Learning to "See" Symbolism
FLHS English Team: Kristin Elliott, Carrie Heimlich, Kelly Phelps, Casey Stelmachowicz
Our English team recently completed a research lesson for an upper level English course on Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness. We specifically chose this lesson as an opportunity to help students improve their analysis and understanding of important literary elements (e.g., allusion, symbolism, imagery, irony, conflict, characterization, etc.). To that end, our developed a lesson storyline that included eight major instructional segments outlined below.
Key Materials
● Painting: The Vanities of Human Life by Harmen Steenwyck. A classic example of a Dutch 'Vanitas' painting where symbols are used to caution a viewer about placing too much emphasis on wealth and pleasures of life. (Click on hyperlink for image.)
● Contrasting movie posters from the 2009 production of The Road, a film based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy that students previously studied in the course.
Poster #1: Ominous picture of a boy and man walking away from an image of destruction and bright light. (Click here to view the image.)
Poster #2: Comparatively calming and peaceful image of a man and boy walking toward a city in the horizon with light coming through the clouds. (Click here to view the image.)
● Instructions for poster and writing activity
● Example teacher-created poster from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Lesson Storyline
1. Ask students to study The Vanities of Human Life painting (projected in front of class). 2 min
2. Ask students to examine it some more; keep looking. 3 min
3. Ask students to journal about the painting in their poetry journals. 5 min
4. Discuss painting as a class, eliciting student ideas about symbolism. 15-20 min
5. Transition from visual symbolism of the painting to the visual symbolism in a set of contrasting movie posters from The Road. Project both posters on the screen and discuss symbolism as a class, eliciting ideas from students. 10-15 min
6. Transition to the Heart of Darkness poster and writing activity. Handout instructions. 5 min
a. Explain that students will be working in pairs and that each pair will be working on a symbol from the novel.
b. Each student pair will develop a poster representing the identified symbol and will write a paragraph describing the significance of the symbol using textual example from the novel.
7. Provide an example poster and paragraph with the main character, Kurtz, from Heart of Darkness. Discuss the example as a class. 10 min
8. Place students in pairs to select symbols and begin work. 20-25 min
a. Each pair will select a symbol from a basket. Once everyone has picked a symbol, they will have the option of trading symbols with another pair or picking an alternate symbol out of the basket
b. Use the remainder of class time to get started.
Design Rationale
The design was based on our team’s hypothesis that carefully scaffolding students’ analysis and understanding of symbolism in visual forms would help support and deepen students’ analysis of symbolism of more subtle and discreet literary devices woven into works of literature, such as Heart of Darkness.
Pivotal Segments
We focused our planning on two lesson segments we believed were most critical for fostering students understanding and analysis skills—segments #4 and #5. This choice was consistent with our hypothesis that the analysis of visual art would serve as a critical step in building students’ capacity to interpret and explain symbols in works of literary art.
The team also agreed that while the visuals were promising tools, they had limited value unless we were adequately prepared to skillfully elicit student thinking and facilitate the class discussions. To accomplish this, we spent time thinking through the discourse patterns we hoped to foster during the class discussion and writing down specific examples of what those interactions might sound like. Below is one excerpt of the detailed planning notes our team prepared for segment #4. We also conducted a dry-run of this pivotal segment during our last meeting before implementation.
Observations and Debrief
During the lesson implementation, observers followed assigned case study students and documented specific reactions, comments, and discourse exchanges from the key lesson segments. Teachers noted several prominent patterns across the various observations. Students were stimulated with the visual displays, readily verbalized thoughts, and drew important connections between objects in the painting and overall symbolism of the work. Some examples included,
“Everything represents something within the human experience, it’s something that gives life meaning like music, war, knowledge.”
“I noticed the placement of the items. The lute is by the mouth where the skull would be playing it. The horn is by its ear, and the sword is going through the skull.”
“I like that it’s really cluttered, it’s not organized. It’s not necessarily one person’s life, it’s everyone’s life.”
Similarly, observers noted that students were able to draw clear connections between specific objects in the painting and the title of the work. One student commented,
“The clock shows that all the things on the table we only have for a limited amount of time.” Another student explained, “These are the things that everyone left behind. It’s just things. Once we are gone it’s worthless.”
Observations also showed that students were equally or perhaps even more engaged in the poster discussions, possibly because they had prior knowledge of the story.
“The arm across the boy is like when a mom is in a car with her kid. The dad is holding the boy with one arm and the gun with the other and those two things are the most valuable to him.”
“The hole in the sky reminded me of how he is supposed to carry the torch. If there’s a little bit of good left in people maybe he will find it.”
“The dark side is the dad but the boy is on the left side in the light and he’s the one who survives.”
Analysis of student writing samples from the pair work showed that nearly all student pairs wrote a paragraph that thoughtfully explained the meaning of their symbol. In addition, about two-thirds of the class successfully chose textual evidence to support their interpretation of the symbols. The student work samples also revealed several areas of continuing need. Only about one-third of the class was able to explain the symbol’s significance to the novel and just over half were able to analyze the symbol in relationship to the overall story and themes of the book.
Our team concluded that the visual scaffolding activities and the facilitation of class discussion during the pivotal segments helped stimulate student thinking and foster deeper connections around the use of symbols. Specifically, we noted the value of creating opportunities for students to verbalize their ideas about symbols and articulate their analysis. This led to deeper connections and enabled teachers or peers to probe for additional details or explanation. We also concluded that future instruction was needed to help students take the next step of constructing written paragraphs that capture the same level of thinking and analysis including effective use of textual elements and drawing connections to the overall message of the work.
