Pay No Attention to the Rat in the Corner

It's Monday morning, and my students and I are sleepy as I put up the next artifact. We have been analyzing various "artifacts" for their tone. It's been fun, since the artifacts are multimedia; the first three were songs, the next are pictures, and later we'll watch some movie clips and read from the novels we've studied. My students, predictably, are excited to watch any amount of a movie on a Monday morning, no matter how brief or unsatisfying. I, also predictably, am excited to talk about tone, this sophisticated literary concept that I've never quite gotten to with ninth graders. This will be the year, I think optimistically, as I provide mini-definitions for words like "sardonic" (dark and sarcastic) and "lugubrious" (sad... really sad... kind of ridiculously sad).

I like talking about tone because it is a concept that we can carry beyond the abstractions of literature into the broader world of all artistic expression. I daydream about these kids, in eight years, standing in the Tate Modern in London and discussing the tone of cubist paintings. Then they will go to a cafe and discuss the tone of Ezra Pound as opposed to T.S. Eliot, before taking their tone-aware selves to the movies, where they will undoubtedly be watching for shots, acting, and setting that denotes a specific attitude toward life, the world, suffering, etc. Tone, in other words, is the gateway into several conversations that deeply interest me.

As we finish up with the three songs--all from movie scores, all instrumental--I put up a picture. It is from a masterpiece picture book, loaned to me by our zealous librarian, called The Arrival. The pictures are dusky, hazy dreamworlds, each filled with a play of light and darkness that inspires and delights. I want to sit with this book for hours, just making up stories. So, on the document camera, anticipating their squeals of appreciation, I share the first picture with my students.

"OK," I say, watching them shift in their seats to see the picture reflected on the overhead screen, "Write down some words to decribe the tone of this picture. Then, write down--specifically--what about this picture gives it that tone?"

I expect them to begin writing immediately, since the picture is a glowing scene of a family eating supper together. The tone seems clear to me. Instead, they are staring, perplexed, at the screen. I glance back at the picture and see the problem.

In the corner of the picture is a large creature that can only be described as a rat. It doesn't exactly look like a rat, since it is as big as a dog and has batlike ears, but it is pale in color and has a long, ratlike tail. It lingers in the corner of the happy family tableau, smiling and perhaps hoping to catch a scrap from the table. If it were a dog, it would fit easily into the scene. But it's not, not a dog.

"Um," I hesitate, wondering if I should draw attention to the alien creature. "OK, to do this right, I need you to not worry about the big rat in the corner. It's not there. Can you do that?"

Students are shaking their heads. No, we can't to that. Of course we can't. There's a sort-of rat in this picture! That changes everything.

I have to laugh, and resist the temptation to turn this experience into a metaphor for some aspect of life or teaching. Some kind of elephant-in-the-room scenario. But I won't. Because for now it's too funny, too ridiculous, the contrast between my rather pretentious tone lesson and my students, valiantly trying and obviously failing to ignore the giant rat-thing that drives out all thoughts of high literary jargon, pulling them from abstraction into bizarre imaginations.