Bridging the Gap:
Integrating Research with the Teaching of General Education Courses

Robert C. Evans and David V. Witkosky
Auburn University Montgomery

PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH (David V. Witkosky)

Burnout at the collegiate level of teaching is hardly an unusual or new topic of discussion. An informal survey of available resources (found by using the Google search engine and the keywords “burnout,” “teaching,” and “higher education”) yielded 129,000 hits. Replacing “higher education” with “college” increased the number of hits to 461,000. In addition, popular books dealing with teaching at the collegiate level frequently feature chapters on burnout and its consequences (e.g., Cox & Heames, 1999; Filene, 2005). A common thread in these online and printed resources is the recognition of an almost inevitable decrease in job satisfaction as college professors in all subject areas spend more and more years in the classroom. Where opinions vary is in the explanation for this regrettable phenomenon.

One body of research attributes some occurrences of burnout to frustration on the part of certain professors over not being able to devote themselves primarily to teaching (e.g., Eble, 1988; Kellough, 1990). Faculty members who suffer from this type of burnout claim that they are being sidetracked from the really important part of their careers—interacting with students—by the demand of the university administration that they carry out academic research. These faculty members see imparting fundamental knowledge to nineteen- to twenty-two-year-olds as their primary function. They believe that their efforts in the classroom will help to shape the lives of their students, and they fear that a career spent in the library or laboratory and too steeped in esoteric scholarly inquiry will lead to a very narrow focus and prevent them from gaining a broad view of their subject matter and its role in the world in general—the view that is most useful to undergraduates. In Why the Professor Can't Teach, Morris Kline supports the view that researchers often cannot instruct effectively:

One argument advanced in favor of the research man is that he has superior knowledge. But what knowledge does he possess? He is almost sure to be a specialist. The specialist is like a miner who never surveys a landscape but who digs a barely passable tunnel into a mine to research a small lode of gold that may in fact prove to be tin. Such research narrows rather than broadens. What the professor does in his research has little if any bearing on what he has to teach at the undergraduate and even beginning graduate levels. (1977, p. 71)

A second group of sources notes that, in some cases, a cause for the decrease in job satisfaction can be found in the poor preparation of graduate students for their future roles of inspiring, guiding, and evaluating a classroom full of students (e.g., Baiocco & DeWaters, 1998; Eble, 1988; Finkelstein, 1984). According to this viewpoint, graduate education has long placed its emphasis on enabling students at the master’s and doctoral level to acquire specialized knowledge; less attention has been directed to preparing these individuals to recognize and articulate how one conveys knowledge. In other words, faculty members with a large amount of information are placed in a classroom and asked to do what they have little practice at: instill a love of learning within students and lead them to acquire and appreciate a given body of facts and insights. Supporters of this position believe that young academics quickly become aware of their weakness and either develop coping skills or grow disillusioned. In College Faculty as Teachers, Martin J. Finkelstein laments the often poor preparation of graduate students for teaching during the post-WWII period:

Virtually all faculty received advanced training in an academic discipline or a professional field; virtually none received any pedagogical training. Nor did many come to their first full-time academic appointment with prior teaching experience except perhaps for a graduate teaching assistantship that did not involve full responsibility for a course. While some groups promoted reforms, most novices still began their teaching careers armed with memories of an influential teacher and little else. It must all be learned “on the job.” (1995, p. 35)

Other studies offer a third explanation for job dissatisfaction: lack of interest in, or even disdain for, the role of instructor (e.g., Eble, 1972; Feldman, 1987; Soderberg, 1985). Individuals who suffer from this type of restlessness and disappointment feel that the primary interest of a faculty member in higher education should be research. Furthermore, they believe that universities and colleges are organized in a type of hierarchy in which institutions devoted to research are at the top and institutions specializing in undergraduate education are at the bottom. Instructors who view themselves primarily as researchers and see research as the principle purpose of higher education are convinced that professional success is measured solely by the amount and level of scholarly production, and they insist that any talented faculty member with a healthy self-respect, a strong drive for self-preservation, and a competitive nature should aspire to find a position at one of the so-called top institutions. At the same time, they feel that anything that might distract researchers from their projects should be avoided. In their opinion, teaching is a necessary evil, and research sabbaticals or reductions in teaching load should be regarded as rewards. Kline (1977) comments on the attitude of many scholars toward classroom instruction responsibilities:

Many researchers have said frankly, “Universities would be fine places if there were no students.” Quite a few have expressed their contempt for undergraduate teaching and often can be heard at evening social gatherings to bemoan the fact that they must meet an undergraduate class the next morning. They sneer at the mere teacher and act condescendingly toward the students whom they regard as dull and unworthy of their attention. (pp. 88-89)

Bob Evans and I believe that it is impossible to agree on one, and only one, explanation for burnout among faculty members in higher education. In general, we feel that burnout can best be understood by taking into account a professor’s preparation as a graduate student and his or her current employment situation. In addition, we think that it is important to investigate issues of personality, motivation, and aptitude. Based on personal experience and our own examination of the topic, we wish to discuss a fourth type of disillusionment: burnout arising from a specific type of teaching assignment. Specifically, we want to consider the sometimes detrimental effect of teaching freshman and sophomore courses variously termed “university core requirements” or “mandatory general studies courses.” Involvement in these courses is one of the most crucial aspects of many university professors’ jobs, but it can also seem to be one of the least rewarding.

Faculty members who enter the profession because of their love of scholarship and theory and because of a desire to pass along their passion for serious study and advanced ideas often find themselves frustrated and unfulfilled by spending so much time teaching basic information, rudimentary concepts, and unsophisticated skills to students who are often unmotivated and unprepared. Sources recognize that many of the students who take freshman or sophomore general studies courses will fail to pursue their education to the point of receiving a bachelor’s degree, and instructors comment that students at these early stages of their college careers are often unsure of their long-term goals and unfocused on their studies (Boyer Commission, 1998, 2002; Tinto, 1993).

For these reasons, it is easy for the teachers of such students to feel unchallenged, unappreciated, unmotivated, and unrewarded. Burnout—to one degree or another—is a common result, especially if teaching such courses requires extensive and time-consuming grading, as is true, for instance, in the teaching of freshman writing courses or introductory literature courses. As an antidote to this disease, we suggest a form of whole-group collaborative learning. (Resources discussing collaborative learning occasionally refer to it as cooperative learning. Our intent in this paper is not to focus on the distinction between cooperative and collaborative learning, but rather to highlight the beneficial effects of a learning process that involves active, creative, and meaningful contributions by, and dynamic interaction between, students and instructors.) For the purposes of this paper, we define collaborative learning as “a way of dealing with people which respects and highlights individual group members’ abilities and contributions” (Panitz & Panitz, 1998, p. 161). It emphasizes “consensus building through cooperation by group members, in contrast to competition in which individuals best other group members” (Panitz & Panitz, 1998, p. 161). Whole-group collaborative learning differs from other types of collaborative learning in that the instructor and members of the class work as a collective and the result of their labors is greater than what the instructor or the students might be able to accomplish individually. Frequently, whole-group collaborative learning leads to online or printed publications.

There are many different forms of collaborative or whole-group collaborative learning (see Biehler & Snowman, 1997; Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 1994). In spite of their differences, the various forms follow a similar structure. Commonly, students first “consider a question individually and then discuss their ideas with another student to form a consensus answer” (Panitz & Panitz, 1998, p. 162). Next, these thoughts are reviewed by a small group of three or four students and eventually evaluated by everyone in the class, including the professor; afterwards a process or synthesis begins, responding to individual input but yielding to group control (Slavin, 1995). It is important to note that, although the faculty member selects the topic, creates guidelines, and supervises work, the individual students conduct the nitty-gritty search for information, debate relevant issues, and take on the responsibility of drawing conclusions. Many times, the final outcome of the intellectual investigation can be anticipated by the instructor, but particularly in whole-group collaborative learning, the means of reporting information, the choice of emphasis, and the interpretation of relevance are influenced by situational and group dynamics. In general, advocates of this type of learning and teaching environment are faculty members who thrive on a lack of predictability and who value frequent and direct professor-student interaction.

Whole-group collaborative learning provides social, educational, and attitudinal benefits. It gives students the incentive and opportunity to interact with fellow students and their instructor, and it fosters a sense of self-discipline and self-worth (Cooper et al., 1990; Johnson & Johnson, 1989). Students feel responsible for contributing to the group effort, and they see that others are depending on them to supply necessary blocks of information (Millis & Cottell, Jr., 1998). Students also gain a better understanding of the learning process, and they recognize more clearly the goals and objectives of a given course (McManus, 2005). Many advocates of collaborative learning praise the effect it has on the overall academic level of the course and on the maturity level of the students (Bligh, 2000). Indeed, students are no longer willing to sit back and be spoon fed pieces of information (Slavin, 1995). Moreover, students recognize the relevance to the group effort of what they are being asked to understand or do (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 1994).

In the next section, Bob will offer personal reflection on this topic. He will explain how he faced the challenge of preventing burnout in his own career and how he succeeded in maintaining his love of teaching by incorporating his research interests and methods into a modified form of whole-group collaborative learning in lower-level composition and literature courses.

PART TWO: PERSONAL NARRATIVE (Robert C. Evans)

In previous papers presented at this conference I indicated how, during the past ten years, I have tried to integrate my teaching and my research by collaborating with students on research projects that could lead to publication. The first of these projects, for instance, involved working one-on-one with a particular student on an essay comparing and contrasting a story by William Faulkner with a story by Flannery O’Connor (see Appendix A for bibliographic information on texts mentioned in Part Two). In this case the student, although highly motivated, had no special scholarly training. A later project involved working one-on-one with a particular student on an essay comparing and contrasting writings of Ben Jonson with one of their Latin sources. In this case my collaborator—an older graduate student—had advanced expertise in Latin, which she taught in the local schools. Yet another project involved a highly motivated advanced undergraduate English major whose skills and attitudes made him capable of painstaking textual analysis. These projects, and others like them, were greatly stimulating and highly satisfying, but they only involved single students.

The more I began to work on such publication projects, however, the more I began to wonder whether it might be possible to involve entire classes in them, and especially whether it might be possible to do so even at the freshman and sophomore levels. Because first- and second-year courses in writing and literature are almost always part of a university’s core curriculum, and because almost every university student is required to take them, these courses tend to attract some of the best-prepared and most highly-motivated of all students. However, they also tend to enroll many students who are at the opposite end of the spectrum of preparation and motivation. Moreover, even the best-prepared and most-motivated students often have no special interest or expertise in the materials on which these courses focus; often they have neither prior familiarity with the texts being studied nor any experience with the analytical methods used to study them. All these facts present both challenges and opportunities to the teacher of such courses, but I have discovered that the satisfactions such courses can provide—both to the teacher and to his students—increases greatly when all the participants feel as if they are contributing to a process that will lead to permanently valuable and even publishable results. It is one thing to write a paper for a professor that will be read once by him and then probably forgotten, both by him and by the student who wrote it. It is another thing altogether to think and write with the prospect that one’s ideas and words may achieve some real permanence and may be read, and taken seriously, by a multitude of serious readers, including readers far distant from one’s own campus. This prospect motivates students because they realize that the stakes are potentially much higher than is true in most “normal” assignments. And the same enhanced motivation also affects their teachers, who are less likely to regard such assignments as routine or monotonous, because they understand that such assignments can produce real, innovative knowledge and lead to lasting results in the form of scholarly publications. Both students and teachers, then, benefit from the effort to integrate teaching and research, and this is especially true when that effort involves entire classes. No longer are the beneficiaries merely single students, and no longer is such collaborative scholarship merely a sideline to normal teaching. Instead, scholarship and teaching are blended in uniquely satisfying and productive ways. In the space remaining, I hope to describe a few such projects more specifically and indicate how I was able to involve entire classes in serious scholarly work.

One way to produce such work is to focus on a little-known but significant text—a text that deserves serious study but that has not yet received much attention from professional scholars. In the early 1990s, for instance, I happened to be doing some research at the Beinecke library at Yale University when I discovered an autobiographical poem by a woman, Martha Moulsworth, who in 1632 decided to write a verse account of her fifty-five years of life—years that had been particularly interesting and eventful. By the time she wrote, Moulsworth had been orphaned at an early age, married three times, widowed three times, and a mother several times; she had lost not only all of her husbands but at least one of her children, and she had also lost (through her father’s early death) the chance to be even better educated than she had already become. Her poem laments the fact that women in her period were denied university educations, and her poem is also unusual in other ways, particularly in her frank assessments of both the frustrations and the pleasures of life (including marriage) and in her final decision to remain a widow lest she jeopardize her freedom. When I discovered the poem, in an obscure manuscript, I assumed that surely it had been studied before, but I was wrong; it had been completely overlooked, despite its real fascination. As one of the earliest pieces of autobiographical writing in the English language, the poem was of interest; as one of the earliest pieces of such writing by a woman, the poem held even greater interest; as an especially blunt and honest piece of writing by a woman, the poem was more interesting still; and, finally, the fact that the poem was a poem—and a fairly skillful poem at that—made the work all the more intriguing. I knew, then, that the poem was significant, but even I was surprised when it was quickly selected for inclusion in the latest edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature—the collection of standard texts that is most widely used on U.S. college campuses.

Eventually three books grew out of this discovery of Moulsworth’s poem—an annotated edition of the poem with extensive commentary; a hefty collection of essays by seasoned scholars; and, of more relevance to this paper, a collection of student writings about the poem. This collection, published by the Princeton University Women’s Studies Program, was divided into two sections. The first section included full-blown essays by student writers, some from my school but many from students at other colleges. The students examined the poem from multiple perspectives, and many of the writers of these essays (several of whom were graduate students at the time) have since gone on to successful academic careers of their own. However, the second part of the book (called a “Critical Kaleidoscope”) offered numerous brief observations about the poem, from many different points of view, by scores of students, most of them undergraduates from my own classes, and many of them undergraduates from my first- and second-year writing classes or introductory literature courses. Because the poem we were studying was essentially “brand new” (even though it was also four hundred years old), students could write about it without feeling the “anxiety of influence” that often comes with studying a well-known text that is groaning under centuries of scholarly commentary. In this particular case, the scholarly commentary was either non-existent, or it was so new and so specialized that there was still plenty of opportunity to say something “fresh” about the poem without having to worry about repeating the observations of others. 

Students in freshman composition courses, for instance, could rely simply on common sense (and their knowledge of common human experiences) to say interesting things about Moulsworth’s relations with her parents, her husbands, her children, and her God; students without advanced literary training could still use rather rudimentary knowledge to make fresh and interesting comments about the structure or phrasing of the poem, or the techniques it used, or the particular traits that made the poem effective. Often I encouraged students in these freshman and sophomore classes to write whole essays about the poem, and, although many of these essays did not deserve to be included in their entirety, I included any sentences or paragraphs that struck me as especially insightful or shrewd. Later, in a different kind of writing assignment, I sometimes asked classes to provide me with discrete comments on isolated aspects of the poem. For instance, I might ask students to give me five brief paragraphs discussing five distinct word-choices in the poem. Why had Moulsworth chosen to use this particular word and not some other? How did her choice of that particular word contribute to the larger meaning or effectiveness of the work? By assigning such work, I hoped to impress on students that in their own writing, as well as in all writing, each word was a deliberate choice, and each word mattered. The results of all these assignments—both the full essays and the more limited comments—gave me a wealth of material to use in the third Moulsworth book. Every single student who made a contribution to the book, no matter how minuscule, was given credit for his or her contribution, and in fact every single student who contributed to the book received a free copy. Because the book was published by the Princeton Women’s Studies program, it was widely circulated, and it is indexed in the standard scholarly bibliographies and is often cited by later scholars who have dealt with Moulsworth’s poem. My students, then, had the satisfaction of knowing that they were making a real contribution to serious scholarship, and I had not only that satisfaction but also the satisfaction of realizing that my teaching and my research were intimately connected and mutually reinforcing. The students were highly motivated, and so was I.

Subsequent projects have followed the pattern set by the Moulsworth book. In one case, for instance, students at all levels and in all classes contributed to intensive analysis of a little-known story by Frank O’Connor, who is universally considered one of the masters of the short story genre. O’Connor’s story entitled “Ghosts” is a hauntingly powerful work—funny one moment and stabbingly painful the next. Yet this work, like many individual works by O’Connor (and indeed like many individual works by many noted writers) had never received extended examination until my students began to focus their full attention on the story. Their work resulted in a book entirely devoted to intensive analysis of “Ghosts”—paragraph-by-paragraph and sometimes sentence-by-sentence or even word-by-word. Students in the composition classes learned, once more, why individual word-choice is so important and how each paragraph of a piece of writing contributes (or should contribute) to the successful structure and coherence of the whole work. Meanwhile, students in sophomore-level literature courses had a fresh opportunity to discuss such matters as characterization, theme, plot, symbolism, structure, etc. And all the students had the satisfaction of contributing to a real piece of scholarship—one that is indexed in the standard bibliographies and is available in libraries throughout the world (see Appendix A). Current similar projects include books on Anne Vaughan Lock (the little-known and little-studied author of the very first sonnet sequence in the history of the English language—a collection of poems very much worthy of serious study); Matthew Hale (a prominent seventeenth-century jurist who also wrote a very fine collection of poems about Christmas, which often resemble the style and thinking of works by his great contemporary, John Milton); and the unknown English translator of fifty French poems from the sixteenth century called The Octonaries, which are not only skillful as poems but entirely typical of their period. 

A different kind of project, however, suggests that the methods just described can be used in dealing not simply with little-known texts but even with texts that are very well known indeed. One of the most famous of all works of American literature, for instance, is Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”  Bierce’s tale is justly praised: it is tautly written, superbly constructed, and full of suspense, and it concludes with one of the most surprising and effective endings imaginable. The story is included in practically every anthology of the short story or of American literature; it is frequently taught and has been the subject of extensive critical commentary. One of our most recent collaborative projects, however, focused on precisely this story, and (somewhat to our surprise) we discovered that there was still much more original analysis left to be done on this tale. In the book that resulted from our efforts, the first quarter is devoted to summarizing, in detail, previously published commentary on the story by professional scholars. The remaining three quarters of the book consists of detailed, line-by-line, word-by-word analysis of the story collected from essays and comments authored by almost 120 students at my university. Whereas many of the comments by professional published scholars deal with broad themes and general ideas, the student comments more consistently dig into the nitty-gritty details of the work, focusing especially on Bierce’s precise word choices. The result is a book that any future serious student of the story will need to consult, and the project that led to the book not only generated a good deal of enthusiasm and serious commitment from the students involved but also made my own teaching of the story seem more than an ephemeral classroom exercise. Similar collaborative publication projects have dealt with well-known stories by Kate Chopin, and similar future projects will deal with classic stories by Charlotte Perkins, Jack London, and others. 

Burnout, I would therefore argue, is not a necessary consequence of years of teaching, nor is it even a necessary consequence of teaching an abundance of “lower-level,” introductory courses. Burnout is one possible (or even likely) result when teachers feel that their work has become a matter of uninspired, uninspiring rote routine, or when they sense that their work leads to no lasting, significant results. Collaborative research and publication, I would suggest, is one of the best ways to breathe life, commitment, and motivation back into the classroom, both among students and among their teachers. Students who participate in such projects realize that they are writing not simply for their present teachers but, potentially, for an audience that includes many other teachers as well as many other students, and not simply teachers or students confined to their own particular campus. Student participants realize that their work, if it is good enough, will get into print and will be read for years to come by others with a truly serious interest in the subject they are studying. Their teachers likewise have an extra incentive to make sure that the work they foster and supervise is of the highest possible caliber, and those teachers also have an extra incentive to make sure that they are as devoted to success in teaching as they can be. Collaborative research and publication involving entire classes, therefore, involves real—and lasting—benefits to everyone involved. 

References

Baiocco, S. A. & DeWaters, J. N. (1998). Successful college teaching: Problem-solving strategies of distinguished professors. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Biehler, R. F. & Snowman, J. (1997). Psychology applied to teaching (8^th ed.). New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Bligh, D. A. (2000). What’s the use of lectures? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. (1998). Reinventing undergraduate education: A blueprint for America’s research universities. Retrieved 20 April 2006, from http://www.sunysb.edu/Reinventioncenter/

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. (2002). Reinventing undergraduate education: Three years after the Boyer report. Retrieved 20 April 2006, from http://www.sunysy.edu/Reinventioncenter/

Cooper, J., Prescott, S., Cook, L., Smith, L., Mueck, R. & Cuseo, J. (1990). Cooperative learning and college instruction: Effective use of student learning teams. Long Beach, CA: The California State University Foundation.

Cox, S. & Heames, R. (1999). Managing the pressures in teaching: Practical ideas for tutors and their students. London: Falmer.

Eble, K. E. (1972). Professors as teachers. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Eble, K. E. (1988). The craft of teaching: A guide to mastering the professor’s art (2^nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Feldman, K. A. (1987). Research productivity and scholarly accomplishment of college teachers as related to their instructional effectiveness: A review and exploration. Research in Higher Education, 26, 227-298.

Filene, P. (2005). The joy of teaching: A practical guide for new college instructors. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Finkelstein, M. J. (1984). The American academic profession: A synthesis of social scientific inquiry since World War II. Columbus, OH: Ohio State Press.

Finkelstein, M. J. (1995). College faculty as teachers. In H. Wechsler (Ed.), The NEA 1995 almanac of higher education (pp. 33-47). Washington, D.C.: National Education Association.

Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T. & Holubec, E. J. (1994). The new circles of learning: Cooperation in the classroom and school. Springfield, NJ: Behrman House Publishers.

Kellough, R. D. (1990). A resource guide for effective teaching in postsecondary education: Planning for competence. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Kline, M. (1977). Why the professor can’t teach. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

McManus, D. A. (2005). Leaving the lectern: Cooperative learning and the critical first days of students working in groups. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company.

Millis, B. J. & Cottell, P. G., Jr. (1998). Cooperative learning for higher education faculty. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

Panitz, T. & Panitz, P. (1998). Encouraging the use of collaborative learning in higher education. In J. J. Forest (Ed.), University teaching: International perspectives (pp. 161-202). New York: Garland Publishers.

Slavin, R. E. (1995). Cooperative learning: Theory, research and practice (2^nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Soderberg, L. O. (1985). Dominance of research and publication: An unrelenting tyranny. College Teaching, 33 (4), 168-172.

Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2^nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Appendix B

Sample Section from One of the Published Books Resulting from Use of Collaborative Learning in a General Education Course

(The following pages reprint the first few pages of the opening chapter of the book Frank O’Connor’s Ghosts: A Pluralist Approach [see Appendix A for full details].)

FRANK O’CONNOR’S “GHOSTS”: A CLOSE READING

CONTRIBUTORS: Luay Q. Abdel-Jaber [LQA]; Nathan Allinder [NA]; Olivia L. Au [OLA]; Melissa Baker [MB]; Shannon Barco [SB]; Bronx O. Barton [BOB]; Samantha L. Batten [SLB]; Tamara J. Booth [TJB]; Tanya Brummet [TB]; Alicia M. Buford [AMB]; William D. Burks [WDB]; Jacob B. Carter [JBC]; Leah B. Coker [LBC]; Linnea Marie Conely [LMC]; Andrea Cook [AC]; Deborah T. Corbett [DTC]; Alice B. Cordle [ABC]; Deborah Cosier [DC]; Alicia K. Cranford [AKC]; Shannon Davis [SD]; Foster Dickson [FD]; Amy Earnest [AE]; Heather Edwards [HE]; Doris F. Ferow [DFF]; Angela Fuhrman [AF]; Calvin Gipson [CG]; Jimmy Garrett [JG]; Leslie K. Grooms [LKG]; Clint Hammock [CH]; Mary Beth Hogan [MBH]; Katherine Hughes [KH]; Connie James [CJ]; Jennifer L. Johnson [JLJ]; Willie Mae Johnson [WMJ]; Steven Jones [SJ]; Angeline D. Lovinggood [ADL]; Danon Lucas [DL]; Jessica Anne McNeill [JAM]; Mia Manning [MM]; Krewe Maynard [KM]; Angela M. Montgomery [AMM]; Charles Jeffrey Moody [CJM]; Laura A. Morrison [LAM]; Kelli L. Miller [KLM]; Heather C. Nabors [HCN]; Elisabeth M. Newell [EMN]; Edward Pate [EP2]; Natasha B. Pitts [NBP]; Eleanor Planer [EP]; Lane Powell [LP]; Eddie Rollins [ER]; Debbie Seale [DS]; Tawanda Shaw [TS]; Donna Y. Smith [DYS]; Patrick Steele [PS]; Teresa Stone [TS2]; Alisha A. Sullivan [AAS]; Sherry Terrell [ST]; Autumm L. Thurman [ALT]; Irina I. Traphan [IIT]; Barbrietta Turner [BT]; Patrick Weir [PW].

“GHOSTS”

by Frank O’Connor

[1]    For twenty-odd years we’ve always had Oorawn Sullivans for servants; why I don’t know, unless it was the only hope of getting something off the bill.

It’s typical of O’Connor to present a first-person narrator, especially since in many of his stories he sought to capture the sound of an actual voice speaking. Presenting such a narrator allows O’Connor not only to tell a story but to show the impact of the story on the character telling it, thus providing two stories in one.  Note how the phrase “twenty-odd” already suggests the narrator’s casual tone. Note how the first sentence seems to imply initially that the narrator is from a wealthy class, especially because of the reference to “servants”; the second half of the sentence makes it clear, however, that he is merely a merchant, as dependent on earning income as anyone else. Already, then, the story has introduced the important themes of class and social distinctions, which become crucial motifs throughout the tale. The first half of the sentence suggests condescension; the second half suggests empathy and identification, especially since the narrator has apparently been allowing the Sullivans to buy on credit. The structure of this one sentence, then, foreshadows important implications of the story as a whole. The first half of the sentence seems to imply superiority; the second half suggests some comic frustration and some genuine sympathy for the poor. This perfect balance of tones is an important distinguishing trait of this tale and of much of O’Connor’s best fiction.

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A traditional HISTORICAL critic would immediately be interested by the word “Oorawn”; such a critic would want to determine the precise meaning of the word and learn as much as possible about its significance [AMB; CG]. A MARXIST critic, like a THEMATIC critic, would immediately be alert to the story’s opening emphasis on class distinctions [TB; LBC; KM; EP; PS; TS] and would be curious to see whether or not the story helps to promote the breakdown of class differences [EP]. A Marxist might find it particularly striking that the narrator refers to “servants” rather than to “employees”: the former word implies a greater sense of superiority [TS2]. At this point the class differences seem long-standing and immutable [PS], but later they will begin to break down [DC]. A Marxist might also note the casualness with which the narrator says that his family has “had” members of the Sullivan family, as if they are possessions rather than people [WMJ]. Both a FORMALIST critic and a THEMATIC critic might admire the way the story subtly implies one of its central concerns (class) in its very first sentence [TB] and also how this light-hearted opening sentence ironically foreshadows a major change in tone by the narrator at the end of the tale [AAS]. A thematic critic might note that even in its very first sentence, the story already foreshadows another one of its major themes: the influence of the past upon the present [FD; AF]. The fact that the narrator’s family has had Sullivan “servants” for “twenty-odd years” suggests a place of traditions, a place where things are done the way they’ve always been done, a place where generations of families live in the same niche of society. All these implications will be relevant to the rest of the story [DC]. The speaker, in remarking that his family has “always had Oorawn Sullivans for servants” but admitting that he doesn’t know precisely “why,” seems to imply that he is as conventional and predictable as his surroundings. This implication, however, will later prove to be false: he will later demonstrate a good deal of versatility and unconventionality. A FORMALIST critic would appreciate this kind of narrative irony [DC].