The Caucasian Chalk Circle: Plot Analysis and Characters: A Guide to Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, #1

Jorges P. Lopez

Preface

Like Reading Margaret Ogola’s The River and the Source before it, this guide book lays emphasis on both interpretation of literary texts and approach to questions. My experience in teaching Literature through time has shown me that students often fail because they never get to learn how to interpret a story; that is how to turn the facts of the narrative into themes, character traits and elements of style. This book takes the student through a step by step approach in doing just that. The set of twelve questions at the end of every section teach you to identify what facts are important in the narrative, how to interpret them and how to apply them. This teaches you to deal with literary texts on your own. If you follow the directions faithfully, you should find learning Literature and dealing with literary texts a pleasurable experience. These ideas have been tried and tested with boys at Starehe Boys Centre for a long time. They should work well with you. As an examiner, I have tries to guide you on how to interpret questions, how to plan and present your answers and how to tell whether or not you’ve done all what the question requires you to do. This book also shows you how to tell at what point you earn marks so that you can tell how many marks you’ve garnered once you have dealt with a question. This book also tells you one Important truth; that to deal properly with literary texts, you need to read them thoroughly. You also need to familiarize yourself with literary terms because apart from the fact that writers use them without explaining them, you are also expected to use them in your writing, if your answers are to be any good. A catalogue of these terms has been given at the end of the text. This book also introduces you properly to Bertolt Brecht and to epic theatre. it should challenge you to study a lot more of Brecht in particular and epic theatre in general. Feel free to join the literary debate via [email protected]. I hope you enjoy using this book and more. Good luck in your exam and in your literary enterprise.

All quotes in this book are taken from the approved school edition by Target Publishers.

Introduction:

Before you read this guide, a few issues need to be settled between you and me so that we are very clear in our minds what it is we are trying to do here. I would hate to use that term, ‘guide book,’ especially in the way it is normally used elsewhere. I would want you and me to see this book – and to regard it – as a set of principles pointing out what you need to be aware of in order to fully appreciate drama and in particular Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. This is because, as a teacher of Literature, I would hate to see a student merely read the play and regurgitate it like a cow chewing curd because s/he has to pass an exam. Reading this play should be an inspiration to reading much more drama – Shakespeare, Soyinka, Rhone, and the rest. For this reason, I would be glad to see a student use this guide as a pointer to elements of drama and as a tool which will help the student appreciate the play more fully. This guide isn’t a formula that can be used the way you do a calculator or a mince meat machine; feed in a few significant digits or raw product and wait on the other end for a finished product. This book should inspire you to feel motivated to dig more out of The Caucasian Chalk Circle than you would have hoped for suppose you didn’t read it. It should not be treated like those shortened notes that you summarize in the library so that you can have something to quickly flash through on the morning of your Chemistry paper 2. No. Learn to see it as a challenge to you meant to provoke you to realize how little you know and therefore inspire you to dig deeper - a lot deeper. This is because, if no one has told you so far, Literature is about opinions; everybody has their own. They are like bank accounts. People can peep at your bank account, but they cannot share it; and indeed, if you tried to present somebody else’s opinion, you would only embarrass yourself because you haven’t considered that opinion the way its owner has. It is like trying to explain their bank statement at the end of the year. You can never tell at what time they did what with their money! It is time you begin building your own opinion and learn to respect it so that you can present it or defend it if need be. Any literary essay is essentially an attempt to defend your opinion and you must know it very well and be confident enough to do so.

This guide is wholly written with you, that is, you the student in mind. You do not need anything outside this guide to be able to fully appreciate Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle; but common sense should probably tell you that since this is one person’s opinion of the play, may be the more opinions you hear, beginning with your teacher’s, if you have one, the better. The more opinions you hear, the more you will respect this one. But that does not change the fact that this guide is written especially with students who do not have access to teachers and those private candidates who probably cannot make the time, in mind. It teaches you how to go about reading the play (even if you are seeing one for the first time), what to expect with KCSE questions, how to interpret those questions and tell what they require you to do, how to respond to them and how to tell whether or not you have satisfied them, that is, how to tell whether or not you have done all that they require you to do. If you are a teacher, I believe you will find this guide absolutely handy. It introduces new, radical ways of handling themes and characters so that students can handle them with ease, individually or in groups which makes your work a lot easier. You and I know how difficult it can be to try to get new Literature students to understand concepts such as theme, character and style and to guide them to extract them from a literary text. This guide shows them how to do this, how to write essays and more. I believe our objective is the same; to see these youngsters succeed in the English exam and in their lives if we can.

As for you the student, you must realize that there is no shortcut to familiarization with literary terms and aspects of style. Writers, me included, will use them without explaining them. For this reason, you have little choice but to understand them fully so that you can tell what they mean when they are used in writing and so that you can also use them with ease – you are expected to do so. One thing no one might have told you is that literature is about judgment. Marking of your essay is subjective. People will be biased about you unless they think you fully belong to the literary field. The way you write is one way of assuring them. Apparent inability to interpret literary terms and too simplistic writing will give your examiner the wrong opinion and this could lead to bias. It doesn’t hurt – nay, it helps a lot - to avoid it.

But there’s another truth that must be told. I believe one of the leading reasons why you are looking at this guide is because you are desperate for something to help you pass your exam. Rest assured this is what I am trying to do here. Your spirit should be emboldened soon after reading this guide and faithfully following what it suggests you do. You will be surprised how quickly your work will change. These ideas have been tried and tested with students in leading schools in the country and they have worked wonders. I do not see why they shouldn’t work wonders with you. So, like I said, rest assured. Many books – and teachers – won’t tell you how to go about discovering elements of literature such as themes, character traits and aspects of style from the dialogue you read in a play. They will only guide you in reading, then present you with a list of themes and character traits and aspects of style and tell you; these are the themes, these are the characters and their traits and these are the aspects of style. They won’t tell you how or where they got them from! Indeed, this is why many students fail because they will go ahead to present these ideas as their own while they cannot tell where they came from. If you can’t tell how those who gave you the ideas arrived at them, then you can’t explain the ideas yourself and neither can you illustrate them. That is why you can’t write well or discuss literary ideas fully. That is why you can’t pass a literature exam. This guide takes you through a step by step personal discovery of these things before presenting its own suggestions. It should help you to see things you haven’t seen before. It should help build your confidence in presenting your own ideas, in improving your writing and in passing your exams. It should help you to even criticize the ideas presented here.

Studying Drama

If your friend, let’s assume her name is Wambu, should tell