approach in our education system: that literature only serves as a “collection of study-objects largely unrelated to the reader, a kind of language museum of interesting relics” (Gold & Gloade, 1988, p. 239). The kind of questions literatherapists pose to their clients can serve as models for English and Literacy teachers.

Bibliotherapy has been defined by Hoagland as “a dynamic, interactive process between reader personality and literature which effects adjustment and growth” (Morgan, 1976, p. 39). Bibliotherapy is literature used for some measurable benefit to the reader. Although the term was coined in 1916, the philosophy behind it is much older. The inscription above the library in ancient Thebes, for example, read, “The Healing Place of the Soul” (Daisey, 1993, p. 438). In the modern era, the old McGuffy readers were used to instill moral values in students. Outside of the classroom, bibliotherapy has been used to treat a myriad of physical and emotional conditions, including addiction, abuse, dysfunction, and depression. This is not to suggest, though, that literatherapy is strictly problem-oriented. It is also beneficial for such affirmative goals as enhancing self-understanding and achieving self-actualization. As Elizabeth Drew explains, “The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."

A body of literature already exists that affirms the therapeutic value of writing. For example, the National Council of Teachers of English published, in 2000, a collection of essays by academics under the title, Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice (Anderson & MacCurdy, eds.). This anthology stresses the unique opportunity the writing classroom offers students to engage in a healing process. As expressed by the editors, “the chief healing effect of writing is thus to recover and to exert a measure of control over that which we can never control—the past. As we manipulate the words on the page, as we articulate to ourselves and to others the emotional truth of our pasts, we become agents for our own healing” (Anderson & MacCurdy, 2000, p. 7). The application for the classroom is that,

Teachers can approach the stories as sites or occasions for making sense of experience, using their expertise as writing professionals, writers, and human beings to help students create texts that embody their lived experience, the clearest expression of it, and whatever understanding of that experience is available to the student and the community within which the student lives and writes at the time of the writing. (Anderson & MacCurdy, p. 9)

One example of literature’s potential to promote positive life changes is the “Changing Lives through Literature” program adopted in Johnson County, Kansas, from a broader national movement that uses literature to help individuals on the wrong side of the criminal justice system get their lives back on track. Stories such as T. Coreghesan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” are read as springboards for self-reflection. Boyle’s protagonist, feeling it is “good to be bad,” likes to live his life in such a way as to prove he “didn’t give a shit about anything” (p. 129). After a night that teaches him the wisdom of the saying that if you go looking for trouble, you’ll probably find it, he is so shaken and scared that he states his only desire is “to go home to my parents’ house and crawl into bed” (p. 136). Decadence and a “bad boy” image no longer seem so romantic. The tie-in between the protagonist in this story and criminal offenders is clear. A recent newspaper article about the program explains that “studies have shown that participants have lower recidivism rates than similar offenders who don’t participate.” This is because “by thinking and discussing the characters and themes in the stories, participants can gain a better understanding of their own problems and ways of dealing with them” (Rizzo, 1999, p. B4).

The bibliotherapist Hoagland has proposed three stages that the reader must pass through in order to have an authentic interaction with the work. Identification (I.A. Richards, 1924, et al.) is the first phase; this occurs when the reader finds some commonality between the story and his or her own life. Stage two is catharsis; this entails Aristotle's description of the purgation of emotion that results from the viewing of a tragedy. The third phase is insight, the combining of ways of feeling with ways of thinking that leads to a new insight or awareness (Hildreth & Candler, 1992).

If bibliotherapists present one message for English and Literacy teachers (and reader response theorists would likely concur), it would be that not enough emphasis is given to stage one—if students don’t strongly identify with one or more characters in what they read, the subsequent stages will never be reached. As one professor explains, students “recognizing themselves in literary characters . . . was vital to the full experience of the reading. Those participants who strongly and personally recognized themselves in literary characters obtained great benefit from their reading” (Cohen, 1994, p. 39). A bibliotherapeutic approach to literature allows participants to experience both ways of feeling and ways of knowing; it is both cognitive and emotional.

Reader response theory has been influential in generating textbooks that include questions designed to push students to make connections between issues raised in fiction and their own lives. Rosenblatt (1978), for example, cites the research of psycholinguists who claim “that ‘comprehension’ of the text starts ‘from the outside in’. That is—to use their jargon—from ‘the semantic input,’ from what the reader brings to the page” (p. 88). There is a difference, though, between championing the concept of making personal tie-ins to assigned reading, and having students actually engage, over extended periods of time, in the “deep digging” that is crucial for any chance of engaging in personal transformation. Bibliotherapy intensifies the relationship between reader and text via questions designed to expose the kind of raw emotions that normally do not surface in a classroom setting.

English Professor Lad Tobin (2004), a long-time proponent of a psychotherapy-influenced Literacy classroom, recalls that “several years ago [he] wrote in a book that [he] disagreed with the literary critic Louise Rosenblatt, who states that English teachers should not play therapist and ‘should not meddle with their students’ emotional lives’” (p. 55). Tobin, however, advocates for the “importance of depth in student writing and emotional intensity in the teacher-student relationship.” It is, in his estimation, “something we ought to be proud of—the way our field, like psychotherapy, can help people make sense and gain control of their personal as well as their public lives” (p. 55).

We believe that bibliotherapeutic approaches will help teachers address their common complaint that student writing about literature is superficial. Other authors have highlighted the lack of depth in students’ writing about literature. Anderson and Rubano’s (1991) Enhancing Aesthetic Reading and Response points to such studies as Purves, with Harnisch, Quirk & Bauer, (1981), and the findings of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (1982), to make the case that U.S. students are limited to a narrow range of acceptable responses to assigned reading (see also Marshall, with Smagorinsky & Smith, 1995). Expectations are often for “right” answers, as if literature were efferent and not aesthetic. Anecdotal evidence also supports this claim. Donna Moessner, for example, a veteran English teacher who has studied bibliotherapy extensively, defines the difference between the way students are often urged to engage with the text, and the level of engagement bibliotherapy suggests:

Yes, questions are asked about personal connections. This is done tons in middle school and junior high—although how personal and how often with real feelings, I’m not sure. It nearly disappears in high school, just as journals/writer’s notebooks do. Personal expressive writing declines in most high schools. Bibliotherapy means writing about your very personal experiences, and most importantly, your FEELINGS and emotions. I think that doesn’t happen. They get more into analyzing text, historical critique, etc., often just to pass tests. They often don’t connect with their personal experience. Any time a personal connection to literature or writing occurs, bibliotherapy occurs. However, these experiences are few and far between. (Personal Correspondence, 2005)

As the Early American writer, Jonathan Edwards, might phrase it, it is the difference between merely reading the word “fire” and actually getting burned.

The classroom potentially offers the ideal setting for a bibliotherapeutic approach. One study, in fact, finds that “reading without discussion with others may at times solidify, rather than expand, challenge, or modify one’s point of view” (Hynes & Wedl, 1990, p. 291). An article from the Journal of Poetry Therapy demonstrates how the novel, The Wizard of Oz, might be taught using this approach. Sherry Reiter (1988), the author, works as a Creative Arts Therapist at a hospital in New York. She suggests discussion questions that could also work as writing prompts, such as “What does going home mean? What do you have to gain by staying on the road?" To paraphrase additional questions from the same article: What would you need to obtain in order to be happy? What obstacles have you encountered? How have you overcome them? What helpers have assisted you along the way? What journeys of disillusionment and enchantment have you embarked upon? What false gods have you relied on? (p. 154). Thus begins the process of identification.

English Professor Jerome Bump (1990), who has written extensively in the field of bibliotherapy, offers some very practical advice concerning bibliotherapy-inspired writing prompts in relation to literature:

To help students identify and articulate what they felt as they read books, I asked them to record their emotions in a journal. . . . Student journals were divided with quotes on one side of the page and reactions on the other. Our first goal was to identify a range of feelings, but I asked for other reactions to be recorded as well: self-esteem issues in the text and in themselves; personal associations, especially family memories; awareness of family dynamics in the text and of functional and dysfunctional interactions . . . and the characters' emotions and their ability to express them. (pp. 357-58)

As a follow-up to student writing in this example, Bump found it effective to have "the class break down into small groups in which students, with the aid of their journals, disclosed as much to others as they felt comfortable sharing." The value of this approach was to "increase the amount of time each person had to share feelings about the literature." Technology offers additional benefits, such as online discussion boards, listservs, and blogs, that often include the possibility of writers remaining anonymous. In Bump’s approach, an enrichment activity follows the computer-based discussions, as “the program produced a transcript of all comments by all students in all groups. This communal journal celebrated a new kind of informal prose broken up by many voices, playfulness, and irreverence. Students were also asked to read and comment on the transcripts and to write essays about them” (p. 361).

An example of literature-as-springboard for a bibliotherapeutic approach is Willa Cather’s short story, Paul’s Case, in which the young protagonist, Paul, with his keen sense of aesthetics, is barred by his father from working at the theater, the place he feels most fully alive. As a result, Paul embezzles money, travels to New York, lives a culturally enriched life for eight days, and then, as his money dwindles, commits suicide. Following is a list of writing prompts that incorporates both the standard “elements of literature” approach (i.e., analyzing the story in terms of plot, setting, tone, character, point of view, theme, and style), and bibliotherapy-inspired queries, designed to help students make deeper personal connections:

1. Based on the way the story is told, what do you imagine the narrator thinks of Paul? What do you think of Paul? Do you consider him a "case," as the title implies? What is he a case of?

2. How was Paul defined by his setting of Cordelia Street in Pittsburgh? How does the new setting of New York City influence Paul? What is the setting of your life? How has your setting shaped you? Would you be more fulfilled in a different setting? If so, how?

3. What kind of son does Paul's father want? To what degree does Paul satisfy his father's expectations? What expectations do your parents have of you? Have you lived up to them? What expectations do your friends have of you? What expectations do you have of yourself? Is there a big difference between the person you are and the person you think you should be?

4. Paul was “accustomed to lying." Why? Do you believe his lying is justified? Why or why not? Is there any part of your life that you keep hidden by lies? If so, why?

5. What obstacles must Paul overcome? What could he do to overcome them? What is an example of a moment in your life when you had to make a major decision? What decision-making process did you use?

6. What would you do if Paul were your child? your friend?

7. What do the arts mean to Paul? What do they mean to you? What do you do to make the arts a part of your life?

8. Paul has been "dreading something," that "thing in the corner." What does he fear? Is he right to be afraid? What are your greatest fears? Do your fears affect the way you live your life? How can these fears be overcome?

9. Why is there so little dialogue in the story? Whom does Paul feel he can talk to? To whom do you confide? Who confides in you? What qualities make a person a good confidant?

10. Does Paul change over the course of the story? Is his life a growth process? Who has the most influence on him? What steps do you take to make your life a growth process? Who has had the most influence on you? How does that influence manifest itself?

11. What makes Paul unique? What makes him common? What makes you unique? What makes you common?

12. What is this story’s take-home message? How does that message relate to you?

These questions are meant to prod students to identify with characters in the story. And that, according to bibliotherapy, is the first step toward an authentic engagement with fiction.

Reading specialist Cris Tovani (2004) describes how such an approach affected one of her students, Anthony: The class had read Sandra Cisneros’s essay Salvador: Late or Early, and Tovani was prodding the students to make personal connections. She recalls that Anthony initially offered the tie-in that “he had a baby brother just like the boy in the story” (p. 13). Tovani urged him not to stop there, resulting in Anthony’s epiphany:

Maybe even though Salvador is just a kid himself, he is having to help his mom with the baby, just like I have to help my mom. Salvador’s mom isn’t being mean to him. Salvador’s mom really needs and depends on him, just like my mom depends on me . . . At first, I thought the mom was being abusive because she was making Salvador take care of all the brothers and the baby. Now, I see that he is very important to his family. But I wonder, where is the dad? Maybe there is no dad, and that’s another reason why Salvador has to do so much. He’s the man of the house.” (pp. 13-14)

Tovani notes that “Anthony had not only made a connection to his personal life, but had used that connection to understand the text. When he took his connection back to the text, he went deeper into the story” (p. 14). In addition to psychological benefits, therapeutic approaches can nudge students toward more critical thinking. Note that here, Anthony not only asks questions, but also ventures a possible answer. The end result may be a relationship between author and reader that poet Robert Bly describes as “inside talking to inside.”

Because bibliotherapeutic approaches remain a low priority in an era of high-stakes testing, and because therapeutic approaches are often displaced by the more traditional “elements of literature” methods, we surveyed a mixture of teachers, college graduate students, and undergraduate education and English education majors. Thirty-four respondents provided feedback to the following questions, designed to gauge their reaction to the Paul’s Case queries listed previously:

1. Do these questions help you identify with the characters? Why or why not?

2. Do these questions help you relate to the story? Why or why not?

3. Do you prefer these questions to the standard "elements of literature" approach, which analyzes the story in terms of plot, setting, tone, character, point of view, theme, and style? Would you/Have you used questions like these with students? Why or why not?

4. Do you consider these questions too personal?

5. Are there any questions that you feel should be added to this list, or removed from this list?

6. Should students be allowed to choose which of these questions they answer?

Ninety-four percent of respondents believed the questions did help them to identify with the characters and relate to the story, and also that the questions should be used with students. One respondent cautioned that bibliotherapy-type questions should be used in addition to, and not in place of, more traditional questions that focus on the elements of literature. Similarly, another respondent feared that the questions divert students too far away from the actual story. Several respondents suggested that “Paul’s Case” questions may be too comprehensive; perhaps tackling fewer issues would be beneficial, since fewer topics would allow students to probe them in greater detail. Whereas the questions are designed as follow-up writing prompts to a whole class reading assignment, another useful comment is that there may be a more subtle way to transition into the issues the story presents, e.g., relating the issues raised in the story to someone the student knows, before making personal tie-ins. Another respondent argued for letting students write their own questions.

As for the bibliotherapy-inspired questions being too personal (#4), again, 94% indicated they were not. One respondent noted that reading by its very nature is a personal act. Another pointed out that students do not seem resistant to probing personal issues. Question five elicited a response that questions tying the short story to the world, not just to the student, would be valuable. As for question six, only one respondent argued against allowing students to choose the questions they answer, noting that students could still choose the degree of their response. Several respondents pointed out that teachers should tread carefully in sensitive areas.

Overall, these results highlight a possible disconnect between what educators believe—that follow-up questions should encourage students to bridge their own lives, in a meaningful way, to assigned reading—and actual classroom practice. There were almost no reservations about posing personal questions. In fact, most of the respondents thought the questions were important.

With all the perceived benefits (e.g., identifying with the characters and relating to the story), why haven’t bibliotherapeutic principles become mainstreamed in education? Perhaps one explanation is that reader response has been around long enough that even textbooks routinely pose questions urging students to see themselves in literature, in effect, creating the illusion that students are engaged with fiction on a deep level. The difference is between paying lip service to a theory via textbooks’ discussion questions, and actually requiring students, over time, to discuss and write in depth in response to bibliotherapy-inspired prompts that truly probe their own life issues.

The field of bibliotherapy offers English and Literacy teachers a chance to look at a body of research that demonstrates ways in which fiction can be presented in the classroom that students may find life-enhancing and life-transforming. Bibliotherapy addresses student resistance to assigned reading as being "irrelevant" or "boring." Writing extensive and intensive responses, over long periods of time, pushes students to elaborate their thinking more than class discussion can often accommodate. The therapeutic process appeals to the "whole student," not just the academic experience. Bibliotherapy may point the way for students to establish strong personal links to literature. As Robert Tremmel (1999) phrases it, "Questions about teaching must be more than questions about teaching; they must be questions about living, too" (p. 11). Yet another way to accomplish this comes from a research associate at Kansas State University: “I encourage teachers at all levels to suggest the therapeutic potential of reading to their students by discussing their own experiences with books” (Daisey, 1993, p. 439).

Overall, this survey suggests that K-12 teachers and education majors are receptive to devoting time to develop students’ personal connections to literature, the spirit of which has already made inroads into the way responses to literature are approached by textbook authors. However, the difference is that we propose to take reader response to the next level—to the deeper digging, over time, that bibliotherapy demands. As one of the survey respondents notes, “Many of the students I encounter have much experience with ‘exploring their feelings’ and know just how to respond, often with extremely trite or pat observations.” Bibliotherapy breaks this surface, achieving a goal that Kafka once articulated: “A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us” (1904 letter to Oskar Pollak).

References

Anderson, Charles M., & MacCurdy, Marian M. eds. (2000). Writing and healing: Toward an informed practice. Urbana: NCTE.

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. (2002). Greasy lake. In X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (Eds.), Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama (8th ed.). (pp. 128-136). New York: Longman.

Bump, Jerome. (1990). Innovative bibliotherapy approaches to substance abuse education. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 15, 355-362.

Cather, Willa. (2002). Paul’s case. In X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (Eds.), Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama (8th ed.). (pp. 535-550). New York: Longman.

Cohen, Laura J. (1994). Phenomenology of therapeutic reading with implications for research and practice of bibliotherapy. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 21, 37-44.

Daisey, Peggy. (1993). Three ways to promote the values and uses of literacy at any age. Journal of Reading, 36(6), 436-39.

Gold, Joseph, & Gloade, Fred. (1988). Affective reading and its life applications. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 15, 235-44.

Hildreth, Bertina L., & Candler, Ann. (1992). Learning about learning disabilities through general public literature. Intervention in School and Clinic, 27(5), 293-296.

Hynes, Arleen J., & Wedl, Lois C. (1990). Bibliotherapy: An interactive process in counseling older persons. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 12(3),
288-302.

Koopman, C., Ismailji, T., Holmes, D., Classen, CC, Palesh, O., & Wales, T. (2005). The effects of expressive writing on pain, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in survivors of intimate partner violence. Journal of Health Psychology, 10(2), 211-221.

Marbella, Jean. (2001, September 9). Roth mourns fall of literature. Kansas City Star, p. I9.

Morgan, Sharon R. (1976). Bibliotherapy: A broader concept. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology 5(2), 39-42.

Purves, Alan C. (1981). Reading and Literature: American Achievement in International Perspective. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English.

Reiter, Sherry. (1988). The Wizard of Oz in the Land of the Id: A bibliotherapy approach. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 1, 149-56.

Rizzo, Tony. (1999, January 9). Literature to help troubled lives: Johnson County to use study of writings in offender program. Kansas City Star, p. B4.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1978). The Reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Smyth, J., Stone, A., Hurewitz, A., & Kaell, A. (1999). Writing about stressful events produces symptom reduction in asthmatics and rheumatoid arthritics: A randomized trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281, 1304-1309.

Tobin, Lad. (2004). Reading student writing: Confessions, meditations, and rants. Portsmouth: Boynton,

Tovani, Cris. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading?: Content comprehension, grades 6-12. Portland: Stenhouse,

Tremmel, Robert. (1999). Zen and the practice of teaching English. Portsmouth:
Boynton.

Appendix A

Survey Concerning Guided Questions Related to a Short Story

Summary of Paul’s Case (from the website Literature Annotations): “This short story was written by Willa Cather around 1905 when she was living in Pittsburgh; it is the only one of her stories with that city as a background. During her time there she taught in a high school and she said the story was based on experience with two boys in her classes. It also has connections to her own background of growing up in a small town in Nebraska where she hungered for a broader life experience.

Paul, a sensitive high school student, felt very frustrated with his home life [on Cordelia Street in Pittsburgh] and his family's expectations that he would grow up to work in a factory or the steel mills as his father and most of his neighbors did. He was not close to anyone in his family and had no neighborhood or school friends. Instead, he spent his evenings ushering at the symphony hall or backstage at a local theater.

Paul dreamed of living the life of the performers he saw. He was without discipline and without direction. He had problems at school and was surly when called before a school committee. Eventually he was pulled out of school and sent to work by his father. He devised a scheme to steal money from his employer and then ran away to New York City where he stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, living for a few days the life of his dreams. When he realized that he would have to return home and accept his punishment he killed himself.”

Commentary on the story (from the website Literature Annotations): “This is the most anthologized of all of Cather's writing . . . It has been called a ‘study in temperament’. It is a testimony to the reality of youthful dissatisfactions and the common failure of families to understand and of schools to be helpful. Paul was a misfit and was unable to accept the drab reality of his daily life. His solution was most unfortunate. Paul's Case is useful in student discussions of adolescent issues and adolescent suicide.”

Bibliotherapy, sometimes called literaptherapy, is a psychotherapeutic technique that uses literature to foster personal growth. The goal of the following bibliotherapy-inspired questions is to make fiction a transformative experience and enhance student interaction with literature.

Questions Over Willa Cather's Paul's Case

[full text: http://ofcn.org/cyber.serv/resource/bookshelf/troll10/trollchptr7.html]