Confronting Our Theories: A Queer Lesson for English
As an English teacher, I would sometimes read Poppy Z. Brite’s novel Lost Souls with groups of 16-to 18-year-olds as we worked on their comparative literature essays for portfolio assessment (the British A-level). First published in 1992, and an example of the New American Gothic horror genre, the novel provoked comparisons with 19th-century Gothic and discussions of sexuality in the discourse of vampire fiction. My students wrote about Lost Souls in relation to, for example, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the novels of Anne Rice, and the schlock-stick of British “Hammer Horror” B-movies. On a good day and with a fair wind behind them, they took this opportunity to analyze how language is used by speakers and writers to work on their sexual identities and how sexuality figures in the representation of the vampire. Merrell Shoes on Sale
In recalling my teaching of Lost Souls at this point, however, my concern is with encouraging us to examine our reading practices rather than recommending the novel as a text to “use,” to hold up and wave about as a gay-themed and charactered artifact. As we know, texts don’t necessarily do the work for us. In the following extract from the novel, the main character, “Nothing” (known to his family as Jason), a 15-year-old Maryland Goth, is experiencing a lesson from his English teacher, Mrs. Peebles:
In Nothing’s English class the next day, Mrs. Margaret Peebles plunged her hypodermic of higher
learning into Lord of the Flies and sucked every drop of its primal magic, every trace of its adolescent wonder. Nothing knew half the class hadn’t even read the book. If they were judging it by what the teacher said, he could hardly blame them. But he’d read it three years ago, one summer afternoon in bed with a fever, and when he had put the book down, his hands had been shaking. Those wild, salty-skinned little boys had tumbled through his head, and he had cried for them, so young, grown old so fast “Jason.”
He sighed, Peebles was staring at him. The rest of the class paid no attention; they were elsewhere too, in their own worlds, driving away on their own roads. “What?” he said.
“We were discussing William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. You have read the book?”
“I have.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me about the rivalry between Jack and Ralph. What allows it to grow so bitter?”
“Their attraction for each other,” Nothing said.” Their love for each other. They had this fierce love; they wanted to be each other. And only when you love someone that much can you hate them too— Discount Merrell Shoes
A ripple of laughter went through the class. A couple of boys rolled their eyes at one another— what a fag.
Peebles pressed her thin lips together. “If you had been paying attention, instead of doodling and staring out the window—”
Suddenly he was too tired to care what happened to him. This was empty, all empty useless crap. “Oh fuck you,” he said, and felt the class suck in its breath and silently cheer him on.
What Nothing offers here—in spite of what Mrs. Peebles expects—is a committed and critical personal response based on a curious, independent reading, a reading that challenges normalized readings. As a rich text (as such texts did also for Bechdel’s younger self and for Fecho’s Andy), Lord of the Flies changed Nothing’s mind and changed him physically, too; he shook, he cried. There is no evidence here of the text having the same meaning for Mrs. Peebles or the rest of the class to whom she has introduced it. Indeed, the rest of the class knows and understands that nothing not a permitted reading. They laugh in a way that shows theirs is a schooled response.
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