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> Jeffrey Howard

Students as Storytellers: Teaching Rhetorical Strategies

through Folktales

New Voice

An instructional note on one method of using folktales as texts in the composition classroom to help students gain a basic understanding of agenda and the way objectives and

ideologies can shape information.

InstructIonal note

In my composition classes, I have struggled at times to find content that appeals to my students. I want them to read texts that invite their interest and draw on

their past cultural experiences. This problem is a common one, I think, for many teachers. Philip Snyder asked, “Where are we to find . . . a theme that will be close to our students’ experience, yet distanced enough and sufficiently complex to of-fer these writers the possibility of genuine investigation, rather than yet another opportunity for personal reverie or the airing of common knowledge?” (315). In my composition classes, I have taken to using texts from folklore, such as fairy tales or folktales, to help my students develop critical thinking skills that heighten their awareness of the value of those individual experiences as part of a larger narrative tradition. Of course, this brings up echoes of a long-standing debate in composition studies involving the use of literature, oral or written, in the composition classroom. Mark Richardson writes about two problems that any instructor interested in us-ing literature as content for the composition classroom would do well to keep in mind: “The first objection is that . . . in the hands of a literary specialist, literature becomes more important than writing. The second is that the study of literature is inherently hierarchical, depending as it does on knowledge and ways of thinking that are baffling for first-year students and impossible for them to emulate or em-body” (280). There are many ways to deal with these objections, but they are not necessarily simple. Literature courses and writing courses have different purposes, and students come into them with different motivations and goals in mind. If an instructor wants to use literature in the composition classroom, it needs to serve the ends for which the course is designed and the needs of the students. Further, the literature ought to be accessible to the students so that they can work with the material without the fear of somehow being wrong simply because their ideas about it differ from those held by the instructor. Lena M. Ampadu has dealt with these

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objections by having students read and analyze “speeches, sermons and other oral texts” in the “black sermonic style” and by incorporating the rhetorical strategies found in those texts (83). My instructional project does not use the oral tradition as a model for literacy as Ampadu’s does, but it does give students accessible, familiar texts with which to engage and practice rhetorical and writing strategies. Students receive the opportunity to interact with a familiar text, in this case the folktale of Red Riding Hood, and rewrite the text in such a way that it implicitly supports a position or agenda on some social issue.

Elizabeth Radin Simons, a folklorist, writes, “The content of modern folklore lends itself perfectly to the teaching of writing” (7). Like Snyder, she feels that writing students need to connect with the topics they discuss, but those same students need a chance to play the expert by drawing on their own experience: “Topics must honestly engage students, and students must be knowledgeable about them, must have plenty to say about them” (7). By virtue of the cultural groups in which they participate, human beings possess, on some level, knowledge of folk-lore in the form of the games they have played, food they have eaten, songs they have heard, and any number of other expressions of “informal traditional culture” (McNeill 14). This puts the students in the unique position of being the expert in the class, at least on some cultural aspect, even if they have not yet learned how to interpret that experience. With the folktale, many of my students instantly connect to the discussion because of their own prior experience with the genre and even the stories we talk about.

However, I do not simply want my students to be observers of the narrative traditions they know. I also want them to participate in these traditions as storytellers, but I try to do so in a way that will still add to their writing and analytical skills. Storytellers are traditionally a community’s receptacles of narrative knowledge, with the appropriate rhetorical capabilities that allow them to convey a tale that appeals to the audience, meets certain objectives, conveys particular messages, and emphasizes valuable parts of the storyteller’s culture in the process. As part of the introduction into their role as storytellers (although instead of transmitting stories orally they do it through writing), I present my students with the concept of what Joseph Har-ris refers to as “rewriting,” because storytellers are essentially doing just that. They conserve cultural elements and stories, but they also innovate on those cultural units or memes in the process of transmission. In the same way, Harris explains, from a writing expert’s perspective, that the “practice” of “rewriting—as drawing from, commenting on, adding to—the work of others” is essential to the academic life of a writer. “The job of an intellectual,” he says, “is to push at and question what has been said before, to rethink and reinterpret the texts that he or she is dealing with” (2). The way Harris describes the process of rewriting or reinterpreting texts in some fashion mirrors the characteristics of the folk process. The folk process, or the process of passing on oral texts through retelling them to a different audi-ence with different goals or objectives, consists of interplay between permanence and adaptation, stasis and change, and individual innovation and conservation of community traditions over time. Storytellers control the narrative and adapt to

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circumstances or contextual factors. While Harris seems to emphasize rewriting the texts of “thinkers” or intellectuals, I have students rewrite the stories they have heard many times before. The practice of rewriting these narratives becomes fruitful as students employ the rhetorical strategies of the storyteller.

red riding Hood

The folktale or fairy tale, like many narrative genres, is extremely adaptable. Nearly every culture has some form of folktale, and versions of the same tale are pervasive across cultural boundaries. A story like “Cinderella,” for example, has variants not only all over Europe, but also in the Philippines, Kashmir, Russia, and the United States among Native American groups. Jack Zipes writes:

The fairy tale adapted itself and was transformed by common nonliterate people and by upper-class literate people from a simple brief tale with vital informa-tion. . . . In fact, it continues to grow and embraces, if not swallows, all types of genres, art forms, and cultural institutions; and it adjusts itself to new environ-ments through the human disposition to re-create relevant narratives and through technologies that make its diffusion easier and more effective. (222)

In my class, I encourage my students to become involved in this process as active forces in transforming a folktale for their own ends. This is a low-key project I as-sign early in the semester to introduce students to fundamental ideas in persuasive writing and rhetoric. The objective is to understand rhetorical strategies and appeals to audiences, as well as understanding the implicit or underlying purposes or telos in a given narrative by doing it themselves. The other objective is to gain a greater understanding of oneself and one’s cultural background and values in the process of retelling the story. As part of the framework for the assignment, which I call “Red Riding Hood . . . with an Agenda,” I do four things: first, we discuss what the word agenda means; second, students read and watch different versions of Red Riding Hood; third, I explain that they will be rewriting the version of Red Rid-ing Hood with which they are most familiar but with a particular agenda in mind; and fourth, I provide a list of potential topics or agendas that they can use in their retelling. Setting the framework can take a bit of time, sometimes up to a couple of class periods, but it gives the students an idea of the traditions, both literary and oral, with which they are engaging.

The word agenda can be tricky because of its use in or in reference to political discourse. Agenda means “an underlying ideology or purpose behind an action,” but its connotation is generally far from positive. I consider, however, its loaded mean-ing to be a fruitful topic for discussion, especially in my persuasive writing classes, because I emphasize the need to define the terms we use and understand their full meaning and implications. It also plays into discussions about ideology and the manner in which the narratives we hear and tell are often shaped by hidden biases and varied personal beliefs and belief systems. The students should understand that the agenda or position in their retelling must always remain beneath the surface; they cannot come out and state their opinion or position openly. I expect them to show

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their argument in the actions of the characters. Students often require extra help in this area because it is much easier to be straightforward and say outright what the writer’s position is. Students whose second language is not English may require additional help in that area. This can be helpful to the students who are writing research papers in this and other courses because it helps train them—by forcing them to do it themselves—to watch for subtle clues regarding the biases of those who disseminate the information they glean and synthesize for their persuasive essays.

Next, I present the students with various versions of the story of Little Red Riding Hood in various media, including print and video. The students can also participate in this part of the activity and provide the oral versions of Red Riding Hood they have heard. I ask the students to read the print versions prior to class, so they can start formulating some ideas about how versions of the story have changed, depending on the “author.” The Brothers Grimm tell the story so that Red Riding Hood goes home safely in the end because she is rescued by the hero, while Charles Perrault allows the wolf to eat her and her grandmother in order to issue a stern moral to all other “Red Riding Hoods” in society (6). I also have the students read a version called “Maymie’s Story of Red Riding Hood” by James Whitcomb Riley, written in a backwoods dialect in 1916 and told by a female narrator, and another version by Jim Garner called “The Politically Cor-rect Version of Red Riding Hood.” In addition to reading these versions, in class the students and I watch film depictions of Red Riding Hood, including a 1934 Disney version called “The Big, Bad Wolf ” (1934) in which Red Riding Hood is saved at the end, not by a huntsman or a woodchopper, but rather by the Three Little Pigs. We also watch a Spanish depiction of Red Riding Hood on YouTube called “Caperucita Roja,” in which Red and the wolf switch their roles: the wolf becomes the prey, and Red becomes the hunter who triumphs through her own cunning and strength, taking revenge for the death of her grandmother.

This amalgamation of adaptations can generate a great deal of discussion, specifically regarding rhetorical strategies and considerations such as genre, audi-ence, language, and purpose. We look at the ways in which these narratives conserve certain aspects of previous versions, while innovating in other ways. By analyzing these texts, students gain a greater understanding of narrative as a discursive tool to convey a particular message. It is often problematic as well because it can take a great deal of time to read or show and discuss these different adaptations in class without, going back to Richardson’s remarks, allowing the literature to overwhelm the purpose of the assignment and the course in general, which is, of course, learning about writing. Teachers may choose to limit the amount of media the students read and watch to two or three of the best examples they think will help the students. Students should not only see the way that narratives change but also understand that it is permissible to play around with the story.

After reminding students that is their turn to retell the story, I present them with a list of possible topics. These topics are merely suggestions; students should have as much freedom as I can give them in this assignment, but I offer these suggestions as a safety net. These topics include gun control, abortion, civil rights,

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drug abuse, legalization of marijuana, capital punishment, childhood obesity, and education. Students also have the option of selecting a completely different topic, and some find it helpful to look ahead at their future persuasive research project and use the Red Riding Hood assignment to help them start thinking about their argument for that paper.

outcomes

The interactions between the student, the argument, and the story of Red Rid-ing Hood produces wonderful—and sometimes wonderfully strange—results. My students draw from their own interests and pour those into the narrative. In addi-tion to those I have mentioned, their topics include—to name a few—nutrition, poverty, and social media. With the permission of my students, of course, I provide some examples of their work.

One student, Mikal, wrote his story around the stereotype of fraternity members. Mikal belonged to a fraternity himself and felt the need to talk about the abuse that members of Greek organizations receive from people outside of their community. In his story, Red is a sorority sister on spring break who meets the wolf and five or six of his pals and tries to resist their advances. As the wolf tries to steal a kiss from her, Red screams,

“Ew! You’re so hairy!”

“All the better to keep us warm when we cuddle,” the wolf replied.

Even more off put than before, Red cried, “Yuck! What a foul smell you have!”

In a self convincingly suave tone he responded, “All to show pretty girls like you how masculine I am.”

Seeing that she is outnumbered, a member of a fraternity gathers his brothers to-gether and saves her. Afterward, “Hand in hand, the guys and girls walked to the closest restaurant to get some food and margaritas. Seeing as it was spring break, that sounded like the best way to start the day, and they lived happily ever after. Until Spring Break was over.”

Looking over this example, one can see interesting rhetorical strategies at work in Mikal’s storytelling, specifically with finding a middle ground to argue. Through the setting and some of the characters, he demonstrates his belief that fraternities do not consist simply of drunken party animals; they also have qualities like loyalty, courage, and moral fortitude. Interestingly, he also concedes to some of the stereotypes concerning members of Greek letter organizations by begin-ning the story with Red receiving a text from her boyfriend: “The message was a desperate plea for a hangover care package to be delivered by her to his room.” Mikal also concludes his story with the boys and girls drinking alcohol, calling it “the best way to start the day.”

Topics or positions in these stories are not always as obvious to the reader in the way that Mikal’s are. However, their stories are some of the most interesting, not because of what they are arguing for, but because of what their versions of the

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story reveal about their worldview and background and belief systems. One student, Ben, a double major in biology and philosophy, offered a version of the story in which Red’s mother informs her that she needs to pray to be protected from the wolf. She also receives a warning from the huntsman to avoid the wolf. When she meets the wolf, she discovers that he is a philosopher, or at least a manifestation of rational thought. She runs to her grandmother for protection from him:

“[H]ow grandmother, do we escape the wolf?” questioned Red.

“You don’t. The wolf is inescapable, no matter how hard we try. We should stop trying to escape him, and rather embrace him. This is what makes us free; this is what makes our lives beautiful. Rather than taking the absurd steps at escaping the inevitable, we need to accept the wolf as a part of life,” said Red’s grand-mother.

Red smiled and nodded her head. She gave her grandmother a big hug and left, the wolf waiting outside for her. Red smiled and held out her hand and the wolf took it. They walked back together, admiring the beauty of the forest.

In some ways, one could consider Ben’s narrative a story of accepting and dealing with the things we fear: seeking enlightenment regarding the things we do not know or our own doubts can bring individual peace.

I also have had several international students who have shared fascinating adaptations of the tale. Yifei, a student from China, shared a version in which Red comes from a village of hunters who shoot werewolves and make money from sell-ing their skins. Red and the werewolf, whose name is Justin, ultimately fall in love, defy her family, and marry, which leads to decreased hostility between humans and werewolves. While the story takes an obvious anti-hunting/pro-nature stance, it also deals with love’s powerful role even in unlikely relationships, as well as a remedy for social division. On a cultural level, one might be tempted to see this paper as a cliché or some spinoff of a Twilight novel, but Yifei’s use of motifs is actually in keeping with other variants in the Red Riding Hood tale tradition. For example, in some French versions of the tale, the antagonist is referred to as a bzou, otherwise known as a werewolf (Delarue 15). At one point in Yifei’s story, Justin is attacked by a tiger, but luckily Red is there to rescue the werewolf. Werewolves and tigers both figure into Chinese folk culture, and some Chinese variants (at least 241, according to Wolfram Eberhard in 1970) of the Red Riding Hood tale (not any of the vari-ants we read for class) actually use a tiger as the antagonist instead of a wolf (21). This assignment was a turning point in Yifei’s experience in the class. Her ability to express herself in English through her writing began to improve dramatically.

Similarly, Hajime, a Japanese student, also wrote a successful story that combined his own cultural background and agenda/topic in a very moving way. His topic was the harmful effects of nuclear power. His story is perhaps best inter-preted in the context of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 that exposed Japanese citizens to radiation from damaged nuclear plants, but one might also see a connection to the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 and the devastating effects of that cataclysmic event. His story explains that Red

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Riding Hood lived with her grandmother because “her parents were already dead,” and according to the story many other people had died, too. The disease turns out to be radiation poisoning. Interestingly, the only wolves in this story are made-up ones. Red’s parents told her about the wolves in the “containment building” so she would stay away from it. One day, the “wolves” come, but they are men in green jumpsuits (hazmat suits). They find out that Red herself has been exposed, and they take her and her grandmother to the “containment building.” When she wakes up, she finds herself in a white hospital gown, wearing an oxygen mask. She also notices that she is lying next to someone else.

She did not know whether the person was a man or a woman, or even if it was human or not. It did not have legs and arms, and there was no nose on its face. But she gasped when she saw its teeth. “Grandma!”

. . . Red Riding Hood was shocked when she saw her grandmother’s face. It was completely changed for the worse.

“Oh! Grandma! Why you don’t have legs?”

No answer. But she continued to ask.

“How did you lose your nose?”

“Oh! Grandma, what a red face you have!”

“Why can your arms not hug me anymore?”

A “wolf ” finally explains to Red what has happened to her grandmother. He tells her of the earthquake twenty years previous and the nuclear leakage from the plant that led to the deaths of thousands of people.

Red Riding Hood had not known about the accident until she heard the story from the wolf. And now, she knew why she had lost her hair when she was a child. She also knew her destiny. She knew she would be like her grandmother. When she knew the future, she could not face her destiny. She asked the wolf, “Kill me now, please.”

As a piece of writing, Hajime’s paper is full of interesting cultural references, es-pecially the conclusion that smacks of Japanese fatalism and the intensity of the relationship between family members. Like the other examples, it functions the way folktales have always functioned: as an outlet for the things that we think about but do not always talk about. The tale gives expression to desires, expectations, and, most of all, fears and anxieties.

conclusion

The examples I have provided represent some of the better stories my students have written, but they are certainly not the only interesting ones. Many of my students have enjoyed this opportunity to reinterpret the story in their own way. As mentioned previously, many students may struggle with balancing creative storytelling and implicit argument/agenda. In some cases, students have gotten so carried away with retelling the story that I have no idea what their agenda or

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position on the issue actually is, although the end result is often quite ingenious as stories go. On the other hand, other students have erred too much on the side of explicit argumentation, even bringing in outside research that completely breaks up the Red Riding Hood narrative. The students who have understood how to tell the story without resorting to telling me their agenda outright or leaving behind the story have always done the best, as this is indeed one of the main objectives of the assignment. In my feedback to the students who have veered away from my expectations for the assignment, I still encourage their creativity or ability to argue explicitly (which is certainly important for other assignments), but I also try to help them understand better the relationship between the underlying agenda and its presentation in narrative form.

Some teachers may be intimidated by the task of explaining how to investi-gate or “read” folklore, but if needed there are texts available that can ease the burden of explanation, especially Lynne McNeill’s Folklore Rules: A Fun, Quick, and Useful Introduction to the Field of Academic Folklore Studies, which my students find helpful not just in identifying but also in analyzing and understanding folklore. The main idea is that students learn how underlying beliefs and conscious rhetorical choices reshape narratives. Teachers may choose to follow up this assignment with another analytical piece in which students apply what they have learned about agendas and hidden ideologies or beliefs by analyzing news stories on TV or radio, politi-cal speeches, or research articles on similar topics and write about the ways these stories are told differently. Consequently, students will not only learn to “rethink” and “reinterpret” the narratives they think they know, but they will also incorporate them in other domains of inquiry.

Works cited

“Agenda.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press, 2014. Web. 11 Oct. 2014.

Ampadu, Lena M. “Gumbo Ya Ya: Tapping Cultural Stories to Teach Composi-tion.” Composition Studies 32.1 (2004): 73–88. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Jan. 2015.

Delarue, Paul. “The Story of Grandmother.” Dundes 13–20.

Dundes, Alan, ed. Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989. Print.

Eberhard, Wolfram. “The Story of Grandaunt Tiger.” Dundes 21–63.

Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. Logan: Utah State UP, 2006. Print.

McNeill, Lynne Sullivan. Folklore Rules: A Fun, Quick, and Useful Introduction to the Field of Folklore Studies. Logan: Utah State UP, 2013. Print.

<

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Perrault, Charles. “Little Red Riding Hood.” Dundes 3–6.

Richardson, Mark. “Who Killed Annabel Lee? Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom.” College English 66.3 (2004): 268–93. JSTOR. Web. 24 Jan. 2015.

Simons, Elizabeth Radin. Student Worlds, Student Words: Teaching Writing through Folklore. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1990. Print.

Snyder, Philip. “Writing 1-002: A Theme Course for Freshman Composition.” College Composition and Communication 33.3 (1982): 315–17. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.

Zipes, Jack. “The Meaning of the Fairy Tale within the Evolution of Culture.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 25.2 (2011): 221–43. Web. MLA International Bibliography. 11 Oct. 2014.

Jeffrey Howard is a second-year PhD student and graduate fellow at Idaho State University and became a member of NCTE in April 2015.

2016 Dav i D H. Ru s s e l l awa R D Ca l l f o R No m i N at i o N s

NCTE is now accepting nominations for the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English. This award recognizes published research in language, literature, rhetoric, teaching procedures, or cognitive processes that may sharpen the teach-ing or the content of English at any level. Any work or works of scholarship or research in language, literature, rhetoric, or pedagogy and learning published during the past five years are eligible. Works nominated for the David H. Russell Award should be exemplary instances of the genre, address broad research questions, contain material that is accessibly reported, and reflect a project that stands the test of time. Normally, anthologies are not considered. Reports of doctoral studies, while not precluded from consideration for the Russell Award, are typically considered as part of NCTE’s separate Promising Researcher program. Works nominated for the award must be available in the English language. To nominate a study for consideration, please email the following information to ksearsmith@ncte.org: your name, your phone, your email; author, title, publisher, date of publication, and one paragraph indicating your reasons for nominating the work. If you have the four copies of the publication needed for distribution to the Selection Commit-tee, please send them to the postal address below. (If not, we will request them from the publisher.) Send nominations and materials by March 1, 2016, to: David H. Russell Award, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1010, Attn: Kelly Searsmith.

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