Three Long-term Flourishing Takeaways from Death of a Salesman

[Retrieved from a backup copy of John's previous blog post in the days of yore and fitting for graduation and other significant times of transition during one's journey through life.]

"...I thank Almighty God you're both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." -- Willy to his sons Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman

Why must everybody like you? ….Now listen, Willy, I know you don't like me, and nobody can say I'm in love with you…" --Charlie in Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman stirs my thinking about education and long-term flourishing in fresh ways. The play has been a close companion from my first reading in college and through much of my teaching career. I enjoy the challenges of teaching English Composition at the introductory college level these days, but I do miss discussing Death of a Salesman with students. Although it's a tragedy, it makes us keep thinking about the problems that can get in the way of pursuing the grace of everyday experiences and relationships. So, here are three takeaways from several rounds of reading the play with high school students. 

1. Learning is way more important than liking. As my introductory quotations suggest, Willy Loman is way too concerned about being liked and way too avoidant of learning. Charlie and his son Bernard know the difference. The narcissistic self-image focus and anti-intellectual impulses of Willy and young Biff in the flashbacks to Biff's senior year in high school show how a commitment to learning needs to balance one's focus on sports. In the flashbacks, audiences and readers of the play see that the learning of ethics and virtue needed coached into Biff's life as much as the skills of sports. In contrast, being liked and liking the comfort of having one's way serve as the central teaching for Biff's high school years. Willy realizes too late that he neglected truly essential lessons for his son and for himself.

2. Significant commitment is way more important than success. That's common advice for folks who reach midlife, but it's important for school-age children and all stages of life. We need older and younger generations to wrestle with those big essential questions about ethics and the meaning(s) of life. The failure to do so leaves us hollow, exhausted from frenetic activity, and without moral compasses, which is how the 60-something Willy Loman starts the play. Our current schools can easily be seduced into training students for success with high-paying jobs while neglecting the pursuit of the essential questions that are part of significant living and long-term flourishing. 

3. A few good close relationships are way more important than popularity with many people. Each fall, I share with my students that it's probably good that Willy Loman didn't have our social media. Ironically, a few people like Charlie do show love to Willy in practical ways, ranging from long-suffering tolerance for his strange outbursts to lending him money so that he can pretend to have a job that barely sustains him. 

Although Willy Loman berates him, Charlie is the best friend Willy can have. Tragically, Willy is so distracted by being liked (being popular) that he can't see the love of those closest to him. The potential for Willy to have great relationships is a major part of what makes the story qualify as a classic tragedy. In the last part of the play, Willy Loman takes his own life because he thinks this will make him popular with his son, provide him with life insurance money, and help him regain his own lost popularity from his high school years. What Biff most wants is his father's love, honesty, and openness.

Bonus Takeaway: You can't help but worship. In Death of a Salesman, Willy thanks God for his sons, but he's actually worshiping his son Biff as a god--both as a teenager and as a 30-something adult. Willy was looking at Biff as a source of inspiration and hope, so Willy tried to live vicariously through him in Biff's high school years. Biff couldn't sustain that sort of pressure, and by the end of the play, he seems to learn that such worship is too fragile to sustain life. Audiences and readers learn in one of the last flashbacks that Willy also damaged his relationship with his son when the teenage Biff discovered Willy's infidelity, thereby feeling a betrayal of all that his dad's values and ways of valuing. For over seventeen years, their relationship is dramatically fractured by this betrayal.

Some stronger source for worship, relationships, and forgiveness is desperately needed. For starters, Biff and Willy needed to hear and think through a graduation speech along the lines of the late David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water," in which he explores the impulse to worship that characterizes every person. (Foster's own life ended in tragedy too.) The real issue entails what one shall worship, how one will love and relate to others, and what source can focus and sustain a flourishing life—something to think about for graduations and many other transitions throughout our lives.  

Notes from a Failed Blogger: Why Write It If Nobody Will Read It?

This morning, a local pastor was sharing a reference to Clive James' Substack titled "Diary of a Failed Comedian." Part of the pastor's application was about how hungry we all are for various versions of "likes," via social media or other venues. 

That got me thinking of the previous pandemic-era blog that I maintained for about two years with over 100 posts. To borrow a line from a famous western, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I think some posts were good and some where duds, and I might have helped or encouraged a few people in the process. In a reckless moment of resignation as the cha-cha of my high school teaching routine returned to "normal" levels of busyness, I deleted the blog and didn't save all of my posts. Did that action make me a failed blogger, I wonder?

In my current semi-retirement stage of life, I wonder about endeavors to write and to teach writing. I entertain related questions everyday, and I've kept plenty of related notes, drafts, and half-formed essays for myself. I've often drafted something to post related to topics I've been discussing, reading about, musing over, and/or teaching. It seems that not a day goes by without some sort of AI discussion emerging, ranging from utopian promises to dystopian threats. 

As part of a growing collection with connections between AI and education, I was just reading Pierce Taylor Hibbs' Substack article on "Why AI Can Never Fully Replace Human Writers." I especially appreciate Hibbs' assertion that AI can never fully replace human writers because writing requires choice, responsibility, and trust. Indeed! 

There's something about this struggle over bothering to write that plays an important part of truly being human, whether thinking about posting something on a blog or deciding what to put on tomorrow's to-do list. With Hibbs and others in mind, I suppose I'm exercising my humanity right now in several ways, doing what AI can't actually do.

So, here are some thoughts (from me and others) about the related question: Why write if nobody will read it? 

• To find out what I think: How do I know what I think until I see what I have to say?
• Because if it is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly!
• To reframe my thinking.
• To pretend you're actually out there reading this. 
• To construct and reconstruct my self or my sense of self. 
• As a strange mix of professional and amateur practice. 
• As a sort of note in a bottle to others who may be drifting in the sea of whatever we might call our culture after postmodernism. 
  
• Problem exploration.
• As part of a chain reactions to other writers and conversations.
• Building inventory for a mind palace. 
  
• To imitate Marcus Aurelius. 
• Because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
  
• To write while wondering if there is always a divine being who reads everything.
  
• Because I feel like it, and AI doesn't feel like anything.

***

To be, or not to be, continued? 

Developing Rigor AND Mental Health Support in the College Classroom

An essential and ongoing discussion about post-pandemic education with first-year college students... 

In February and March (2024), I'll be leading an interactive book review with local community college instructors and professors in different disciplines. The topic is rigorous learning and mental health in the college classroom. The book is Improving Learning and Mental Health in The College Classroom by Robert Eaton, Steven V. Hunsaker, and Bonnie Moon. I've been reading, rereading, side-researching, and discussing the book with others since I stumbled across it in our local library last fall. The book is a timely, humble, and helpful contribution to discussing an elephant in the room: How do we maintain expectations for what rightly should be college-level learning while recognizing and realistically responding to the mental health challenges of our first-year students?

I especially appreciate how the authors have collected, curated, and tried out many of the most important theories, research-based insights, and practices related to bringing these two areas of concern together. Likewise, I appreciate their humility as well as their helpfulness because they frequently remind readers that they have not perfected the best practices or found any silver-bullet solutions, and they help readers realize that much of the relevant, existing research has many instances of correlation that are not necessarily clear in revealing important causal relationships. (In other words, when researchers observe two or more significant things happening together, one thing doesn't necessarily cause the other.) 

As I'm working through my final round of my analytical notes and starting to develop essential and guiding questions for our upcoming book talk, I've landed on three of my own essential questions that help me reflectively process the book and my relevant experiences in both high school and (now) college settings. 

Here are my essential questions about rigorous learning and mental health support in the classroom:

1. What is rightly difficult for students about learning in your courses? (Why is that difficulty right and important?)

2. What is unnecessarily difficult about learning in your courses?

3. What unnecessarily difficult parts of learning might you be able to change or somewhat influence for the better?
   

No doubt, there is more to come. Time and resources permitting, I might share more here in the near future. July 2024 Update: It did go well. Additionally, those three questions have related well to discussions about AI in our courses and what sort of appropriate "friction" (a.k.a. difficulty or struggle) students should encounter when learning at the college level in order to flourish academically, socially, and personally. All sorts of discussions have connected to this book and issues of growth, challenge, grit, motivation, purpose, and more.

Better Thinking as Thanking

 Happy Thanksgiving! 

I never realized how controversial that greeting could be until I entered the world of contentious grownups. Details aside about those controversies and contentions,  I'm thinking of my own bent toward grumbling, quarreling, discontentment, and occasionally all-out-despair. I'm thankful for writers from previous generations who return us to being thankful for just existing. G.K. Chesterton comes to mind for lifting up my thoughts and affections: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." 

May you enjoy that highest form of thought in the days and months and years to come!

Life after High School English Teaching: Phasing through Semi-retirement

For high school teachers who are "midway in our life's journey" or nearing the end of your teaching career, I encourage you to watch Riley Moynes' TEDTalk on "How to squeeze all the juice out of retirement." This talk can prepare you for some retirement transitions that aren't always so pleasant yet hold much potential for growth and flourishing. Even if so-called retirement seems far away, there are some good things to start thinking about in terms of how you can flourish in these later years.

Moynes sets up the following (not-always-sequential) four phases of retirement:

1. Vacation

2. Grief & loss

3. Trial & error 

4. Renewal 

 

I experienced about two months of vacation (Phase one) last summer after retiring from full-time high school English teaching. Early in the summer, I was signing up to teach and try out a few sections of English at the local community college in the fall (Phase three). I'd taught college-level English courses before, but throughout the year I discovered important shifts in my planning as I noticed a mix of college-ready and not-quite-ready-for-college students in my courses. My part-time work was often full-time planning. 

Moynes' rightly characterizes Phase three as "a time of trial and error. In phase three, we ask ourselves, 'How can I make my life meaningful again? How can I contribute?'"

At times this summer, I slipped into grief & loss over my working relationships (Phase two). Having retired rather young, I've sometimes anxiously been considering whether I want to start a new career. To help me lessen my anxiety, a wise mentor suggested that I think in terms of how I might do life differently during this span of time. That did help. 

 

Looking back, I see how aptly Rick Moynes categorizes the "big five" losses of Phase two:

"We lose that routine. We lose a sense of identity. We lose many of the relationships that we had established at work. We lose a sense of purpose, and for some people, there's a loss of power. Now we don't see these things coming. We didn’t see these losses coming, and because they happen all at once, it’s like, poof, gone."

 

On a different note for me, almost a week away from starting to teach my college composition classes, I'm enjoying some more trial & error thinking (Phase three), and I get little whispers of renewal in terms of purpose, function, enjoyment, and flourishing (Phase four). Perhaps returning to blogging is part of that renewal. 

 

I somewhat blogged my way through the pandemic and produced a little over 100 entries before discontinuing early last year. I think Moynes' four phases relate well to grief and loss that many of us experienced in relation to the pandemic. 

 

Speaking of renewal, I've enjoyed revisiting Park Palmer's The Courage to Teach. He's also inspired a more recent publication about The Courage to Learn. More on those books in future posts. Palmer helped found The Center for Courage & Renewal, which is a good place for educators to visit, especially if retirement is still a long way off.

 

 

 

Is Rhetoric Helpful?

Is rhetoric helpful? Well, that depends on what kind of rhetoric and what kind of approach to rhetoric we take. Everything that I have read from the late Wayne Booth's works leads me to say that rhetoric can not only helpful but essential to long-term flourishing in our relationships. Likewise, good rhetoric can benefit our communities and society at large. Booth is especially helpful for understanding rhetoric because he can clearly distinguish between good and bad versions of rhetoric. 

In The Rhetoric of RHETORIC, Wayne Booth provides some real-life samples of rhetoric's bad reputation as expressed in several comments, and though these examples are pre-2005, they still sound too familiar: 

• "Impoverished students deserve solutions, not rhetoric." Letter to Chicago Tribune. 

• "All that other stuff is rhetoric and bull. I don't think about it." Athletic coach. 

• "[What I've just said] is not rhetoric or metaphor. It's only truth." Columnist attacking race prejudice. 

• "President Bush's speech was long on rhetoric and short on substance." New York Times Editorial.

--Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 39-41). Kindle Edition. 

 

In light of such a bad reputation, one might ask, "Is rhetoric helpful despite its misuses and abuses?" Short answer: Yes, perhaps even more so in light of those misuses and abuses. 

Our problem with rhetoric is more so a problem with the dark side of human nature. An honest study of rhetoric reveals such flair-ups in humans throughout the ages and across cultures. Such practices, especially in our modern world, can give rhetoric a bad name. In such cases we have the pejorative sense of rhetoric, in which we are "expressing contempt or disapproval."

In addition to the pejorative use of the word rhetoric's use, the study of rhetoric can sometimes come across as too formal and esoteric, merely the work of some ivory tower academics. However, teachers and writers like Wayne Booth insightfully reveal how relevant and accessible rhetoric can be for everyone. In fact, I'm thinking that Booth's approach is even an essential discipline for all citizens and community members to practice throughout their lives. If rhetoric is basically the study of and use of various means of persuasion, then rhetoric can be used for great good as well as great evil. 

I was recently musing that we have so much focus in public schools and colleges on speech communication, yet we have so little focus on learning to listen well. We aren't required to take courses in listening. Perhaps one might have been forced to learn to listen in the traditional use of lecture, but lecture has become a bad word while engagement has become the gold standard for teaching and learning. Unfortunately, much of our educational rhetoric does not have a vision as to what larger purpose all of our engagement should have.

In contrast to merely being engaged, Wayne Booth offers a mix of ethical and rhetorical purpose for our engagement growth in the classroom, in the community, and in the culture at large. He coins the terms "Listening-Rhetoric" for this practice and purpose. I long for this sort of practice and purpose to become a normal part of our society and organizations so that we would constructively "Dare to Disagree" while also agreeing to be deeply civil in our disagreements. 

Booth characterizes such "Listening-Rhetoric" as this:

"[Listening-Rhetoric is] an even deeper probing for common ground. Here both sides join in a trusting dispute, determined to listen to the opponent's arguments, while persuading the opponent to listen in exchange. Each side attempts to think about the arguments presented by the other side. Neither side surrenders merely to be tactful or friendly. 'If I finally embrace your cause, having been convinced that mine is wrong, it is only because your arguments, including your implied character and emotional demonstrations, have convinced me.' Both sides are pursuing not just victory but a new reality, a new agreement about what is real." --Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 576-580). Kindle Edition.

Such an understanding and practice of good rhetoric is the foundation for a deliberative representative democracy. 

In our clamorous and conflicted culture of non-listening rhetoric, Booth's vision for better rhetoric sounds increasingly good and helpful.  

Developing a Rhetoric of Rhetorics

"Rhetoric is employed at every moment when one human being intends to produce, through the use of signs or symbols, some effect on another - by words, or facial expressions, or gestures, or any symbolic skill of any kind. Are you not seeking rhetorical effect when you either smile or scowl or shout back at someone who has just insulted you?" --Wayne C. Booth. The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication (Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos) (Kindle Locations 54-56). Kindle Edition. 

Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of RHETORIC continues to serve me well by challenging me to become a more thoughtful communicator, teacher, learner, and human being. We all need that challenge. Likewise, we need to consider thoughtfulness as more than mere intellectual activity but also as the well-intentioned consideration of others. Booth was not only a rhetorician who focused on ways to communicate well but also an ethicist who sought ways to treat others well, especially through thoughtful listening as well as speaking and writing. Basically, Booth wanted his students, readers, colleagues, and conversational partners to feel valued as human beings. With such an aim, he invites us all to seek better understandings of rhetoric.

As I've started teaching English composition in a community college this year, I'm further considering the ongoing need for "a rhetoric of rhetorics." (I'm retired from high school English teaching after 28 years.) By "a rhetoric of rhetorics," I mean a survey of the different ways that people conceive of the elements, strategies, devices, and other facets of rhetoric. By rhetoric, I lean on Booth's notion of anytime "one human being intends to produce, through the use of signs or symbols, some effect on another," which is pretty much everyone all the time to some extent. I also conceive of rhetoric as the ongoing study of such practices and trends. 

Such a survey of rhetoric(s) can help me navigate and guide students through the different ways that teachers and rhetoricians (a fancy name for people who are really into rhetoric) study, analyze, do, and teach rhetoric. I especially sense that need for a rhetoric of rhetorics when I glimpse another teacher's notes with a conception of the rhetorical triangle that differs from my course's or when I survey Open Educational Resources (OERs) and other resources for English Composition. So many folks have so many different ways of looking at rhetoric. Much of the material is very good, but taken together, it can be confusing due to differences in terminology, structure, approach, and assumptions.

For this latest endeavor to blog about learning, teaching, and living, I'm hoping to use this space for developing notes, reflections, and attempts related to "a" rhetoric of rhetoric. Please notice how the indefinite article "a" suggests that I do not have the more definite understanding found in Booth's "The..."