"The Contender"

At first glance, Lipsyte's The Contender is a strange book to mix with Go Ask Alice - see previous post - as one takes place in white suburbia, following a "well-to-do" girl's struggles with drug addiction, while The Contender focuses of a young black male who tries to escape the negative life in the New York ghetto by becoming a professional boxer. To be honest, I too was confused at first, especially when I first began reading the book, as to what one had to do with the other. The narrators couldn't have been more different and the setting - aside from the time period - couldn't have been more different. However, when you read into the books, there is a faint light that suggests that, despite the stark contrast between the narrators, that they are perhaps experiencing something that is very similar, but in a different fashion.

When the reader is first introduced to Alfred Brooks - a notable difference from Go Ask Alice - he is a high school dropout on the fast-track to mediocrity. He has a steady job stocking shelves at a local grocery store, but sees no room for advancement or, the more concerning of the two, a reason to try to advance. His childhood friend James has begun hanging out with a bad crowd that try to coerce Alfred into joining them in their juvenile delinquency. When James is arrested for trying to break into the store that Alfred works at, the bad crowd beats Alfred senseless, sparking a new desire to become something. Alfred goes to to a local gym that trains boxers and signs up. At first, he finds every reason to be bummed out in life and to not train hard, but eventually the training turns his view of the world around. Alfred slips six weeks into his training and spends a night drinking and smoking pot with the bad crowd, and even gets to see James again. James has slipped into a criminal mindset and Alfred hints at his use of cocaine just before passing out from drinking. The next day he is coerced into a day trip with the bad crowd, only to have to flee from the car they took, as it was stolen. He struggles for a few days to recover and almost quits training, but returns and becomes a better fighter than ever. He eventually works his way to amateur fights and has three victories before his trainer tells him it's time to quit. Alfred is adamant about going with the fourth fight, and takes a Rocky style beating that costs him the fight, but gains the respect of those around him, and, most importantly, respect for himself. He then plans to return to school to get his GED, become a part of the Youth Leaders program in his community, and continue helping upcoming fighters at the gym. However, James appears again, for the third and final time, after trying to steal from the same store again. He is badly injured and Alfred manages to coerce into seeking medical attention and coming off "the junk" with his assistance. The novel ends as they walk through the snow en route to a hospital.

Again, this is seemingly heavy material for high school students to read, but it's a terrific moral and the "feel good" story that America loves to hear. To digress momentarily, I do believe I will be coupling this book with John Knowles's A Separate Peace, since they feel almost identical in a sense. However, when comparing this with Go Ask Alice, the critical reader will notice that both narrators live in a world where the have a "good" way of living and a "bad" way of living. In Go Ask Alice, the narrator has the "good" life when she is a square and is not on drugs. She seems to believe that her life is horrible, but it pales in comparison to each bout of her abusing drugs and the aftermath of those choices. Though she eventually swears off the life, it haunts her through her peers and is what ultimately lands her in the mental asylum. Now, Alfred, in The Contender, faces two different worlds as well. The "bad" world is perpetuating the stereotypical lifestyle of the ghetto resident that James and the bad crowd demonstrate. These kids steal, drink, smoke, and go to jail, while the boxers - the "good" way of life - seek to better themselves physically and advise Alfred on how to better himself with education and hard work. Unlike the unnamed narrator from Go Ask Alice, Alfred brings his baggage to the beginning of the story and is able to overcome it without the suggestion of his untimely demise shortly after the text. However, the critical reader will notice that the two struggle between these two ways of life and slip in and out of both of them, eventually choosing to live the "good" life, despite what is going on around them. This will be an interesting discussion to have with the students after they have read both novels.

"Go Ask Alice"

With my student-teaching semester quickly approaching, I've been struggling to juggle the responsibilities of moving to a new place, everyday life, and my high expectations for my knowledge base for the semester. If nothing else, I'll at least force myself through the reading that the students will hopefully engage in during the course of the semester. I've just - and I literally mean just - finished the book Go Ask Alice that is part of the reading list that my cooperating teacher has provided for me. Though I feel as if my high school and college careers have left me fairly well-versed in literature, this is one of the texts that I am not familiar with due to my affinity for the classics and "big name" authors. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Miller's The Crucible are the two that I will be most familiar with, as I read them in high school as well, and I will have some knowledge base for Knowles's A Separate Peace from my encounter with it in junior high and not long ago in field observations. It is the newer works - Go Ask Alice, The Contender, and Swallowing Stones - that I have no knowledge of their existence, let alone their content and value as literary works.

The reference is really no surprise...

For those who may not have read Go Ask Alice, it's a short but chilling tale of a teenager's struggle with drug addiction after being introduced to it without her knowledge. The unnamed female narrator begins the tale as a mousy, "square" girl who has the usual worries of boys, popularity, sex, and physical appearance, until she is invited to a party where she unknowingly drinks a glass of cola laced with LSD. From there, the narrator begins an "on again, off again" struggle with the dangers and strife that come with habitual drug use and recovery. These struggles land her living with her grandparents, clear across the country struggling to live, being raped by a rich woman and her boyfriend, in a homeless shelter, and in a mental hospital, to name just a few. The writing style is an easy read, as it is claimed to have been based on the actual diaries of a teenage girl, but the content is harrowing for the reader. There is little time in between the jumps from the narrator's love/hate relationship with drugs. For a cluster of pages she is a heroine who is fighting "the Establishment" by not conforming, but quickly falls back into missing her life at home. Once back, she is eager to begin her life anew after her experiences but always seems to be brought back to misery by her life, drugs, and finally her reputation. The book ends with no real conclusion, suggesting a new start for the narrator, but provides a disturbing epilogue that leaves nothing but questions.

This book may seem like heavy reading for high school students, but these worlds are very real and extremely tempting to them. They will only increase in temptation when the majority of them travel to college and live away from home for the first time in their lives. Aside from a "scared straight" use, the novel also presents the students with a surprising amount of challenges in literature. For one, the book is written as if the reader is the narrator's diary and is receiving each entry. This makes the book written in a heavily bias, first-person, stream-of-consciousness format that often leaves the reader wondering if the narrator is lying or exaggerating as well as moments where tremendous amounts of time seem to have passed, but only a few weeks have due to a lack of accurate dates. The first-person narration also provides the issue of the narrator's bias. Unlike works such as Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the narrator is detailing the events in her life as they occur, and not some time later. Therefore, the narrator has all the bias of a teenage female during the drug era of the 1970's in America. However, the narrator's absence of a name makes the character seem akin to seemingly any teenager who might experience these very common feelings, hardships, or "tough decisions." In total, this novel is certainly going to bring a gloomy atmosphere when reading it with the students, but will certainly provide the students with the passion needed to analyze the literature for it's strengths, weaknesses, purpose, and morals.

Slices of Life: What our Possessions Say about Us

As the holiday season approaches it brings with it the ever present "moving date" as I continue to further my education toward profession. Of the last four years, three of the holiday seasons have mean packing my possessions into as few boxes as possible, discerning what is necessary and what can be discarded or donated, how to transport it, and the other wonders that are incorporated with such a move. However, it is at this point, with such a distinct inventory of what one owns, that you realize, as Tyler Durden would have asserted, how much one's possessions own them in turn. While looking the things I discard or donate, I look at them and wonder if I should be doing that. These items, many of them not unearthed in years, bring back essential memories, fondness, trauma, etc. that it seems one forgets in one's routine life. For example: I donated several items of clothing that I should have donated years ago. A few of the items date back to when I was in the early years of high school, approaching the better part of a decade ago now, and were not acceptable to be worn in public at all. However, even as I packed these items away to be donated to those in need, I couldn't help but reminisce on the things that I had cognitively attached to them: My first date, my first cross country race, the first party I attended, my first kiss, and other socially important memories from high school. It seemed to me that for a moment, at least, our lives seemed very compartmentalized.

This perhaps plays upon the writing of a peer regarding his thoughts about flash fiction, as I had just finished reviewing it for him, but seems more likely to be a useful technique for reading analysis and writing in the future. As we begin to get older, it seems we gather more and more things that we essentially do not need, but hold an intrinsic, emotional value for us. Our students, who have not been on the Earth nearly as long as we have, should then have the ability to choose a handful of items to represent their entire life span. For example: If I were to track my life until my sophomore year, when I turned fifteen, I could easily clump my life together into five objects: a cow puppet, a Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal, a Gameboy, a bicycle, and a CD Player. Each of these would represent stages of my life that I can remember. (1) The cow puppet is something I still have from when I was a child, (2) the Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal was my favorite thing in the early years of my cognitive memories and my favorite game and television show, (3) I spent a good portion of my youth playing games and it only increased during this time, (4) I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was eight years old and it changed my freedom once I did, and (5) the CD player linked me to music and would shape my attitude, decisions, clothing, etc. from the time I was about twelve until I graduated from high school.

As an educator, this could be an interesting way to learn about the students in your classroom. It doesn't necessarily have to be a big project, although in younger years it most certainly could be, and could simply be a list with explanations. Seemingly this would be a great opening assignment for the students to accomplish so that they can learn something about themselves, the instructor can learn something about them, and perhaps their peers could learn something more about them that would cool off some of the highly judgmental airs that come with groups of students. Then the instructor could relate the assignment to the way that most narrative novels are written, as they are usually pieces of a much larger story that the author weaves together to demonstrate the significance of every piece. Seemingly just a thought, and can certainly be bent and shaped to whatever the instructor wants to do with it. Well... back to packing.


Oh, and Happy Holidays in case I'm not back before then!