Exploring Moral Ambiguity Through English Language Arts

In Sarah Levine’s article “Making Interpretation Visible With an Affect-Based Strategy,” Ms. Levine outlines the differences between how experts and novices derive meaning from various texts.  She gives the example of a college freshman and college graduate both react to the symbol of a wedding ring rising from the bottom of a dirty pool. (Levine)  As Levine explains, the expert sees the symbolism of purity in conflict with corruption in the passage.  The novice merely sees a dirty pool. (Levine) Levine then goes onto share how novice readers can become expert readers through specific instruction.

However, this is not intriguing to me.

What is intriguing to me is the Levine’s statements on the deriving of meaning.  Levine explains that the novice reader derives meaning from the symbols of the ring and the dirty pool from cultural associations.  We naturally view the wedding ring as good and the dirty pool as bad because of our cultural and moral associations. (Levine)  We view the dirty pool as symbolic of corruption because we associate dirt with filth and from there with corruption.  Thus, meaning is obtained from a moralistic reading of the work.  We use the “morally good” and contrast it with the “morally bad.”  But what about the morally grey?  There are things in the world that are empirically evil. There are things in the world that are empirically good.  But why do we think so?  Many students and novice readers are not ever taught to think about it.  Many times they are just taught to accept whatever common interpretation exists from a given text.  We read the text and don’t really think about the greater ramifications of why we like or dislike a character. 

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a professor and discussed Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The professor stated that Macbeth is a tragic hero.  However, I countered with the argument that he is a sympathetic villain. But, I now wonder what exactly the difference between these two interpretations is.  How do our moral associations make us distinguish these two things as different? Why do two different people, looking at the exact same set of actions see a hero or a villain?  Is either term really accurate?

I believe that these are the kinds of questions that teachers should make their students ask themselves.  Importantly, teachers should not try and turn students against their beliefs.  It is very important that teachers respect the moral and religious beliefs of their students.  However, they should inspire their students to really think about those beliefs…to think about why they would choose to view actions as good or evil. And I believe that English Language Arts is the key to this question.

Let’s take a look at a classroom and 8^th grade high school students who are studying Hamlet.  Novice readers might see a boring play about a whiney prince trying to take revenge.  But now let’s introduce a wild card.  Alongside Hamlet, the class will also be studying The Lion King, Batman and Final Fantasy XV.  Why are we studying comic books, movies and video games alongside this classical play.  It’s not because they are ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ and will ‘make the kids love learning.’  No, it’s because they all find their origin in the same idea. 

Boil all four down to their basic elements and you get the story of a crestfallen prince, Hamlet in Hamlet, Bruce Wayne in Batman, Simba in The Lion King, and Noctis Lucis Caelum in Final Fantasy XV, who must avenge their father and restore the order of their ‘kingdom.’ Now, we must ask the students to look at these four and their stories, Do they think revenge is wrong? If so, why is it wrong? Do we like Noctis and Simba more than Hamlet and Batman and if so why? Do we think that Batman is better than Hamlet because he doesn’t kill people? Is killing people always wrong? If so, why is it always wrong? Why do all four of these characters share similar sorrows and burdens? In what ways are they different? Is it an appropriate response to the situation? Do we think Simba is more upright than Hamlet because Simba’s throne was also taken? Is Hamlet’s revenge justified or moral? Why do we think it is?  

An important part of this exercise is ensuring that the teacher does not offer any correct answer of their own.  If one watches the teacher in the TedEd video on ‘True/False Equations’ (which will be linked below) the teacher offers no correct answer.  She only guides the thought process of the students.  They debate and decide for themselves what they think is correct.  It is the other students who instruct and teacher each other.  In this, it must be the students not the teacher who debate and decide what the ‘correct’ answers are. That way we transform novices into masters. 

Works cited:

Levine, S. (2014). Making interpretation visible with an affect-based strategy. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(3), 283-303.

https://tedd.org/?tedd_activity=truefalse-equations