Dicey's Song - Struggling to Fit In

I believe Voigt offers powerful insight for our class, especially for those of us who plan to be educators, about the difficulties many children face in reconciling their family life and personal struggles with the rigid anonymity of the classroom. Chapter two finds Dicey in a classroom"just like every other classroom she had ever been in" (38). Necessarily, the classroom must provide students with a level of familiarity that facilitates processing and memorizing new information - if the classroom does not register as familiar, the space may feel less safe and cause anxiety that impedes learning. To a certain extent teachers depend on the classroom to transmit cultural messages about power relationships and appropriate behavior to students, and on students to decode these messages and respond accordingly. However, as Voigt demonstrates, a child may exhibit appropriate classroom behavior while dealing with family and personal situations that distract from the goals of classroom instruction.

The Tillerman children struggle to integrate their personal feelings, family dynamics, peer interactions, and school obligations into coherent and meaningful understandings of themselves as individuals, and school is the site of many of their anxieties. While most children do not have to face the kinds of personal struggles that Dicey and her siblings face, all school-aged children do have to learn how to understand themselves as members of increasingly expanding communities. School-aged children must learn how to function as members of a family (often fraught with complications), members of various peer groups, members of the classroom, the school, the town, the country, etc. and also how to integrate those roles into a single personality. And since children spend over half of their waking hours in the school, most of this work is done in competition (or compliment) to curricular instruction.

Mr. Chapelle misses so many opportunities to help Dicey break through her impatient boredom and become a real member of the classroom. In their discussion about conflict Mina and Dicey each offer valuable insights, but Mr. Chapelle fails to offer Dicey the support she needs to fully think through the idea of conflicts "'between someone and himself'" (44). His biggest mistake is his failure to earn her trust. He publicly accuses her, without proof, of plagiarism or collusion; he embarrasses her, disrespects her, and loses her respect. Even after he apologizes and promises to change her grade "Dicey didn't say anything. She didn't care what he said [...] It didn't make any difference to Dicey what he said" (209-210). Mr. Chapelle's actions drive Dicey further away from school at the institutional level, yet she does find a link to school society through Mina's willingness to defend her. Voigt suggests that the people in the margins are still viable, and often more interesting, entrees to community and shared experience.

Voigt reinforces this perseptive through Mr. Lingerle, who, because his weight puts him in the margins of their society is able to look beyond the assumptions the school makes about Maybeth's potential, and advocate for her success in a way that is meaningful to her. James struggles to climb out of the margins and be accepted by his peer group, but must sacrifice his true talents to achieve acceptance. Sammy struggles to balance his desire to win familial stability through positive peer interactions, and then turns violently on his peers when they insult his family. The specific struggles of the Tillerman children are only representative of the innumerable complications school-aged children face as they attempt to integrate into the larger society. Every child will feel marginalized for some reason at some time, and some children do actually face family situations well beyond their maturity level. The teacher can never know for sure what a child's family life or interior struggles look like, but educators still have a responsibility to advocate for kids' interests, even within a system that doesn't have time or resources to recognize each child individually.

Dicey's Song informs adults' interactions with children, but it is written for children, and has amazing potential for child-readers. It allows some children to look beyond their more sheltered lives, and allows other children to see themselves pulled from the margins and represented as worthwhile characters with stories that matter. It gives voice to kids who don't quite fit in to other story lines.

Gathering Blue

"The community cloth was drab, all no-color; the formless shifts and trousers worn by the people were woven and stitched for protection against the sudden occasional rain, thorn scratch, or poison berry. The usual village fabric was not decorated" (41).

"'Maybe it it something that artists have,' she said, liking the sound of the word she had just learned. 'A special kind of magic knowledge'" (145).

When reading Number the Stars, I was gratified that Lowry seemed not to endorse exceptionalism as a prerequisite for heroism. Every Dane was heroic in some small way, and any one would perform a larger heroic act, if called to do so. Heroism was rooted in compassion, human solidarity, and respect for difference between and among people. In her dystopian future set of companion books, Lowry introduces readers to a world quite different from Denmark, where compassion and difference are equally scarce.

Kira was born different from the other villagers, and by their custom "should not have been kept" (26). But the guardians assert that "exceptions can be made" (33), provided, as we learn, there is some special reason to warrant an exception. It is only because of her special gift that Kira is saved, because of her talent for embroidery. Lowry chooses to mark Kira exceptional in two ways, first as a cripple, and second as an artist, when either alone would have been sufficient to separate her from the crowd. Yet, although Kira is exceptional, her disability makes her vulnerable to the ordinary townsfolk and her artistry makes her vulnerable to the village guardians. There is at least an echo of concern for the least of society's members in Kira's social positioning.

The imagery of the village cloth, "drab, all no-color" (41), suggests the hard reality of village life, of a people whose only purpose is survival, and who seem to fear continually for their survival. Yet from this community little Jo begins to sing of her own desire, Kira and Thomas learn to thread and to carve, all out of their own power. The artistic impulse is irrepressible, but it threatens to disturb the people's work (and therefore also their survival?), so the guardians capture and contain the little artists to ensure their talents serve the existing power structure. Lowry shows that art and beauty are threatenting to cultures that maintain dominance through fear. Since the guardians found it fitting to situate Annabella far from the rest of the community, I find it perplexing that they allowed Kira's mother to practice "the art of dye" (41) right in the middle of the village. Perhaps they did not think her talent so great as to constitute a threat or an asset. Or perhaps the memory of Kira's mother suggests that small flutters of creativity and individuality are generally tolerated in the village, and only rare flights of genius held captive.

I have not yet read the Messenger, but I suspect it will help clarify some of the questions I was left with after Gathering Blue. I like that Jonas in the Giver (which I have not read in a few years) is made heroic not by some magic ability (not even the special magic knowledge of an artist), but by the kind of cultural knowledge that is common to every young reader who encounters the text. That is something that Jonas and Kira share with Lowry's audience - an appreciation of the injustices taken for granted by other characters in the novels, so that any child can imagine him or herself understanding and accepting the moral responsibilities that Lowry's characters inherit.