The JCI Prison Scholars Program

Tag: student writing

  • advanced literature nov 10

    advanced literature nov 10

    I’m writing this paper while lying in a hospital bed in the Emergency Room at MedStar MemOfMiceAndMenorial Hospital, where I was sent this morning after consulting the doctor about my knee. It’s not an injury, she said, but an infection, which makes sense now I think about it. Let’s hope they don’t have to amputate. The guy in the next room has gangrene in his foot.

    Anyway, back to Of Mice and Men. I don’t know if I believe, as Mr. Gross does, that a book can be reduced to a single moral or message, but I know that’s what he wants from me. If I had to sum up a moral or message for the sake of argument, it would be “True loyalty means protecting your man at any cost, even the cost of his life.” By shooting Lennie in the back of the head, George is committing the supreme act of loyalty, because there’s no question that if he were found, Lenny would be shot on the spot by Curley in an act that would easily be defended after the murder of Lenny’s wife (and maybe this is the reason why Steinbeck never lets us get to know her well—if we knew her and sympathized with her, we might not have such sympathy with Lenny). I wonder if George will get away with his act with impunity, however. Slim understands and isn’t going to tell on him, but if anyone else found out what he’s done, wouldn’t he be arrested for murder? (George, after all, doesn’t have Curley’s privileges.) Lenny’s body may disappear into the swamp and never be found, but still, George may have to go on the run for a while.

    Reading the book for the second time with the men made me see things I hadn’t seen before, including how carefully structured it is. I didn’t make the connection, the first time I read it, between the shooting of the old dog and George’s execution of Lenny. I think there’s no doubt that George does the right thing. He’s a good shot and Lenny doesn’t know what’s coming to him. He goes to his death thinking about his rabbit farm, and his death was no doubt instant. It’s difficult to imagine how George will get along without him. In some ways, I think an enormous burden will be lifted from his life. But he’ll probably miss having Lenny around, not least for the money Lenny could bring in. It’s difficult to imagine George being able to develop another friendship with a “normal” man. Whatever else you could say about him, Lenny was special.

    In closing, I wouldn’t say I really enjoyed reading Of Mice and Men, or that I came to a new appreciation of Steinbeck, but I did get more out of it than I expected, and I can see there’s more going on beneath the surface, and within the structure, than I initially believed.

    By the way, the doctor just came in and said I have a superficial infection under the skin and it’s probably nothing—all I need is a course of antibiotics and a bandage. I feel completely disappointed. I’m always hoping for something dramatic and morbid, even if it’s my own expense. Would I have preferred it if he’d come into the room with a shotgun and told me he had to put a bullet in the back of the head? Perhaps I would.

  • advanced literature #5

    advanced literature #5

    Ch2.Donald

    This semester, we’re trying something different in Advanced Literature. After putting the men through Conrad, Melville, Poe, Shakespeare, Nabokov, etc., I’ve decided to turn the tables and let them select the books for a change. The book we’ve started with is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, chosen by Mr. Gross. The book is really not a favorite of mine. I don’t like Steinbeck’s sentimental idealization of the poor, nor do I lie his action-oriented plots. I find his work very macho, and I complained about it in class.

    Later, I regretted my complaints, especially knowing how much the book means to Mr. Gross. Now that I know how important it is to a man whose opinions I respect, I’m going to work a little harder to go beneath the surface and lay aside my knee-jerk reactions. After all, I believe (or I like to believe) that’s what a lot of the men did with some of the books I chose, like the Edgar Allan Poe stories that drove Mr. Fitzgerald so crazy, or Lolita, which so many of the men found so difficult to read because of their distaste for Humbert Humbert. But they knew the book meant a lot to me, so they struggled and went ahead despite their distaste, and many of them ended up finding something memorable in these books. Or, at least, they said you did. I hope they did. I like to think they did.

    So when reading Of Mice and Men, I thought to myself, what does Mr. Gross see in this book? What does Mr. Peters see? And when I tried to see it through the men’s eyes, I found there was more going on in the story than I previously wanted to acknowledge—even, as Mr. Arey pointed out, psychologically.

    In the scene we read this week, Lennie lets Candy in on his and George’s plan to retire on their own farm and breed rabbits, and it turns out Candy’s actually got savings of his own and asks to join them. The plan that had always been a fantasy suddenly, for a short while, comes to life and becomes real. Curley’s wife always seems to be hanging around Slim, and Curley loses it. Slim stands his ground, so Curley turns on the guy who seems to be the underdog—the big dumb semi-mute Lennie. This is when we see Lennie in action. He may not be smart, but he’s as strong as an ox and as stubborn as a bulldog. Once he starts, it’s almost impossible to get him to stop. He’s almost like an animal in that sense–dangerously unpredictable.

    This section shows us how tough these men have it. Like Candy’s old dog, they go on until they die, with no one to put them out of their misery. We sense the misery and physical pain of the workingman’s life, the male competition and camaraderie, with no entertainment but drinking and fighting, playing cards and tossing horseshoes. In this sense, the bond between George and Lennie seems to be vital and unusual. They protect each other, rather than competing. George could use Lennie like a tool, but instead he tries to look after him, to stop him from getting into trouble. They both need each other, and have come to rely on each other. But George has something that Lennie doesn’t have, and that’s someone to look after and care for. Looking after Lennie gives meaning to George’s life. Lennie copies George in every way, which is why he’s always looking for his own creature to care for – whether it be puppy, mouse, or rabbit. It seems ironic that in his own mind, Lennie sees himself as a gentle, vulnerable creature, easily hurt. In this section, we see how to others, he can suddenly become terrifying.

  • Life: A Short Story

    Today’s post comes with two apologies. First, to you readers – here at the Program, many of us have been experiencing end-of-semester crunch in our day jobs.

    Second, this post comes with an apology to the student whose writing it is. Last summer, I taught a course titled Political Analysis and Political Narrative. Since the course focused on the way that James told the history of the Ste-Domingue (Haiti) revolution in such a way as to “argue” for his preferred Marxist understanding of politics, over the course of the class students were asked to write narratives of historical events – whether “public” history or the story of something that happened in their own lives – in a way that made a political or moral point.

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  • Reflections on Forbidden Island from one of our Games and Game Theory Students

    I’m still working on putting together my thoughts on Friday’s class and our chaotic game of Labyrinth Lord, but in the meanwhile, here are some thoughts from one of our students, L.B. (posted with his permission; I am transcribing this from his paper, so any typos are probably mine):

    It was very interesting from a sociological point of view when a group of us played Forbidden Island. Once the rules were explained, the confusion began. One man assumed a leadership role. He was directing the play of everyone else. In the beginning, the individual players permitted this guidance. However, the two men who explained the rules and refereed the play repeatedly intervened with their leadership, when questions arose or an air of confusion permeated the table.

    Finally, when the majority of players grasped the rules individuals assumed responsibility for their turn and the game proceeded rather smoothly. It was intriguing to see how well the men played when someone needed protection. The conversation took on an air of empathy for someone who could be taken off the board and everyone spoke on how best to save said player.

    Such cooperation was eventful in a prison atmosphere. The men shared a common thread of cooperation in order to win the game. Initially the man who assumed the leadership position easily surrendered his self-appointed role in favor of the group dynamic of mutually shared cooperation among all.

    It was with a shout of jubilation when everyone showed each individual player how to move toward the helicopter pad in order to fly off the island. The game was won and smiles and pats on the back were shared.

    I marveled at this game for the group dynamic that was quickly created and could see how much fun the group experienced. It would have been interesting to see how quickly such frivolity would evaporate into consternation if a player had assumed a role to sabotage play to lose the game. I can only surmise that the culprit would have been castigated with rude comments and other players would have been reluctant in the future to play with such a libertine.

    I would give Forbidden Island four out of five stars as a rating. I would have enjoyed playing this game as a child, as it would have helped to foster a cooperative approach to handling problems as they arose later in life instead of the me against the world approach that so many youth of my generation (Baby Boomers of the early 1950s) were taught in the games – win at any cost.