MarcAnthony P. Solli
The study of any form of literature, its poetic devices, figurative language, and analysis of a diverse sampling of such literature provides a potent framework in which students can begin to think creatively and independently. By encouraging a free-flowing, guided discussion from a sampling of seminal works emanating from the “gangster genre”, and by offering a close, methodical, detailed reading of passages from these texts, which often feature a variety of topics in “Americanism” and “the American dream”, teachers may achieve a modicum of fulfillment in their didactic purpose. Teachers may be empowered to act as facilitators of cognitive development and comprehension through the exploration of an American ideal and its disintegration, usurpation, or perversion by the code of the gangster hero.
Students, on the other hand, can emerge from the Language Arts classroom, where such critical discourse should transpire, as more able close readers of pattern, foreshadow, detail, and other literary devices. They may develop a renewed fervor for reading and studying a variety of texts and gain an academic mindset that favors Bloom’s Taxonomy. Learners will not only read for comprehension, but ultimately investigate text in order to analyze, deconstruct, synthesize, and finally evaluate these works, or even create classroom products (i.e., projects, academic papers) that imitate or emulate the literature studied.
Such critical evaluation (the final stage of learner achievement in Bloom’s Taxonomy) is only possible through detailed assimilation, argumentation, and grappling with a text’s significance (or perceived significance) once comprehension of the basic elements of a text have been accomplished.
To study selections of American gangster narratives affords any student the opportunity to investigate the entire gamut of philosophical, political, or cultural ideologies associated with such works. Such study also enables learners to realize that literature is often a powerful vehicle, even a catalyst for informed debate and creative exposition of ideas. If students can be guided through Socratic questioning and subtle direction to discover the broad arguments and subtle distinctions within such literary and filmic works of art, then they are led in a direction where they may use the same set of interpretive skills to critically analyze not only “gangster texts” that may seem enticing and relevant, but also any text from any academic discipline or artistic sphere. Students can then be hopefully inspired toward developing questioning techniques and critical mindsets that will serve them not only as learners, but also as critical, open-minded, reflective human beings throughout life, even as they continue to advance the “stories” of the individual journeys of their lives. In such a fashion, heroic, gangster literature, whether fictional or adapted from truth, can serve as a model for students’ own personal heroic journeys, so that literature can be viewed as just as potent an alternative to student growth as actual, non-literary characters operate as role models to students in their own developments.
Indeed, by studying the literary and filmic texts of the American gangster, in which complex ideologies and notions about power, ethnicity, gender, loyalty, and betrayal are often buried within the artistic beauty and artifice of the text, students can become academic “detectives” of a sort. They can begin to ascertain the means and methods by which writers so eloquently and expertly imbue their melodious language with complicated truths and argument. For a class of tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders who are adolescents on the cusp of young adulthood and its implied responsibilities, the transition from high school to the world beyond the classroom can seem tumultuous from many angles, including social and psychological aspects. The challenge for the Language Arts teacher is to harness these turbulent energies of such students and to direct them in a creative way toward a kind of success in the classroom that is based on critical thinking and attention to clarity (both oral and written).
A curriculum unit on the American gangster is appropriate for learners, not only those who may initially shy from the density of certain texts, but also for those who are facile readers. Once a teacher has provided the poetic tools, devices, and discussion jargon to engender academic success, students’ esteem will be bolstered as they transfer discussion of texts beyond the academic forum and into their homes and lives. This study will allow for the didactic techniques and strategies of brainstorming, cooperative learning, guided discussion, and persuasive argument of ideologies and positions, while permitting students to draw connections between the texts and any other knowledge they may bring to the discussion from other sources (television, movies, music, other classes, personal experiences). Our academic analysis of this literature is the perfect vehicle in the Language Arts classroom to ensure that learning and teaching flow across the continuum of a curriculum. Often historical, sociological, and psychological concepts are acknowledged in discussions of such literature.
In essence, students should be able to glean parallels and connections to their own lives, thereby providing a profound relevance to their learning experience, through a discussion of “Americanism” and aspects of the “American Dream” in both its ideal and real forms (as presented in the works of Mario Puzo, Francis Coppola, and more contemporarily, in Brian DePalma’s
Scarface,
Ridley Scott’s
American Gangster,
and David Chase’s
The Sopranos).
Students will be able to see the cross-cultural, multi-cultural significance and perspectives offered by these works of such diverse authors (directors), while simultaneously recognizing the common threads of each text’s anti-heroic quest for the elusive “American Dream”, a mythical notion which appears to transcend race, ethnicity, and even generations or socioeconomic circumstance.
Through guided discussion, cooperative learning and the composition of persuasive essays (or more informal journals), students will learn to compare and contrast issues presented by the textual samplings discussed, and will learn to argue in logical defense of their own positions based on the words and thematic message presented either by an author’s voice or by authorial omission. Most essentially, students should come to appreciate the artifice and beauty of the literary form while understanding its power to inspire freedom of thought and intellectual debate within the context of our examination of particular antiheroic representations.
Such representations often will serve as counterpoints to convention amidst the larger context of readings in this mythology course. Students’ synthetic creations of personalized heroic journey storyboards, written work, artistic representations, musical compositions, or electronic presentations (i.e., PowerPoint presentation) will serve as summative, culminating assessments as to whether or not basic comprehension, interpretive, and analytical skills have been mastered regarding our literary investigation.
