Trying

Meg Enthoven

Period 2

World Literature Honors

Ms. Oliver

Trying

            He was trying today; I had to give him that.  He stood awkwardly at the front of the room, working desperately to call attention to the PowerPoint that had taken him who knows how long to make.

            I was sitting in my assigned seat, unlike many of the other students in this class, trying extremely hard to pay attention.  In here, it took strong motivation to concentrate on the board long enough to actually learn something. 

            I looked around and the usual scene presented itself to me.  Jessica and Sarah sat huddled in the back corner of the room, phone chargers plugged into the wall, probably tweeting about the events of their weekend.  Three juniors were at the table to my left, laughing so hard at something I was surprised the teacher from the next room over hadn’t come in to see if we were holding Mr. Smith hostage.  And scattered about the rest of the classroom were other various students, not one person paying any attention to the Spanish lesson and the teacher doing nothing about it. 

            I glanced back up at the front of the room just in time to hear Mr. Smith finish a sentence about verb conjugations.  He asked for the answer to a question, and when he was met with silence he simply answered it himself. 

            I felt sorry for the guy.  It must be hard to teach year after year and know that nobody was listening to you.  He had started off this year with optimism, trying to engage the class in activities, giving and checking homework, but as the year went on, the attention span of the class slowly began to dwindle. 

            It started off small, people would shoot a quick glance at their phones to see if he noticed, or complain about the homework to see how he would react.  Soon quiet conversations and quick phone checks were taken to a much higher level until we finally arrived here.  Three weeks before our final exam and not one head in the room turned in the direction of the teacher. 

            I glanced at the clock and sighed, twenty more minutes was too many to bear. 

            The lecture went on with no sign of stopping.  I had the urge to pull out my phone and check my texts, but I resisted.  I was really trying to give him a chance today, even though listening to a middle aged man with giant glasses talk about the irregular forms of the verb ser in the imperfect tense made me want to fall asleep.  I looked down at my blank paper, trying to remember if he had told us to take notes during the PowerPoint.  Even if he had, it was highly unreasonable to think he would check them. 

            “Ok class!” he exclaimed suddenly in a very enthusiastic tone, “It’s time for an activity!” 

Members of the class turned their heads in shock.  An activity.  Activities were unheard of in this class.  The norm consisted of him lecturing for forty-five minutes while the entire class pretended that they were listening.  Activities required work.  This class did not do work.  My peers watched in horror as he passed around a worksheet and made silent prayers that it wouldn’t take too long to complete.  As I looked around, I noticed the different methods each person had for getting this horrific task over with.  Some quickly filled in the answers so fast they couldn’t have had time to read the questions, while others simply left it blank on their desks.  Either way everyone was done in about two minutes, causing the look of pride Mr. Smith had carried for finally doing something proactive in his class to waver. 

“So...has everyone completed the activity I handed out?”  He stuttered nervously.  His question was met with dead silence from the room.

And on a normal day he may have accepted that.  He may have sunk into the shadows behind his desk and gone about working until the bell rang eight minutes later.  But today I think something snapped inside of him.  I saw his gaze shift from the girls on their phones to the circle of boys playing cards, until he saw a full view of the room.  His face was torn.  It was like a veil had been lifted and he could finally see the lack of respect for his authority, like he could stand to ignore it no longer.

“Class.”  He said it in a whisper, as if afraid of what drawing attention to himself would do.  No one turned.  But I could see confidence building in his chest, and the second time he spoke, no one dared to ignore him.

“CLASS!”  Heads turned, so fast I feared some of the students would suffer from whiplash.  Phones were turned off and notebooks closed.  All eyed gazed upon Mr. Smith, waiting quietly for him to make a move.  His brows furrowed and his eyes widened, he opened his mouth as if to give a follow up sentence, but nothing came out.  I realized then that he had never expected to gain the attention of the entire class and he had not thought out what he wanted to say next. 

“I....I....just....tell....wanted to tell you....the homework....it’s...it’s on page 96.”  And with that statement the atmosphere relaxed.  Phones were turned on, heads turned back the other way, and poor Mr. Smith trudged back to his desk, realizing he would never have the power to gain their obedience.  The chatter continued for the next six minutes until the bell rang.  As I bent down to gather my things I wondered if he would ever try again, if the class would ever listen again. 

I walked out the door, trying as hard as I could to recall what I had just been taught during that period.  Not a thing, and I accepted the fact that it would always be that way.  Even trying today didn’t help me at all; I had already forgotten what page the homework was on.         

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Analysis

            For this piece of flash-fiction I tried to echo the idea of obedience and disobedience seen in the book.  I’ve had experiences with teachers who have a tough time controlling their classes and to me this lack of obedience that students seem to have for certain teachers is very interesting.  Even in the camp, prisoners change how they act and behave around others depending on the obedience that they have for that individual.  When Caesar and K-123 are talking during the lunch break, they bring up a point relevant to this idea, “Call him a toady, say he carried out orders like a dog.  A genius doesn’t adapt his treatment to the taste of tyrants!” (67).  Like the authoritative figures of the prison, average high school teachers make an impression on their class at the beginning of the year that sets a tone for how obedient the class will be for the rest of the year.  When a teacher is very strict and serious about what they teacher, students will have most respect for them and be more obedience when in their class.  In contrast, teachers who are more laid back and easygoing about their class will have a tougher time trying to engage the students when they need to, because the students will have no reason to be obedient.  Students metaphorically “adapt [their] treatment to the taste of tyrants” when at school, and show different levels of obedience to different teachers in order to best receive what they need.  This is very similar to how the prisoners choose to be more and less obedient to in the camp, like how much they fear the orderly Clubfoot.  “[Clubfoot] never went for anybody who could hit back and let him have it in the puss.  He only beat a fellow when he was down.  He’d let Shukhov have it once” (114).  Clubfoot strategizes about how to create the most fear in the prisoner population, and that is one of the reasons so many people are afraid of him.  Because they know he could beat them for doing something wrong, it encourages them to be more obedient, where as with other kinder guards and orderlies, the prisoners might not be as inclined to do so.  My piece of flash-fiction gives a preview of the disobedience towards someone very different from Clubfoot.  “And on a normal day he may have accepted that.  He may have sunk into the shadows behind his desk and gone about working until the bell rang eight minutes later” (3).  Unlike Clubfoot the character I have developed, Mr. Smith, is too afraid of what confronting his students will do to him.  He would rather them be disobedient than angry at him.  By not being the correct type of authority figure he needs to be, he is unable to grasp the attention of his students.