On the last day of this year's volunteer reading program, I introduced my student and a colleauge to the concept behind the Mad Libs game as we filled out the end-of-year survey. Hiding the survey from their view, I asked for random names to fill in (instead of ours), random topics (rather than the types of books we'd actually read), a few nouns and adjectives, and a number between 1 and 12 (instead of the student's actal grade). Silliness ensued. Good times!
But besides mere entertainment, a fill-in-the blank approach can be used pedagogically to draw attention to an author's unusual word choices -- I've only seen this done once, but the effect was quite powerful. It was in a 10th grade English class. Mrs Stephan wrote on the board:
"Lay your sleeping head, my love,
_________ on my __________ arm."
and asked us to try to guess the missing words.
We made a lot of perfectly reasonable guesses (heavy/strong, etc. etc.), but of course we came
nowhere near the mark. The way Mrs Stephan presented this line emphasized for us just how unusual Auden's word choice was, and helped us see that Auden had linked the two words together in a subtle but effective way by doing this.
†
I thought of this recently in connection with my Modern Fantasy class. In
Stardust, Neil Gaiman completes the phrase "
harsh, but _______" in an unexpected way, undoubtedly for humorous effect, but also in the process emphasizing the truly inhuman values of the Lillim.
In Neil Gaiman's
Stardust, ruthless possessiveness appears to be the dominant characteristic of most inhabitants of Faerie.
‡ Mistress Semele and the Lillim wish to possess the star's heart (by ripping it out of the body of a living woman), and the sons of the 81st Lord of Stormhold all wish to possess the topaz known as the Power of Stormhold. All of these characters are evil, surely, as they do not mind killing or destroying anyone and anything that gets in their way (including Tristran and the star).
And yet, these inhuman characters are portrayed in a way that is not entirely unsympathetic. Their values are selfish and amoral, yes, but the star eventually feels (and we, too, are invited to feel) compassion for the unrepentant witch-queen who has never renounced her desire to kill the star but was (despite her best efforts) permanently thwarted in her quest.
* * *
† Not so coincidentally, perhaps, if you type in those two words alone into google, in that order, the first three hits are Auden's poem. It's the fourth hit if you reverse the order.
‡ Compare Verlyn Flieger's comment in Splintered Light that “[d]esire to possess is the cardinal temptation in Tolkien’s cosmology, and possessiveness is the great transgression.”
