Unmasking of Children's Literature

This was one of my best essay (even though I got only an A-) that I wrote for my favourite sociology professor, A/P Syed Farid Alatas. He always knew me as the girl with a bandana and there was never a lesson that I would deliberately miss. That was how much I enjoyed his intellectual lessons. This is the first part of the few installments of the shorter version of the essay with some edition to its content. Thought of sharing it with those who do read my blog. Enjoy!

Introduction

"Ring around the roses
A pocket full of poses
Ah- choo! Ah- Choo!
We all fall down" - Unknown

When I was a child I use to recite this rhyme everywhere I went. I learnt it while I was watching a movie where a few girls were singing this in a garden and then they all fell down and never got up. As a child I had not the faintest idea that the girls were literally dropping dead (thanks to no handsome hunk) but from the great plague.

Many a times we assume that children are very much innocent and that they need to be protected and shield from the cruelty of life. So stories that were told to children such as fairytales would actually educate the children in way that they should behave so that they could protect themselves. Children's stories were very much a fantasy world where children would feel safe and where anything that tries to harm them would be killed. Sounds like a perfect scenario for children to grow up right?

In reality this notion is only the tip of the iceberg. The actual truth is the hidden portion of the ice berg which is submerged below the water surface. In this essay I shall attempt to uncover the conscious motives that lie behind the idea of children's literature. What exactly do the stories signify? How does a child take to the stories? What is it really trying to convey? In order to answer the following questions we need to first understand how one approaches children's novel.

Reading the text

It is important to understand that "children's books are written by adults for children"1 This means that are "multiple layers of adult writing"2 and thus multiple forms of interpretation. Children as pointed out by sociologists and many other theorists are not a homogeneous group of people but are rather largely diverse. They come divided by different backgrounds, cultures, history and societies. They also have differing developmental stages and different modes of making senses of the world they live in. However despite these differences when it comes to stories such as fairytales and folktales, there seems to be a common understanding of what is being depicted in these stories. Why is that so?

The answer lies in the way the text is written and how it is interpreted by the reader. There are altogether 5 types of reader involved in a reading process and the idea of the true meaning of the text is no longer in existence. What I am implying is here is that there is no such thing as a 'true meaning' when it comes to reading a text. It becomes very subjective and the true meaning would depend on the reader and the story that has been written. It is the interpretation of the author through hos story and the understanding of the story that gives out the 'true meaning' of the text.

Firstly there is the real author who writes the plot of the story. He or she is also referred to at times as the 'second self '. This second self is another level of adult writing whereby a "certain kind of reader through the kind of language used."3 This means it is words that the author uses that creates another level of understanding of the text and can be interpreted by the reader. Thus the motive behind the actual text may vary due to the language that has been chosen to be used.

Next you have the implied child reader. This is the child that surfaces from the second self. The language used belongs to a child rather than an adult, therefore the child reader then surfaces from the text through the use of the language. This basically means that the text is then interpreted from the viewpoint of a child and thus becomes the focus of the narrative. That "focus can be inferred if that narrative includes nothing that would be outside the child's perception"4 This then becomes another level in terms of understanding the text, the narrative focus within the child's perception becomes another form of understanding and therefore another form of reader.

The last reader would be the actual reader. This is any "given reader in the real world, can choose to read as, 'The Implied reader' on a 'temporary' basis, even though they might themselves have very different abilities and sensibilities"5. This is usually the last level of the reader of the text. This is also the level that many mistakenly assumed as the second level of interpretation when it comes to interpretation of children's literature. So when we look at the text there is multiple level of interpretation and hence this can appeal to children despite their social difference.

Having said that, can we then assume that the joy of reading and common understanding is derived by the child because he or she has his or her own interpretation of the text? In that case can we rightly assume that the motive of the text varies according to each individual child? The answer is no.

To be continued...

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1 Karin Lesnik Oberstein , "The Psychopathology of Everyday Children's Literature Criticism, 305
2 Karin, 305
3 Neil Cocks, "The Implied Reader, Response and Responsibility: Theories of the Implied Reader in Children's Literature Criticism, 95
4 Cocks, 95
5 Cocks, 95