Misreading

Whenever I teach a literature course, I quiz my students a lot. In fact, they have a quiz almost every day so that I can make sure they are keeping up with the reading. I don't ask them interpretive questions on these quizzes; I'm just asking for them to recall significant details of the poem or story or play. Sometimes, their answers demonstrate that they either haven't read carefully or haven't read at all.

This past fall, I was teaching American Literature since 1800, the second-semester survey course. One of the plays I tend to assign during the weeks that we cover the 20th Century is Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, I do show them a few clips from the movie, but we talk about the play because, of course, some of the more "sordid" details of the play had to be left out during filming. The quiz I gave that day led to some interesting answers. You can't attribute some of these misreadings to people having watched the film instead of the book. These are just wrong answers.

First, I asked them what reason Blanche DuBois gives at the start of the play for why she has come to New Orleans. One student said, "To work as a [sic] English teacher," which is interesting given that Blanche has been removed from her job as an English teacher back home. As open-minded as the citizens of New Orleans might be, I don't think that she's likely to find employment as a teacher again any time soon. The most baffling response, though, was "She doesn't belong in the country." I have no idea where that one came from. I don't know if we're talking about the "country" as in "not the city" or if we're talking about the United States of America. Either way, the answer just makes no sense.

Early on in the play, Stella tries to hide her pregnancy from her sister because she thinks Blanche doesn't approve of her husband Stanley Kowalski. I simply asked, "What secret does Stella initially try to keep from her sister?" One of the strangest wrong answers was "Stanley." Given that Blanche meets him in the first act, I don't know how Stella can keep him a secret. Another answer of "that she is in love with Mitch" might just be a confusion of which female character is which. However, if Stella is in love with Mitch, that's a secret that's been kept from the audience all these years too.

I also asked students about Belle Reve, Blanche and Stella's childhood home, and about why Stanley wants to see Blanche's papers about Belle Reve. Those are both significant to the plot of the play. They did okay with those questions, provided they answered at all, but when I asked about The Flamingo, all hell seemed to break loose. A sample of some of the more eye-opening wrong answers:

• "It’s a somewhat lucrative hotel"
• "It is a hotel that you can go to for just a few hours for prostitution"
• "A whorehouse in the town Blanche used to live in"
• "A brothel that Blanche work at"

The Flamingo is an infamous hotel near Belle Reve where Blanche does wind up living for a time, and she certainly does enjoy the company of men while she is there, but it is definitely not a whorehouse or brothel. In fact, Blanche has to leave town because even the owners and other patrons of The Flamingo think that she is too "loose." (By the way, I have no idea what the student was trying to say in describing it as a "lucrative hotel." I suppose it was, but still...)

One of the most common questions I ask about stories or novels or plays is about the ending. I just want to make sure that the students have actually made it to the end of the work and that they have some sense of how the author has tried to wrap things up. Unfortunately, the last question is the one that is most often left blank. However, some will attempt an answer even when they haven't quite gotten that far in the literary work. One student summed it up: "The play ends when Blanche decides to leave because Mitch doesn’t want her anymore. She is done." Well, I'm not sure that Mitch is the most significant aspect of why Blanche decides to leave. I think Stanley (and Stella) have a lot more to do with it, and anyone who's seen the play would not attribute the ending to any decision on Blanche's part.



I have taken a different approach in the last couple of semesters to quizzes. Instead of giving the quiz at the beginning of the class session, I now hand them out at the end of class, after we've had a chance to discuss the work. You might guess that the scores have gone up since I started doing this. However, oddly enough, they haven't really changed all that much. I thought two things might happen: students who had done the reading would be reminded of specific details and those who hadn't done the reading could perhaps pick up some key information during the class discussion. As you've seen from some of the answers I've shared in this post, though, it doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference.