Lecture slides for Day 2 in ELIT 46C

1. ELIT 46C
Day 2
THE DIFFICULTY OF IMAGINING OTHER PEOPLE

2. What will participation look like today?
-Let’s start slowly.
--I will give you TWO discussion points for talking ONCE in class today. That means saying ONE
thing out loud. This could mean asking a question or answering a question.
-It doesn’t have to be “right” or “brilliant.” It just needs to be a contribution.
-If you say more than that, it won’t “count,” but please don’t let it stop you.
-I will go out of my way to make sure that new voices get to speak.
-At the end of class, you should turn in a sheet with your name and the one best thing you said
in class
◦ Ex.: I asked about the dogs in the Auden poem.
◦ Ex.: I said something about George Saunders’s style.

3. Reflection
Think of a time when you saw someone (ideally someone you don’t know well)
and you could just tell that they were feeling something deep—without having
seen the thing that caused their feeling and without them reaching out to you.
Visualize that situation. Then answer the following questions:
-How did you know? How could you tell that something important had
happened to them?
-What did you do?
-IF you reached out to them in some way, what made you do so?
-IF you didn’t reach out, what stopped you? What would have made you do so?

4. W.H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts
Contexts/Background:
1. This is an ekphrastic poem! Ekphrasis=verbal description of a work of visual art.
◦ The title is our clue here (as I think Jelsie was pointing us toward in the discussion forum).
2. Pieter Brueghel the Elder—Renaissance painter, Dutch/Flemish, 1525-1569.
3. Old Masters = any great painter before 1800.
4. Icarus: Who? What?

6. This poem is actually an argument
What is the argument? What lines do you see it in?
What is the evidence the poem offers in support?

7. Elaine Scarry
“THE DIFFICULTY OF IMAGINING OTHER PEOPLE” (1996).

8. Imagining Other People
Why does Scarry say “imagining” instead of “understanding” or “empathizing with”?
◦ Because understanding others does take an act of imagination.
◦ Mentally represent a version of the other.
That’s cool. The human imagination is awesome! We’re really good at imagining things, right?
Well, maybe not. Thought experiment: close your eyes and imagine the face of someone
important of you.
◦ don’t call up a memory of that person.
◦ but create, through imagination, a image of their face as if they were right in front of you in this
classroom.
Keep your eyes closed and tell me:
◦ who are you picturing?
◦ how vivid is the image?
◦ does it approach the vividness of actual perception?

9. Jean-Paul Sartre on
the failure of imagination
Scarry quotes Sartre:
“The image, he complains, ‘is like the silhouettes drawn by children’; ‘It is something like a rough
draft.’ It is ‘present but…out of reach.’”
Now imagine trying to do even that kind of simple visual imagination of someone who you don’t
know well and love.
But wait. Is imagination really so weak?

10. The Literary Imagination
According to Scarry, there are situations in which our imaginations of others become extremely
vivid and real.
And that’s when our imagination is being guided by literature.
◦ Literature can lead us to experience characters as fully-rounded, vivid, complete people.
◦ Who is one character from literature that you have had that experience with?
This is what writers are trying to do, right?
They want to build an imagined person—a character—who you accept as real enough to be a
real person.

11. George Saunders on creating characters
that you can clearly imagine.

12. BUT (and we’ll come back to this) literature also shows
us how we can fail to imagine other people and what
happens when we do fail.
This is what interests Scarry even more.

13. George Saunders, “Puppy”
What are the voices/POVs and how does that structure the story?
◦ Free Indirect (as Andrew points out).
What do we see in the POVs? What do we see in their heads?
◦ Savannah: Why the stream of consciousness? “Possibly to mimic the thought processes of
someone with ADHD?”
Kanwar asks: “how does having both Marie and Callie's perspective
affect the story?” What effect does it have on us as readers?
◦ Dramatic irony
◦ Emma asks: ”Can the reader judge either woman for
their actions?”
What do we readers know that they don’t?

14. But, this story also shows us failure of
imagination.
How do the characters fail to imagine other people?
What’s the big failure here?
What are some other failures?
◦ Read the first few paragraphs. (See next slide).
When Marie fails to imagine other people—especially Callie and Bo, what does she do instead?
And how does the story want us to feel about this?

15. Twice already Marie had pointed out the brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect field of corn, because the
brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect field of corn put her in mind of a haunted house—not a haunted house she
had ever actually seen but the mythical one that sometimes appeared in her mind (with adjacent graveyard and cat on a
fence) whenever she saw the brilliance of the autumnal sun on the perfect etc. etc., and she wanted to make sure that, if
the kids had a corresponding mythical haunted house that appeared in their minds whenever they saw the brilliance of
the etc. etc., it would come up now, so that they could all experience it together, like friends, like college friends on a road
trip, sans pot, ha ha ha!
But no. When she, a third time, said, “Wow, guys, check that out,” Abbie said, “O.K., Mom, we get it, it’s corn,” and Josh
said, “Not now, Mom, I’m Leavening my Loaves,” which was fine with her; she had no problem with that, Noble Baker
being preferable to Bra Stuffer, the game he’d asked for.
Well, who could say? Maybe they didn’t even have any mythical vignettes in their heads. Or maybe the mythical vignettes
they had in their heads were totally different from the ones she had in her head. Which was the beauty of it, because,
after all, they were their own little people! You were just a caretaker. They didn’t have to feel what you felt; they just had
to be supported in feeling what they felt.
Still, wow, that cornfield was such a classic.
“Whenever I see a field like that, guys?” she said. “I somehow think of a haunted house!”
“Slicing Knife! Slicing Knife!” Josh shouted. “You nimrod machine! I chose that!”

16. But, this story also shows us failure of
imagination.
How do the characters fail to imagine other people?
What’s the big failure here?
What are some other failures?
◦ Read the first few paragraphs.
◦ What is Marie doing here? Why? What does she want?
When Marie fails to imagine other people—especially Callie and Bo, what does she do instead?
◦ Maddy suggests, “Marie's strong imagination reflects her background and the influence it has held on
her.” Danielle: "Marie's strong imagination is perhaps rooted in her traumatic childhood.”
◦ Projection
◦ Egotism
◦ Classism?
And how does the story want us to feel about this?

17. Homework
Right now:
Do your participation self-report.
This weekend:
Read, read, read Jane Eyre!
Monday by 6 PM:
Post a discussion question in the Canvas forum.