Quicksand and Vectors

In the movie "The Replacements," expression-challenged Keanu Reeves delivers a pretty memorable speech about the nature of adversity.  He is sitting in a locker-room, pre-football game, while the coach try to talk a team up from the previous week's defeat.  The coach, played by Gene Hackman, asks his players, "what scares you?" After a fun interchange about spiders and bees, Keanu pipes up.  "Quicksand," he says.  The team is confused so the coach has him explain:

"You're playing and everything is going fine.  And then one thing goes wrong and another and another.  And you try to fight it but there's nothing you can do.  You're in over your head. Like quicksand."

I think this fear is more legitimate for high school students in 2016 than it is even for professional football players.  Because here's the reality of your lives: things were going well.  You had good grades, you worked pretty hard, everything seemed pretty smooth.  Then BANG.  You suddenly weren't moving forward.  You were stuck.  But hey adversity was nothing new so you doubled back and tried something else.  BANG. You started to feel trapped.  Classes used to be so easy.  But this junior year thing, this college writing thing.  It seemed like a trap.  Wait, you said without saying it, I have to tackle a complex, truly difficult prompt, organize a response on a level I've never encountered before, all while getting held to a rubric that feels way over my head?

At this point in the year, AP Lang can feel a bit like quicksand in that regard.  Vocabulary, rhetorical tools, sentence styles, tone, audience... so many things to keep track of all at once.  So what if instead of adding to the overwhelming complexity of it all we try to simplify things?  What if we reduced the pressure instead of turning it up?

If we reduce an RA to its simplest component it's really all about purpose.  Why did the author put these words on paper?  Why?  Once you can answer that you can tackle corollaries: why is it effective? what tone is created? how does that tone convey the purpose to the audience?

In the wonderful animated movie "Despicable Me", Gru (voiced by Steve Carrell) runs into a man at the Bank of Evil (formerly Lehman Brothers) who calls himself "Vector".  It's another spendid cinematic exchange.  But Vector's name is symbolic, he says, because he (like the word itself) has direction and magnitude.  ("Oh yeah!")

Vector is an interesting idea to apply analysis too.  Authors, with their words, have direction (purpose) and magnitude (tone).  They are headed somewhere; they have a goal.  They can also convey a certain immediacy about that journey.  We have seen evidence of different tones in almost everything we read.  In "Usher", Poe knows that his dark and chaotic tone will ultimately help him achieve the wonderfully introspective purpose of his short story.  In "Young Goodman Brown", Hawthorne skewers the overly judgmental Puritans to achieve his ends.  Even in "Candide" today Voltaire effected a tone - sardonic, sarcastic, slightly inappropriate - to drive his frustration home.

So what if tomorrow instead of worrying about how many rhetorical tools you can find you asked yourself a simple question: what is the "vector" of this passage? Where is it going? Can I articulate the goal here?  And once I can how is it trying to get there?  Am I supposed to feel something along the way?

Because here's what you already know: quicksand thrives on people flailing about reaching in any direction for literally anything.  It's chaotic and unfocused.  They sink faster.  So to avoid it you need to reach out with a deliberate effort for a specific goal and pull yourself toward the answer.

That's your vector.

Deeper Obligations

Politics leaves us all a little broken.

But bitter, earth-shattering politics isn't all the new to our species.  In 1170, King Henry of England committed one of the most politically-motivated murders this world has ever borne witness to.  He incited his confidants to take the life of his former-best friend Thomas Becket.  The TL;DR version of this story (although the whole story is well worth your time) is that Becket was Henry's right hand many for many years.  Then in 1168 Henry names Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important religious post on England.  Henry did this in an attempt to make the church subservient to the English crown.  He was sure that Becket - his friend, his informant, his bodyguard, his everything - would bring the rebellious elements of the church in line for the good of the whole country.

Becket did no such thing.  Almost immediately Becket challenged the King's authority in a whole host of controversial issues.  In short, he became King Henry's worst nightmare.  And the King - not for the last time in English history either - moved to have this man killed.

One line from Becket's writings remains with us to this day.  When the King, in writing, asked his friend why he was suddenly so resistant and objectionable, the Archbishop replied, "With this new position you have introduced me to deeper obligations."

That's an interesting phrase and I think it pertains to you this year.

We've talked before about how writing used to be for school or for the teacher or for the grade.  Some of you claim you still feel that way, even in AP Lang.  I think that's legitimate and honest feedback.  But I want more than ever for your writing to be something that you express because you believe in it.  YOU believe in it.  The prompt might be a bit mundane in your eyes but something in the text galvanizes you in a way that is unshakable.  The words you produce, then, become not just the things you think you ought to say to get a good grade but things that you no longer have the power not to say because they are eating you from within.

Becket was placed before a man he counted as his friend and still he found within him the unquenchable desire to do the right thing. To stand up for people he believed in, for a world view that mattered to him.  And we all have those moments.  Things that push us to finally write and communicate in a way we wish we always had.  Sometimes those things are huge (elections, family changes, friends) and sometimes the reason we cannot contain our words start with the smallest crack in the foundation of something we thought was rock solid (a la House of Usher).

Last week Leonard Cohen died (youtube him... seriously) and I thought a great spark of literary genius had gone out from this world.  The air is colder today and darker.  For some of you, this is true for other reasons.  How many of you have sat with me after school and said, I always thought I wrote just fine? I put some words on the page and that was "good enough"?  Then along came this scrawny pompous white Lang teacher who said, "why did you use that word?" and "what do you mean by this phrase?" and you were forced to explain and clarify in ways that you hadn't really had to before.  And your grade suddenly wasn't what it always was and your world was darker and colder.

We both have outlets though.  We put words on the page and it begins to ameliorate us.  We say the things we want to say the way we want to say them.  And in doing that - our style, our voice - we discover that we had the words all the time.  It just took jarring us from our place to make us realize it.

You see, the thing that King Henry never understood was the Thomas Becket opposed him not because he had the power to but because with great power come great responsibility.  To stand in the most powerful position of a country without any checks or balances is the most dangerous situation of all.  You have some of that power: you are educated and articulate and your voice in both your class and school resonates, whether you know it or not.  So here and now we shape it: we make your words a force for good, ones that can be eloquent and perceptive about the world around you.  Pathos. Logos. Ethos. It's not random, do you see?

When Becket was murdered all of England was aghast. A shrine was built to commemorate him and for centuries people made pilgrimages to honor his memory.  It has lasted  The shrine you construct tomorrow with your words and tone will last as well.  So be sure every brick in the foundation is strong enough to support the depth of your "obligations".