A Directed Reading of
Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men Illustrates
the LitTunes Approach to Literacy.

By Christian Z. Goering
Fayetteville, Arkansas
September 10, 2009

When LitTunes co-founder, webmaster, and editor, Ebenezer Bowles, presented me with an idea last summer, I knew I had to make it happen, and quick. A deadline for a now published chapter was passing and his suggestion of having my pre-service teachers read and connect to Of Mice and Men was an approach I was sure would be engaging, a solid strategy for future teachers to practice, and a pursuit which would allow a few graduate students an opportunity to delve into the world of professionalism by co-authoring a book chapter with me.

That chapter, "Musical Intertextuality in Action: Directed Reading of Of Mice and Men," was recently published in Michael J. Meyer's The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Now that the publication process is behind me, it’s time to review how this project came to fruition and share some of its highlights with the LitTunes community. The project provides useful insights for teachers who are looking for new ways to present Steinbeck’s tragic novella. It also illustrates the dynamic, flexible nature of the LitTunes approach to literacy and the English language arts classroom.

The Project.

Once I decided to go ahead with the project, immediate action was necessary. After buying all of the copies of Of Mice and Men from three local bookstores on Thursday, I entered class that Friday with a special announcement:  There will be a meeting after class to discuss an extra project, an opportunity per se, one which would require extra reading on top of a rigorous summer schedule of nine graduate hours. Five students presented themselves after class and listened attentively to my explanation of their deadline-driven responsibilities should they choose to participate.

First, over the weekend, each student would read and make musical connections to Of Mice and Men. The connections would follow the LitTunes methodology for connecting popular music to literary texts. I instructed the students to study the methodology for their assignment by visiting these two LitTunes pages:

Mission: Read, Write, and Rock! Puttin’ the Pop in the Classroom.

Connections: Pop Music and the Literary Canon in the Classroom. Suggestions for Pairing Contemporary Music and Canonical Literature.

If you’re new to the LitTunes approach, you might want to visit those pages. In a nutshell, the approach provides a proven method for students to direct their thinking and reflection about the unique and original associations between the books they read and the music they know. The foundational goal of the methodology is to help students appreciate canonical literature while enhancing their literacy skills.

Five Brave Volunteers Step Forth.

Five brave souls agreed to complete the reading and connections, and then meet to discuss their findings before the week was out. Katherine Collier, Scott Koenig, John O'Berski, Stephanie Pierce, and Kelly Riley changed their plans for the weekend, read Steinbeck’s novella, and created a list of as many different connections as occurred to them, carrying out a purposeful reading activity.

When the five participants returned to class on Monday, their intellectual excitement was obvious and contagious — even though the assignment had deprived them of some much needed rest. Each had found a spate of connections, and they were eager to share them with the group. We were primed for the next step.

I asked the students to select five connections and explain them in narrative detail. Working with another short deadline, the emerging scholars came through again, writing succinct and insightful text about the links between ideas and characters in the novella and the lyrics of songs gleaned from the music of their life.

From that point, working with their text and the emerging ideas it generated, we developed the chapter, based largely on the connections and explanations they discovered during the weekend of directed reading. We were able to draft the chapter and post it to the editor only a couple of weeks after the deadline. As these five pre-service teachers left the graduate school classroom that summer, they entered their student internship placements with a feather in their caps in terms of a forthcoming publication. They also had an ace in the hole in terms of a strategy they could use with their own students.

The Strategy.

The LitTunes strategy, which directs students to make connections from their reading to their music, is one I define by the term Musical Intertextuality (2009). It is a derivative of Louise Rosenblatt's work with Reader Response Theory and the concept of intertextuality, which originated in the field of Cultural Studies. If expert readers automatically make intertextual connections, scaffolding these connections with a student’s music provides a natural stepping stone towards having them connect to other works of literature. Song lyrics are a more comfortable medium with strong motivational possibilities. They pave a smooth path into a novel.

For the Of Mice and Men project, I created two handouts with instructions and writing space to guide the reading and research of my five grad students. These handouts are easily adaptable to junior and senior high school classrooms for students who are reading whole class or individually selected novels.

The first handout, Making Connections from Text to Music, explains the different types of connections and contains blanks for students to enter the connections while they are reading the literary work. The six connections are:

1) a song is inspired by literature directly;

2) a song connects to a text thematically;

3) a song's setting connects to the setting of a literary work;

4) characters in a song mirror the characters in a classic work;

5) the tone of a song is similar to the tone of a piece of literature, and;

6) a song's plot structure or narrative follows that of a literary work.

The second handout, Analyzing and Explaining Your Connections, provides directions and a worksheet for students to write explanations of five connections chosen from the list they compiled during their reading. It represents the act of synthesis so crucial to critical thinking and a fuller understanding of literary works.

The Results.

Katherine, Scott, John, Stephanie, and Kelly provided 98 original connections to Of Mice and Men. Woody Guthrie's song, "Blowin' Down the Old Dusty Road," was picked three times. Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Gillian Welch, and Tom Waits appeared the most times on the five lists, which says as much about the novel as it does the five readers. Here are four sample connections from the student lists that are especially appropriate and useful:

 
As previously noted, each participant selected five connections as the subject of written explanations. Here are three representative samples.

Kelly Riley, a Texan by birth, netted the most connections, 39. She wrote:

The characters in Of Mice and Men persistently long for connection with yet remain alienated ‎from the people around them. Steinbeck fills the work with fleeting moments of intimacy that ‎seem to open doors for connection between characters. Sadly, these doors always close just ‎before any authentic connection can be forged. However, Steinbeck leaves one of these doors ‎ajar at the end when he depicts, in the final scene, a moment of understanding ‎between George and Slim — “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come with me” (104-105). ‎This final moment seems to suggest the possibility for genuine connection between these two ‎characters. Like Steinbeck’s novella, Jamie Byrd and Steve Fisher’s duet “String of Pearls” ‎describes the divergent perspectives that inhibit connection between two people. The song ends ‎with both characters standing in front of and looking through an open door, which implies that ‎they will overcome the obstacles and reach a point of understanding.

Scott Koenig, a California native, offered 21 unique connections. He provided one of the most unique song titles with this explanation:

Male relationships are rarely explored in literature, let alone in music. Steinbeck takes a risk with Of ‎Mice and Men by presenting a friendship rooted in a dangerous, unspoken notion — that of love. ‎George and Lenny travel the country working toward the American dream, not alone and isolated like ‎the other farmhands, but together, with the bond at the base of any true friendship. In Sufjan ‎Stevens' song, "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!", he echoes Steinbeck by taking ‎that same chance, singing about the love of another male, a best friend from his youth. ‎Though the music doesn't stir up the dusty backroads of Salinas, Stevens' sentiment plays beautifully ‎with Steinbeck's theme of brotherhood, and the profession — if never in words or lyrics such as ‎Stevens' song — of love for your fellow man.‎

Stephanie Pierce, a North Carolinian, connected 11 songs to Of Mice and Men, including this well known hit by Pink Floyd:

On page 82, (among others that seem to mark the loneliness and alienation that the hired hands suffer from) Steinbeck echoes the theme of isolation that Pink Floyd laments in “Is There Anybody Out There?” When the band begs if anyone can hear them or if anyone is around, they articulate the feeling of loneliness that pervades the bunkhouse and disillusions its occupants. The song also acts as a cry that many of the ranch hands fail to vocalize and, in so doing, fail to form bonding relationships with each other.

The three examples are representative of other explanations and provide insight into each individual's musical background and knowledge. The music they selected says a lot about who they are, where they spent their youth, and maybe even what they believe about certain issues in life. While most readers have heard of Pink Floyd, fewer have heard of Sufjan Stevens, and even fewer still have any idea who Jamie Byrd and Steve Fisher are. That fact, I argue, expresses the beauty and depth of this activity. The connections, though tied to a common work, are completely unique to each reader because each of us enjoys different and varying musical backgrounds.

Out of the Cage
And into Understanding.

So, we are left to contemplate a productive activity that is also ambiguous, impossible to replicate, and based solely on each reader's unique and individual response to a text they are reading. It represents one strategy among several to promote the teaching of literacy. It also reminds me that our students are ambiguous, impossible to replicate, and sometimes left out in the cold when trying to understand written works of literature.

Giving our students an opportunity to find a sense of understanding in literature through the music of their life also allows us as teachers and educators to gently push our students outside of the little intellectual boxes that too often cage their appreciation of English language arts studies. Students are allowed and encouraged to find a new sense of relevance to English class by linking their studies to the music that defines much of their life.

The Next Step.

Where do we go from here is always a question worthy of addressing. Collaborating to write a chapter about Of Mice and Men led my students and me to continue investigating the LitTunes approach to literacy and also to begin sharing these practices with others.

Tara Griner, MAT 2009, took the project to the next level and completed an action research project as part of the requirements of her degree. More interesting, though, is that she did it with a largely Hispanic population reading Antigone. Tara has promised to write about the project in a future LitTunes feature. Katy Moore, MAT 2009, successfully employed the LitTunes approach with her juniors in the reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Socrates Would Ask....

So, what are you going to do with these materials and ideas? Will your students respond to a project based on the LitTunes methodology?   Do you see the benefits to enhanced literacy from such an opportunity?   These questions, and more that evolve from the continued use of popular music in the classroom, will help us define additional opportunities. We have much work yet to do.

Appendix A:
Musical Intertextuality Table

Editor's note:
This work was featured in a University of Arkansas press release in July 2009 titled "Linking Lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men Through Musical Intertextuality." Link:
http://coehp.uark.edu/7346.htm

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