A Different Kind of Listening

Detecting the emotional content of a voice requires a different kind of listening.

No longer can we rely solely on our ears. We need to feel the emotion in a voice, and to do this means using our hearts as well as our ears.

Listening with our hearts lets us feel the underlying emotion--the fear or joy, sadness or hope--that flows through a character's veins.

But how are we to identify this emotional quality?

Where do we begin?

Although it may seem obvious, listen to the language of the story--the author's choice of words, the details the narrator has selected to share.

Listen for the rhythm of a pulse, and listen to the tone--whether it's formal or informal, stiff or loose, warm and inviting, cool and aloof.

Then, ask yourself how you feel about the language... and the main character.

What do your feelings reveal? Not just about the character, but about your response to the character?

Let's listen to a handful of voices and try to hear the emotional currents rippling through them:

Basketball is my thing. I can hoop. Case closed. I'm six four and I got the moves, the eye, and the heart. You can take my game to the bank and wait around for the interest. With me it's not like playing a game, it's like the only time I'm being for real. (from Slam! by Walter Dean Myers)

What do you hear in this passage?

Who is speaking?

What's the most important thing in the character's mind? Basketball? Playing the game? Proving himself on the court? Or feeling something different when he's playing than when he's not?

We know he's tall (six four), well-coordinated (he's got the moves), a player with drive and determination. We know, too, that he can play well (in his own mind, at least). And... what else?

How would you describe his emotional state? Secure? Fragile? Despite his prowess on the court, does he feel confident when he steps off the court?

What does Myers intend for us to feel as we read this passage? How does Myers succeed in linking us with this character? He merges our heart with this character's... so that we can feel it beating beside our own... but how does Myers do this?

Here's another voice:

"What if they find us? What's gonna happen?"
Harrison's eyes snapped open and he gave me his meanest stare. "Now, you be quiet, child, and git some rest 'cause we got another long run ahead of us. I don't want to hear no more of your talkin."
I kept quiet then, but the questions were still running back and forth in my head. What if I had left footprints in the field? What if Master hired dogs to track us down? What if it didn't rain? What if they found us sitting in the tree? What if they shot us down, as if we were nothing more than a pair of foolish wild birds?
(from Trouble Don't Last by Shelley Pearsall)

Listen closely... what do you hear in this passage?

Do you hear the fear in the character's voice? Can you feel his fear?

What do we learn from this passage about his life? He's a child ("Now, you be quiet, child...") and tired... and his journey is far from over... but what else?

The characters are running from someone or something... and the danger of being discovered is great... so great that the boy must remain silent.

But the silence only gives the boy's imagination freedom to design ways for their escape to fail--a series of what if's... his existence dependent not on his own actions but on random luck. If the master doesn't send out dogs. If it doesn't rain. If they're discovered in the tree.

Notice how the boy's consciousness reflects his way of looking at the world... his way of being... as an escaped slave. Having run away, he now can feel only the foolishness of his attempt to gain freedom, an attempt no different than a "pair of foolish birds."

How does the author bring you inside the story? What words does she use to let you feel the boy's fear, sense of isolation, and abandonment? The danger that the escaped slaves are in? The growing tension over the boy's future?

Now listen to this voice:

I spent the reception listening to comments about how tall I was, everyone trying to make it sound like it was a good thing to be a giant at fifteen. I towered over everyone, it seemed, and Ashley kept coming up behind me and poking me hard in the center of my back, which was my mother's subtle and constant signal that I was slouching. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a ball under the buffet table and hide from everyone. After four hours, several plates of food, and enough small talk to make me withdraw into myself permanently, we finally got to go home."
(from Sarah Dessen's That Summer)

What do you hear now? And, on a deeper level, what do you feel?

What details provide keys to the emotional state of this character? How do we know what we know about her? Which words, which actions, make us feel a certain way? Why?

Is she confident about herself? Happy with who she is? Pleased with her body? Does she like to spend time with people or does she prefer to spend time alone? What's her relationship with her mother? Her sister (who pokes her in the back)? How does she deal with things that she dislikes? Does she tell people what she's feeling? Does she have the courage to exit a situation that's making her feel uncomfortable?

How does this scene make you feel? And how does the author place you in the character's shoes?

One last voice:

I felt tears stinging my eyes as the bus pulled out of the station. It would take me to the Mehtas' village, but it would not bring me back. Maa must have had the same thought; she reached for my hand and held it tightly.
Mr. Mehta was there when the bus stopped. He was a short man with a small round face and a pair of large, dark-rimmed glasses. It was hard to see his face behind the glasses. I made my best ceremonial namaskar, saluting him and even touching his feet, but he gave me only a quick look. Instead he turned to Baap and, after a courteous but quick greeting, asked, "You have brought the dowry, sir?" Until that moment I had believed it was me the Mehta family wanted; now it seemed that what they cared for most was the dowry. Was my marriage to be like the buying of a sack of yams in the market-place?
(from Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan)

What are the emotions that you feel when you listen to this voice? And why do you feel them?

We are present at a leave-taking and an arrival... events that will change the character's life. By sharing certain details with us, the author gives us a glimpse into the young girl's heart: how much she cares for her family, especially her Maa and Baap, and how much she will miss them.

Even though her parents accompany her on the journey, she's already imagining her life without them... as a married girl in the future. And we're given a glimpse into how she feels about herself and that future when she gets off the bus and meets her future father-in-law, who virtually ignores her respectful greeting and shows interest in only one thing: her dowry.

How does that rebuff make the character feel?

And how do you feel as you move deeply inside the narator's point of view?

What is it in the language that gives you this feeling? Is it the way the character finds herself ignored by Mr. Mehta? Or is it the way that she feels about being ignored... and the way that she expresses her emotional state in words ("Was my marriage to be like buying a sack of yams in the marketplace?")

Listen with your heart. Try to find the emotional thread running through these passages.

If you listen to a story with your heart, not just your ears, you should be able to slit open the story at any point... and not only hear the quality of emotion in a voice but feel the emotional pulse of the story, the character's heart beating steadily beside your own.

The examples that we looked at above were from YA novels, but you could perform the same exercise with picture books or middle grade readers.

Try it, see what happens... and let us know what you hear.

For further reference:

Walter Dean Myers: http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kvander/myers.html and an interview at http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-myers-walterdean.asp

Shelley Pearsall: http://www.shelleypearsall.com/

Sarah Dessen: http://www.sarahdessen.com/

Gloria Whelan: http://www.gloriawhelan.com/

Also, Canadian illustrator Ian Wallace describes how he probes a text for an emotional link before he begins work at http://www.ian-wallace.com/speeches_1.html

On Ambiguous Endings

Two earlier posts on endings ("Finding the North Star" and "Toward the Light: More on Endings") prompted one of Wordswimmer's readers to respond with a thoughtful note about her own expectations in regard to endings, especially in relationship to Walter Dean Myers' Monster and Terry Trueman's Stuck in Neutral.

Galen Longstreth wrote:

When I read the "Finding the North Star" piece on endings, I began thinking of some books I've read that have intentionally ambiguous endings. Bruce writes that an ending should fulfill a promise, and if that promise is broken, "readers will walk away disappointed." Books like Terry Trueman's Stuck in Neutral and Walter Dean Myers's Monster came to mind as books that have ambiguous endings and yet did not leave me disappointed.

Stuck in Neutral is a novel narrated by a teenaged boy, Shawn, who has Cerebral Palsy. Whereas he appears to others as "retarded" because of the limits of his brain functions, he in fact has a very active mental and emotional life, and is able to remember everything he's ever heard. Shawn's parents divorced when Shawn's father could no longer bear to deal directly with the needs of his son. Shawn's father is so overwhelmed with his son's condition that he regularly entertains the thought of killing his child to spare him (Shawn) any pain or discomfort (and probably to spare himself the pain as well). At the end of the book, Shawn's father is at his bedside, telling Shawn "I love you," and holding a pillow in his hands (which readers understand will serve as a murder weapon if the father so chooses). In the final paragraphs, Shawn experiences a seizure, and we do not know what happens.

In Monster, Steve Harmon is accused of being involved in a murder. The book includes two forms of narration - Steven's prison journal and a screenplay that he writes as a way of showing the trial in the courtroom. We never know for sure whether Steve played a part in the murder. In other words, we never know for sure whether he is guilty. He is given a verdict of "not guilty," but not in a way that convinces readers of his innocence. He never says, in either narrative voice, "I did not do this."

Where does an ambiguous ending leave the reader? Has a promise not been fulfilled? Don't I want to know whether Steve really did it? Don't I want to know whether Shawn's father killed him? Is a book not as good because the ending is not tied tightly?

I found Bruce's piece "Toward the Light: More on Endings" very helpful as I was thinking about the issue of ambiguity. I took his suggestion and went directly to the text. First I read the endings of each of these books, and then read the beginnings.

At the end of Stuck in Neutral, Shawn literally asks himself a question: "What will my dad do?" It is the same question the readers are asking. In the beginning of the novel, Shawn tells readers everything he is good at and what he loves about his life, and also about his Cerebral Palsy. The emotional crux of the first chapter, however, is when Shawn says, "My being born changed everything for all of us, in every way. My dad didn't divorce my mom, or my sister, Cindy, or my brother, Paul - he divorced me."

After re-reading this beginning, I read the ending of the book much differently. Shawn is so happy to have his father at his bedside. There is a moment when Shawn's eyes (the muscles in which he cannot voluntarily control) happen to meet his father's eyes. Never have they looked at each other this way, and it means the world to Shawn. Whether Shawn dies during his seizure or not, he knows now how much his father loves him, and that is worth as much to Shawn as life itself. "Either way," he says, "whatever he [my dad] does, I'll be soaring." The ending is connected to the beginning, and in that connection, the ambiguity disappears, at least insofar as it could disappoint.

In Monster, we witness the jury giving Steve a verdict of "not guilty" and Steve tells us a little bit about his life after prison. But in the courtroom, after the winning verdict, when he turns to give his lawyer a hug, "she stiffens and turns to pick up her papers from the table." The look on Steven's face, as described in his screen play, is "like one of the pictures they use for psychological testing, or some strange beast, a monster." In the final journal entry, after the conclusion of the trial, Steve describes his use of a video camera to film his life.

In the beginning of the novel, Steve describes his jail cell, particularly the mirror in it. When he looks into it, he doesn't recognize his own face. "It doesn't look like me," he writes. "I couldn't have changed that much in a few months. I wonder if I will look like myself when the trial is over."

This statement connects directly to the very end of the novel, when Steve writes, "That's why I take the films of myself. I want to know who I am. . . I want to look at myself a thousand times to look for one true image."

Again, ambiguity takes a back seat, as we see that guilty or not-guilty are in some ways less important than how Steve will be able (or not) to live with himself for the rest of his life. How does he perceive himself? How has he changed and at what point will he or was he able to recognize himself again?

While we may have thought that Myers promised us the truth about whether or not Steve committed the crime, we learn that in fact, Myers has offered a different promise, maybe a deeper promise, about the changing self and one's relationship to one's self.

Have other readers found stories with seemingly ambiguous endings, only to discover after a second or third reading that the endings didn't seem as ambiguous as they first appeared?

What about endings that may have seemed clear-cut... only to grow more ambiguous over time?

Why not share your experiences--and your expectations of what makes a satisfying ending-- with Wordswimmer, too?

For more on Walter Dean Myers and Monster, check out
http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/myers.html and also http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-myers-walterdean.asp.

For more on Terry Trueman and Stuck in Neutral, take a look at an interview that appears at http://www.jubileebooks.co.uk/jubilee/magazine/authors/terry_trueman/terry_trueman_interview.asp.

P.S. Thanks, Galen, for contributing your insights on endings.