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Tempest Act 1 Discussion Questions

9/20/2014

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I really like to give my students a character chart of The Tempest either right after or right before they read Act 1. The names of the characters are similar enough, and there are so many repetitions within the play, that it can be quite confusing for first-time readers. I start with the following chart:
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Obviously these aren't all the characters in the play, but they are the major players in the first act, and they all matter whether or not they speak at all in these opening scenes. Some of them matter even if they don't speak at all in the play--especially the women like Sycorax, who are removed from the action before the play begins. 

Before I even begin with close reading questions, I like to point my students to larger questions about repetitions and motifs in the play.

The first general set of themes that I ask them to think about are the sibling rivalries: 1) Prospero and Antonio, 2) Miranda and Caliban (if we think of Caliban as a type of surrogate brother) and 3) Alonso and Sebastian, a rivalry that becomes important in Act 2. I ask students to hold this in their minds, and think about possible sources for all of this pervasive sibling rivalry.

The second general set of themes that we discuss is the various types of master-servant relationships in the play, especially if we broaden our definitions of "service" to include courtiers and political subordinates:
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At this point in the play, the servant relationships that students can most clearly discuss are Ariel-Prospero and Caliban-Prospero. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of these two characters, I ask them to remember to think about the ways that Caliban can be a foil for Antonio or Sebastian, and Ariel can be a foil for Gonzalo. I find that it is useful to give students topics or questions to be "on the lookout for" while they are reading.
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Scene 1

  • How do the characters come across in this scene? What are your initial impressions of the noble leaders (Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo) in comparison with the working sailors (esp. the Boatswain)?
  • Shakespeare has other plays that contain a shipwreck, but that don’t show the shipwreck (ex. Twelfth Night).  In those plays, the characters come on stage all wet and bedraggled and simply say, “Man, I was lucky to survive that terrible shipwreck!” Why does he show the shipwreck in The Tempest? What does that add?

The first question builds on the discussion of masters and servants in our "general themes" discussion. The students are quick to point out the kinds of hierarchies that are being either broken down or desperately upheld by the various characters. They get an immediate sense from Gonzalo's speech that social hierarchy really matters to these characters, even in the face of life-threatening catastrophe.

The second question can lead students in multiple directions. They often discuss the sense of chaos and fear that would be apparent from the scene, and good students also note that we the audience are like the characters on the stage in that we don't know yet that we are being manipulated by Prospero's magic. When we find out in 1.2 that none of the titular tempest was really as dangerous as it seemed, and that Prospero and Ariel were behind everything, we realized that we have been duped just as much as the Boatswain the the nobles. Prospero's seeming control extends beyond the stage even as far as our emotional experience.

In forthcoming scholarship, Bruce Smith argues that this scene helps to set up recurring contrasts in the play between music and noise that will enable Shakespeare to anticipate what we are now calling "sound art." Rather than listening for the sources of sound or the semantic meanings of sound, we are forced into a position of "reduced listening" where we hear the sound for what it is: raucous, terrifying noise. Whether or not we will be able to produce meaning or music out of the noise of The Tempest will depend on our position as listening subjects, rather than Prospero's position as magician (or even Shakespeare's position as playwright). Professor Smith has been kind enough to share his forthcoming essay with me, so I assign it as one of the student's presentation assignment articles.

Scene 2

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In 1.2, I find that it is easier to parse out the various relationships that we see in the play rather than moving chronologically through the scene. The relationship between Prospero and Miranda is obviously one of the most important in the play, so I begin with it. I like to focus on the following lines:
The hour's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not
Out three years old.  1.2.36-41
Here, as elsewhere in this scene, I simply ask students to characterize the relationship between Prospero and Miranda. Students usually respond with some sort of comment about how it's weird that she's 15 years old and her dad has never told her about where they are from and how they came to be on a deserted island. Prospero's call to obedience is telling too, and this marks the first in many, many instances wherein Prospero tries to control another character with storytelling. He obviously and pointedly demands that Miranda listen to him over and over in this scene, but he also rehearses the story of Sycorax with Ariel even though Ariel tells him twice that he does not need to repeat the traumatic story. By repeatedly telling Ariel about Sycorax, Prospero keeps Ariel indebted to him and he is able to deflect Ariel's initial demand for liberty.
Miranda. Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you!

Prospero. O, a cherubim
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile.
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt,
Under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue. (1.2.151-158 )
...
Here cease more questions:
Thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness,
And give it way: I know thou canst not choose. (1.2.184-186)
These two passages do a great job of demonstrating the two sides of Prospero's character that are associated with his paternalism: his affection for Miranda and his obsessive need for control. Students can pick on his warmly affectionate tone here, but they often remark about how creepy it is when he puts Miranda to sleep. There's something about his narcoleptic magic that makes it seem rather like Rohypnol. "I know thou canst not choose" sounds suspiciously like "I know you want it," because both expressions diminish female agency but Shakespeare brings the question of dominance to the forefront even more baldly .

The question of Miranda's sexuality is, of course, fully addressed in this scene between the recounting of Caliban's attempted rape of her and her introduction to Ferdinand. I ask students to think about how messed up it is that Prospero makes Miranda go talk to Caliban moments before she meets Ferdinand... I ask them to put themselves in Miranda's shoes when her father makes her go talk with her unrepentant attempted rapist. Like he did before with Ariel, Prospero forces Miranda to relive a former trauma. We saw the payoff for Prospero when he uses a traumatic past with Ariel: what is the payoff for Prospero now, with Miranda?  This leads to our last passage about Miranda and Prospero:
Prospero. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance
And say what thou seest yond.

Miranda. What is't? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.

Prospero. No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd
With grief that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him
A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows
And strays about to find 'em.

Miranda. I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.

Prospero. [Aside] It goes on, I see,
As my soul prompts it. (1.2.409-421)
Students have been bombarded in recent years with a rhetoric that people are "born" a particular way. This has been a useful and productive means for the gay community to gain political support as they fight for civil rights, especially the right to marry. Pop singer Lady Gaga even turned it into an anthem for her album. 
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Although the message behind the song and the slogan is one of tolerance, it is also a simplistic way to discuss a complicated idea like human sexuality. Shakespeare actually seems to endorse the opposite point of view in Prospero's relationship with Miranda. He carefully controls how she is first introduced to Ferdinand so as to precondition her to fall in love with Ferdinand. We know that this is his intention from the get-go as we see in the aside he makes to the audience in the passage excerpted above: "It goes on, I see / As my soul prompts it." He also primes Ferdinand in this scene through Ariel's song, which pours salt into the open wound of Ferdinand's grief over his father. The song describes in detail the way that Alonso's body will be taken by the sea and turned into coral and pearls. At that moment of painful grief, Prospero dangles Miranda in front of Ferdinand. The love that she offers is a form of instant pain-relief for the grief-stricken young man.

Prospero's
control over the lovers' inward experience of love continues into the scene when he sets up artificial roadblocks between Miranda and Ferdinand: "They are both in either's powers; but this swift business / I must uneasy make, lest too light winning / Make the prize light." He is making Ferdinand and Miranda feel like they are the stars in their very own romantic comedy. He plays the stock character of the senex iratus, a paternal blocking figure such as Egeus in Midsummer Night's Dream.  When Prospero starts playing that role, Ferdinand and Miranda fall in line as the lovers who prove the sincerity and depth of their love by overcoming and resisting his prohibition.  He knows that putting up this false roadblock will only make them want each other more. They are puppets whom he manipulates, even in such a seemingly inward and intimate sphere such as their choice of whom they love and sexually desire.

The concept that we are "born" a certain way--that we have a core essence of who we are that cannot be changed no matter how much society pressures us to do so--is a humanist claim that we have a fundamental "human nature." Through Prospero, Shakespeare makes the opposite claim that our seeming essence--even something as fundamental to us as our choice in mate--can be and often is conditioned by society in ways that we are only dimly aware of. In this way, Shakespeare presents Prospero to us as a sort of post-humanist. He constructs Miranda's inward experience for her in a social experiment. Scientists use the word "controls" to describe the various elements that they can manipulate and eliminate in order to study causation instead of correlation; in the isolated environment of the island, Prospero can adjust most of the controls so that he can run his social experiment with maximum efficiency to make Miranda love the exact man whom Prospero has chosen for her. He is living the early modern patriarch's dream.

Students are generally pretty attached to the idea that they are born a certain way, and that they have a core essence that has not been constructed by society. Asking them to think about the implications of the idea that Miranda has been "programmed" to love Ferdinand usually leads to some pretty interesting discussions about how our culture might attempt to "program" their own inward experience.


One of the few things on the island that Prospero can't control (or at least can't control well) is Caliban. I will discuss Caliban more fully in next week's post!


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Teaching early lit of exploration in translation

9/13/2014

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Christopher Columbus' map. Lisbon, workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus, c.1490. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (CPL GE AA 562 RES).
I teach a unit on early explorations of the New World. Because these narratives are in Spanish and then translated into English for the Norton Anthology, I have found that it's important to give a variety of angles into the texts since students can't "close read" with the same precision that they would be able to if they were reading the author's direct words. We read three Spanish explorers in this unit: Christopher Columbus, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Bernardino de Sahagún. In the following blog post I will trace my general strategy for these three authors.

Columbus

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Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus (born about 1446, died 1506), by Sebastiano del Piombo (aka Sebastiano Luciani), 1519. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Norton's selections of Columbus' writings are unusual. The editors selected two letters that Columbus wrote: 1) Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage (February 15, 1493); and 2) Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage (July 7, 1503).  The first letter makes Columbus look like a hero who has discovered a marvel, and the second makes him look like a deluded man embittered by his fall from grace.

It is useful to compare and contrast the two letters to each other: what kind of persona does Columbus create for himself in each letter? How does he consider the Native Americans? How does he consider the Spanish? In the first letter, why does he reference things like the nightingale and honeybees which were not in the New World but were in Spain? To whom is he writing in either letter and how does that affect the way we understand his tone?

The Norton's selection opens up students to critique Columbus, but it also maintains enough ambiguity that they could still walk away from their reading with a rather simplistic and laudatory view of him still intact. I find it useful to bring in other voices to challenge their uncritical view. First, I give them a critique of the encomienda system that emerged from Columbus' policies, a critique that was written by Columbus' near contemporary Bartolomé de las Casa.  A selection of de las Casas' The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies (1552) is available in the Norton on pp. 38-42. In this section, de las Casas outlines in harrowing detail the atrocities that the Spanish were inflicting on the natives of the Caribbean. I like to ask my students: what is de las Casas’ seeming purpose in writing and how does that compare to Columbus? Compare and contrast the way that Columbus and de las Casas speak about the New World and its inhabitants. Also consider the way that these two early modern explorers use Hispaniola in order to draw contrasts between Native American culture and Spanish culture.

I also ask the younger students to read the essay by Ian W. Toll, “The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus,” in The New York Times, September 23, 2011, available online at this link, which is a really lovely review of Laurence Bergreen's Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (2012). Toll summarizes various "readings" of Columbus throughout history and praises Bergreen for his assessment of Columbus as one who "became progressively less rational and more extreme, until it seemed as if he lived more in his glorious illusions than in the grueling reality his voyages laid bare.” Bergreen's book would be good to excerpt for older students, but Toll's editorial in The New York Times is sufficient for my purposes with ninth graders. I ask them to explain Toll’s criticisms about Columbus and to consider if they accord with de las Casas’ text. Additionally, if the early modern explorers’ account of Hispaniola can tell us something about the way they view Spain, does Toll’s account of Columbus tell us something about how he views modern-day America? Why do you think we celebrate Columbus Day anyway?

Cabeza de Vaca

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Fun fact: "Cabeza de Vaca" means "Cow Head" in Spanish!
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had a crazy, crazy life. He came to the New World as part of the ill-fated 1527 Narváez expedition. After surviving a hurricane and losing the ship, Cabeza de Vaca and a handful of other survivors made rafts and floated from western Florida to Galveston, Texas, where they were captured and enslaved by the Capoques and Hans Indians. After years of enslavement, Cabeza de Vaca became a merchant and then eventually a faith-healer among the Indians. He and the other three remaining members of the expedition traveled by foot all over what is now the southwest United States, amassing thousands of followers. Over an eight-year period of wandering, Cabeza de Vaca ended up in Mexico City where he was reunited with his countrymen and then eventually brought back to Spain. He wrote of his adventure in The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, which he offered to Charles V as being "of no trivial value for those who go in your name to subdue those countries and bring them to a knowledge of the true faith and true Lord and bring them under the imperial dominion."

The Norton excerpt focuses on the initial period of enslavement and the reunion with the Spanish in Mexico city. I like to supplement the Norton's brief section with passages from The Relation that focus on what it was like for Cabeza de Vaca to become a faith-healer. As the excerpt above suggests, Cabeza de Vaca is on board with the colonialist project, but he also critiques the Spanish practice of enslaving the Indians, saying, "
they received us with the same awe and respect the others had--even more, which amazed us. Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way."

The way that he describes becoming a faith healer is especially useful for exploring his divided sense of self.  He alternates between Machiavellian cunning as he seeks to augment the natives' misconception that he is from heaven and heartfelt wonder that God has seemingly chosen him as a vessel to bless, heal, and unite people who are sick or at war with each other. In short, he alternates between wanting to use the Indians and sincerely wanting to help them.

I ask my students to trace the "narrative" or agenda that is pro-colonization, pro-Spanish, and pro-exploitation. Then I also ask them to trace the "counter narrative" that is critical of colonization, the Spanish, and exploitation. We consider also what might account for tension between the two narratives: is this symptomatic of a divided loyalty, a divided sense of self, a product of being in a liminal space between "Spanish" and "Native American"? Is Cabeza de Vaca the "first" American?

Sahagún

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Illustration of Bernardino de Sahagún from Narrative and Critical History of American (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1886).
Bernardino de Sahagún also had an amazing life, although his was one of study instead of one of adventure.  He was a Franciscan missionary priest who spent more than 50 years studying the language, culture, and beliefs of the Aztec Indians. He translated parts of the bible into Nahuatl, the Aztec language. He also wrote the General History of the Things of New Spain which is considered the first ethnographic study to use objective and consistent methods for gathering information. Because of his innovations in ethnography, he is known as the "first anthropologist."

Very simply, Sahagún created a survey that he administered to the Aztecs about a wide range of topics. He administered the survey in their native language,
Nahuatl, and he interviewed a wide range of people (including women). The survey was very simple in its basic premise. The written responses--given in Nahuatl and then translated into Spanish in a side-by-side translation--suggest that the majority of Sahagun's questions were three-part: 1) what is a ____? 2) what is a "good" ____?, and 3) what is a "bad" ____?

Sahagún intended the General History to be an all-purpose reference book: a dictionary, a cultural snapshot for missionaries who were coming in to convert the natives, and a record of a culture to preserve it.  He also worked with the Aztec very closely. The research assistants for his study were all Aztec, and he employed Aztec "feather painters" to illustrate his book. Here are some of their beautiful illustrations:
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The attorney
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The solicitor
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The virtuous daughter
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Good and bad sons
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Female physicians
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A person suffering from possession, turned into an animal
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A female weaver
It is really useful to ask students to articulate what the responses suggest is valued in certain groups. You can look at professions, at age groups, at gender groups, etc. Students can pick up patterns such as children are expected to be obedient (no matter the gender), and adulthood seems to be measured according to whether or not a person is responsible for teaching a younger generation. That is, adulthood is measured by having had children or by adopting children from other family members. It is also useful to think about similarities and differences between our culture and the Aztec culture. Although there are definite differences (according to the General History, a "good" grandfather is one who beats one with nettles!), there are also many, many similarities between our culture and theirs. This document suggests and invites empathy with the Aztecs.

World Digital Library offers high resolution scans of all volumes at The Florentine Codex, named for the best preserved copy of Sahagún's book (located at a library in Florence).

I find it very useful to compare and contrast Cabeza de Vaca and Sahagún, especially around the concept of empathy.  I use the following as a paper prompt:
Compare and contrast the representation of the Native Americans that we see in Cabeza de Vaca and in Sahagún.  How does the form of these two texts (the method the writers use to present information) affect the content of their writing (the actual description of the New World and its inhabitants)?

The two forms are so different: one is a series of definitions and the other is a series of event set into narrative form like an adventure story. The former highlights Sahagún's willing decision to empathize with the Aztecs (even in their own language and giving preference to their own words) whereas the other shows Cabeza de Vaca as he is forced to undergo a partial (but still incomplete) process of acculturation to the native cultures of the American Southwest.
Historical relativists would urge us to keep these offenses in perspective. It was another era, they remind us, when men were governed by different moral and ethical codes. 

--Ian Toll
The prompt, and indeed the entire unit, help to combat the "historical relativists" who excuse the darker side of the colonialist project as critiqued by Bartolomé de las Casas. We see that there was a vibrant and discursive debate about how the Spanish should interact with Native Americans and even moments of questioning why the Spanish would want to conquer the New World at all. Underlying these moments of questioning is the quiet insistence that Native Americans count as humans, and that the Spanish are opening themselves up to condemnation by history and the world for greed and barbarity.  Such a pedagogical move might even make students question why we want to rewrite history to excuse what happened at the beginning of Europe's conquest of the Americas.
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Teaching John Smith: Supplementing the Norton

9/6/2014

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I teach my survey of Early American Lit from the Norton Anthology. I find their selection of texts from Smith to be a bit perplexing, so in order to flesh out class discussion and engage my students, I draw from a wealth of online sources too, which I would like to share with you. These sources help to supplement what we read in the Norton.

First of all, the entire class reads the short selection from A Description of New England, and we open with a discussion of Smith's rhetorical deftness.
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Israel Smith Clare, Illustrated Universal History (Philadelphia: J. C. McCurdy & Co., 1878) 256.
If he have any grain of faith or zeal in Religion, what can he do less hurtful to any; or more agreeable to God, than to seek to convert those poor savages to know Christ, and humanity, whose labors with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pains? ...

What so truly suits with honor and honesty, as the discovering things unknown? erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and gain to our native mother-country a kingdom to attend her; find employment for those that are idle, because they know not what to do: so far from wronging any, as to cause posterity to remember thee; and remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise?                                                               
We begin class with a discussion of the idea of something being requited in triplicate. Here and elsewhere, Smith defends the colonialist project in America as something that benefits 1) God, 2) England, and 3) the individual colonist. He uses this three-pronged approached to convince people to move to Jamestown.

Ask your students to identify when he is addressing each one of these goals, and how he does so.  For example, when he discusses how colonization will benefit England, he uses multiple angles to make it seem absolutely necessary for his contemporary society to send people off to Jamestown.
Then, who would live at home idly (or think in himself any worth to live) only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die? Or by consuming that carelessly, his friends got worthily? Or by using that miserably, that maintained virtue honestly? Or, for being descended nobly, pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred, in penury? ... [Then] cozen thy kindred, yea even thine own brother, and wish thy parents’ death (I will not say damnation) to have their estates?
Here, Smith is discussing the social problem of primogeniture in England--the custom whereby younger sons of the landed gentry were essentially disinherited so that the family could preserve the large estate for future generations through the sole line of the eldest son.  If you are interested in the topic of primogeniture, especially in the context of literary studies, I recommend the now-classic essay by Louis Adrian Montrose, "'The Place of a Brother' in As You Like It: Social Process and Comic Form," Shakespeare Quarterly 32.1 (1981): 28-54.

In this passage, Smith is arguing that the younger, disinherited sons of noble families can be sent to America where they will not only bring themselves honor and praise but also stop being such a troublesome burden to their families. But the efficacy of shipping off England's problem citizens doesn't end with the noble (but impoverished) classes; he also suggests that sending of the vagrant lower classes will solve problems for England.

In addition, he considers England's standing in terms of international politics:
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For those of you unused to reading the typeface of early English books, the passage above, taken from Early English Books Online (EEBO) since it is not in the Norton, says the following:

It would be an history of a large volume to recite the adventures of the Spaniards and the Portugals [i.e., the Portuguese] : their affronts and defeats, their dangers and miseries, which with such incomparable honor and constant resolution, so far beyond belief, they have attempted and endured in their discoveries and plantations, as may well condemn us, of too much imbecility, sloth, and negligence. Yet, the authors of those new inventions were held as ridiculous for a long time as now are others, that do but seek to imitate their unparalleled virtues.

Here, Smith appeals to national pride: Jamestown will not only remove all sorts of unwanted people from England, giving them important jobs in the process, but also serve as means to augment England in the world's eyes, making her into a stronger rival against Spain and Portugal.  He is telling his readers that they can have their cake and eat it too.

This rhetoric of gain upon gain is written everywhere in the Description of New England, especially where Smith declares that the work in New England is as easy as it is profitable:
[Man], woman and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures[.] And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence, as fast as you can hale and vear a line? He is a very bad fisher, [who] cannot kill in one day with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred cods.
He seems to disregard the law of supply and demand, claiming that it is both easy and extremely profitable to fish in New England. Ask your students to think about how that normally works. If it is THAT easy to catch 300 codfish in a day, why would any of your neighbors pay you to fish for them?

Asking students to think about the purpose of this writing is a very productive exercise. The discussion topics above help students to see A Description of New England not as a "description" but as an advertisement or a piece of propaganda. His truth-claims are about as credible as an advertiser's would be: we should think of him as "selling" the idea of "New England" (the first time this description was used to name this geographical region) rather than accurately reporting what things were like there. As such, his report tells us more about the social psyche of England in 1616 than it tells us about real life in the Virginia Colony.
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Smith rescued by Pocahontas Lithograph. Published by Hr. Schile, No. 36 Division St., [between 1870 and 1875] Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-03285.
This discussion makes a very good transition into supplementary material about John Smith's description of his rescue by Pocahontas. The Norton has the very brief mention of Pocahontas in Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). The passage of note is towards the end of their excerpt:
At last they brought him to Meronocomo, where was Powhatan their Emperor... having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death...
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1616 engraving by Simon van de Passe
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Oil portrait by an unidentified artist (c. 1760), after van de Passe's engraving.
A longer description of Pocahontas herself appears in Smith's 1616 letter to Queen Anne, which you can read at Digital History, a site maintained by the University of Houston.
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Pocahontas saving the life of Capt. John Smith. Chromolithograph, color. Boston: New Eng. Chromo. Lith. Co., c1870. Library of Congess, LC-USZC4-3368.
I ask one student out of the group to read the Norton excerpt of the Generall Historie and the 1616 Letter to Queen Anne.  This student is responsible for presenting his or her outside research to the class. I give the presenting student the following guiding questions:

Compare John Smith's accounts to Disney's 1995 movie, Pocahontas. If you haven’t seen the Disney movie, the most basic differences between the historical accounts and the Disney movie are 1) that Disney makes Pocahontas 18-20 years old instead of 12-13 years old and 2) that the movie explains Pocahontas' actions as motivated by romantic (and mutual) love.  There is also a helpful chart comparing Smith’s story to the Disney movie at this link. Chief Roy Crazy Horse (of the Powhatan Nation) also discusses the Disney movie, a discussion that you can find at this link. Why does Disney turn the historical events into a love story? What does that narrative do for America—how does it romanticize the story of the early interactions between English settlers and Native Americans? Why it has been so important to elevate Smith's story to the status of a national myth, especially a love story? Are their elements of Smith's accounts that suggest or lead to this rendering of the story into the basic plot of Romeo and Juliet?
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Disney's 1995 Pocahontas
There are many, many benefits to this exercise.

First and foremost, it corrects student misconceptions about this moment in history since many students are more familiar with the Disney version than they are with the historical accounts.

Secondly, it asks them to think about whether Disney's version of the events serves an ideological purpose of some sort. Some students are quick to dismiss the idea that Disney's version is a form of propaganda--especially those who have not read the excerpt by Chief Roy Crazy Horse. They tend to think that Disney is telling a fairy tale, like Cinderella and Snow White, but harmlessly setting it into the context of a real, historical event. These students argue that this is simply an American version of Romeo and Juliet.

The student presenters, however, are quick to point out that Disney breaks the colonialists group up into groups of "bad" colonists who want to exploit the land and who resort to violence in order to do so and "good" colonists who want to love the Native Americans. Disney presents the problem of America's genocidal war against the Indians as a result of the "bad" colonists, and not the colonial project itself. As one of my students said in class, "Disney lets white Americans feel less guilty about what happened."  This discussion lead to an interesting debate in class: if history is converted into a myth, then who is responsible for how the myth is disseminated into a culture? Is it our fault for not reading the history books and learning as best we can about what "really" happened? Or is it Disney's fault for telling an easy, seductive story that makes us feel better about what happened? Who is responsible when myths and stories cause interference with history?
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"Poccahontas [sic]: A Story of the First English Emigrants to North America, Founded on Fact." Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. 1.37 (September 9, 1852): 577-82; 1.38 (September 16, 1852): 594-97; 1.39 (September 23, 1852): 610-12; 1.40 (September 30, 1852): 625-27. A serialized novel loosely based on the "real" story.
Another faction of students put forth the argument that a competing or additional problem with Disney's rendering of the events into a love story has to do with gender. These students argued that Disney--at least in 1995--didn't know how to market stories to girls without including romantic love. John Smith's biography and the circumstances of his rescue by Pocahontas are interesting enough that Disney didn't have to resort to the love story plot. The real-life events could have been formatted into a story about a man's personal growth through a physical journey (like Finding Nemo) or about the duties that children have to families (like The Lion King) or about children resisting familial pressure (like Brave); however, Disney didn't opt to tell the story of Pocahontas through any of those genres. Students speculated that Disney thought the movie would sell better if it continued its success in the princess genre, which served to reinforce the narrative that women find their happy ending through fulfillment in romantic love.

It is important to tell students that Disney did not event the love story--this is a narrative tradition that goes back hundreds of years. They people at Disney weren't writing in a vacuum, but they did make a conscious choice to perpetuate the love myth. Click on the photos above and below to view pages in the Pocahontas Archive, maintained by Edward Gallagher of Lehigh University, where you will see examples of mid-nineteenth century versions of Pocahontas as a love story.
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Parker, H. F. "John Smith." Morning Stars of the New World. New York, 1854. 249-75.
The third benefit of this project relates to John Smith instead of Disney and/or earlier adaptations of the Pocahontas story. One of the questions we raised is what our responsibility is in determining what "really" happened in history. But of course John Smith is not a neutral reporter as we determined in our reading of A Description of Virginia. He is really good at "selling" ideas to his readers. This allows us to think about how his letter to Queen Anne might also be selling something; even if the basic facts are true (something that historians contest in and of itself), Smith might have alternate or hidden intentions in how he tells the facts of the story. How might Smith be "selling" the idea of Pocahontas, first to Queen Anne and then, ultimately, to us? What does he gain through telling this story?

As you can see, John Smith's writings--particularly about Pocahontas--raise complex questions about colonialism, gender, and historiography. Despite the complexity of these questions, even young students can begin to formulate arguments and opinions about the cultural work that John Smith attempts to do in his writing. Supplementing the readings in the Norton with these additional resources will help students to see the stakes of how we tell history.
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    Claire Dawkins

    English Instructor at Stanford's Online High School

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