Re-contextualizing Stories
Submitted by Robert Waxler (profile)

Strategy: Re-contextualization of the stories used in CLTL

Purpose: There is no meaning without context. And story provides us with the context we seek. That is fundamental to CLTL, at least as I see it.

We locate ourselves in the stories we read and discuss, gain perspective on our relationship to something beyond ourselves, and so begin to understand where we are and where we might headed.

This presents a significant challenge for me as a facilitator around the CLTL table.

At that table, we have all read the same story, and we are eager to talk about it together. But we have each read the story in our own way, mapping our own story on it. I want to listen to each voice, each version of the story.

That is the challenge: how best to evoke the voices that will enrich and expand the story before us; how best to honor each of the voices at the table and, at the same time, deepen the context of the written text; how best, in other words, to make the story a genuinely communal story, significant because we all share it. I want to help make it ours, a story for the community.

One strategy I use to try to achieve this goal is to re-contextualize the story as we move through the discussion. I don't want to interfere too much with the other voices around the table, don't want to bend the conversation too much to my perspectives, but I do want to create a dynamic context that is as inclusive as possible.

Let me use a very short and disturbing story as an example: Raymond Carver's Tell the Women We're Going.

"What do we know about Bill Jamison and Jerry Roberts, the two male characters in the story?" - I might ask to begin the conversation about this troubling tale of male violence. I want to hear the voices first.

--"They shared everything growing up - same girls, same teachers, same clothes, same jobs, same cars."
--"Yes, they were like blood brothers."
--"Jerry dropped out of school senior year, though, and got married to Carol."
--"Right, and Bill got married a few years later, when they were twenty-two, to Linda."
--"Yes, and Jerry and Carol have two kids, with another one 'in the oven.'"

I hear the voices and begin to add mine: "Okay. Now early in the story Bill and Linda are going over to see Jerry and Carol on the weekend - like they usually do. How come? Why don't Jerry and Carol come to see them?"

--"Jerry and Carol have too much stuff to drag around."
--"And Bill seems always to be following Jerry anyway, since they were kids."
--"Jerry seems depressed too. He isn't talking much."
--"They're drinking beer, just the two of them."
--"The women are together in the kitchen."

Around the CLTL table, the conversation is beginning to take shape, the questions help provide some context, but the voices are all interesting and diverse. I don't want to lose the energy or the curve of the discussion, but I want now to pause, create an opportunity to begin to reflect on the implications so far, deepen the texture of the talk.

My strategy now is to summarize what has been said, weave a few of my own thoughts into the conversation, and then focus on a couple of the threads dangling out there: "So we have two guys who have known each other much longer than they have known their wives: a male friendship, a male bond that seems to precede their relations with women. This is not unusual." - I might suggest after repeating several other main points of the discussion so far. "And Jerry isn't talking very much. He's getting 'deep,' Bill thinks. They tell the women they're going, and they are out on the road, headed to the local bar. And then what happens?" - I might ask, hoping to further turn up the plot ground.

--"They go to shoot some pool in the local bar."
--"They drink a lot of beer in the bar - almost two six packs."
--"They talk to Riley, the bartender, about girls."
--"Jerry mashes his beer can."
--"They comment that there are no girls in the bar."

After such comments around the CLTL table, I want to re-contextualize yet again, probe some contrasts, further deepen the implications. I might summarize where we are at this point and then push to another level.

To me, the story is taking on a pattern embedded deep in American culture: male bonding, male grunts and brooding, male drinking, males driving on the road, and males together in the bars - and all this is contrasted with marriage, wives and children, family, home, and domestic space.

It is similar to the classic American Western, I might suggest. Freewheeling cowboys together in the bar, thinking about bar girls, troubled by the Sunday school teacher from Boston who just arrived on the stagecoach to "civilize" them.

This is a story about American male perception, the American male frontier shaping our violence.

"So we have two scenes here so far. One at home (domestic space) where Jerry is troubled. One in the bar (frontier space) where Jerry and Bill drink and shoot pool together," I might suggest. "But why is Jerry so troubled?"

--"His wife is pregnant."
--"He is weighted down at home."
--"He never had a chance to finish sowing his wild oats in high school."
--"He doesn't want all that responsibility - wife and kids and job."
--"He is tired of working so hard."
--"He wishes he was back in high school with Bill."

Then the third scene: we are out on the road again, and Jerry spots two girls on bicycles. The two guys stop, try to pick the girls up, eventually follow them to Picture Rock. The language of the story grows increasingly violent until the end.

"But it started and ended with a rock. Jerry used the same rock on both girls, first on the girl called Sharon and then on the one that was supposed to be Bill's. Why does it happen?"

--"The girls don't want to have anything to do with these guys."
--"Jerry feels rejected."
--"Jerry blames the girls."
--"He thinks women are the problem."
--"He won't take responsibility for his problems."
--"He wants to show Bill he is in control."
--"Jerry is out of control because he feels he has no power."
--"Jerry hates himself and needs somebody to blame."
--"Jerry hates all women and blames them all."

If my strategy has succeeded around the CLTL table this night, I have not left anyone out, but have preserved the richly diverse voices by continuously helping to provide context for the discussion. Such context helps us discover meaning, helps us to locate ourselves.