High School Literary Criticism Papers

Valdosta State University instructors, VSU Archivist Deborah Davis, and Janice Daugharty collaborated with high school English teachers at Valdosta High School, Lowndes High School, Echols County High School, and Clinch County High School to instruct high school students for three days about engaging in the writing process, conducting  literary and historical research on primary sources, regional identity themes, Southern authors, the writer's role as an observer, and writing literary criticism.

Students were prepared for the project activities by reading a Janice Daugharty's short story "Shorn Glory" and by reviewing a CD handout created by the project developers containing primary and secondary sources and literary criticism related to Daugharty's short story. 

On day one of this project activity, Deborah Davis presented a tabletop exhibit and a multi-media show on Daugharty, and discussed the VSU archive collection of Janice Daugharty, and her writings including various drafts of her works. She also demonstrated how the archive collection can be used as a primary resource in studying a piece of literature.

On day two instructors, Daugharty, and students, discussed Daugharty's short stories, the writing process, and sense of place as it related the stories.      

On day three instructors taught students about how to use historical and literary research; and instructed students about how to incorporate what they learned about sense of place into their critical essays.

As part of this project activity, approximately 100 high school juniors and seniors submitted literary criticism papers for evaluation and nine were chosen for this journal. The nine students whose essays were chosen presented their papers at the Janice Daugharty Festival, a regional writing conference, held on April 29, 2004. The conference was an additional event emerging from the project.

Southern Presence in “Shorn Glory”

by Chelsea Pyle

In attempting to produce a work of art, such as a short story, the artist must use a definite and appropriate medium to establish its particular identity. The atmosphere that the artist creates essentially captures the viewer’s attention, and can bring the viewer into the action of the work. In “Shorn Glory,” Janice Daugharty utilizes many important literary elements to formulate the underlying southern regionalism of the story. Similar to most southern writers, Daugharty successfully “evokes poetry and song,” through her soothing and flowing style of writing (Conyers 99). Most importantly, she writes about regional experiences that resonate with her sense of self and place (the South). To convey her theme of regional identity, Daugharty finely tunes the strings of “Shorn Glory” with the employment of southern vernacular, Christian dogma, and vivid imagery.

In molding the shape of her southern tale, Daugharty incorporates regional linguistics to create a sense of the South Georgia environment. She carefully chooses each letter of each word of dialogue between the characters in the story to perfect her use of southern dialect. Drawn from a childhood story, Daugharty modifies her father’s imagination into an illustration of southern life on a hot, summer day. She depicts the liberation of three angelic girls from their strict religious beliefs by a drunken and rebellious barber named Clifford. Upon his introduction to the three “angels,” Clifford passes out, and Gloriann awakens him with a splash of water. She explains, “He’s coming to hisself” (Daugharty 123). Later, Clifford asks, “Where’s y’all’s Ma and Pa at?” and they respond, “They gone to Valdosta to take off the tobaccer” (Daugharty 124). To create a realistic and genuine southern pattern of speech, Daugharty meticulously changes certain letters to give a word a new meaning altogether. The minute adaptation of each word affects the story in such a way that the reader can hear the unique language of the setting’s region.

Carving details into the mold of the story parallels Daugharty’s intricately woven idea of religion in the South. Typically, when thought of, the South elicits many other nicknames, such as the Bible Belt, that describe some of the common practices of the region. Flannery O’Conner best explains the role of religion in the South with her statement, “approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted” (44). The climax in the story – (cutting the “crown and glory” or hair of the three girls) - centers around the idea that the dogma of the Church of God forbids cutting a female’s hair. Daugharty clearly correlates the purpose of Clifford’s act to his experience with the Church of God as a child and the revenge of his mother’s death. Clifford deliberately sheds the hair of the girls to blaspheme God and rebel against God’s will. He orders Gloriann, “run on in yonder and get your ma’s cutting scissors and I’ll get shed of it for y’all” (Daugharty 127). After the deed is done, Clifford watches the girls with their new haircuts through the window of their house. As Conyers points out that God leads men “to their own place—and through that place to the God who made them and placed them there” (106), Daugharty gives the girls a sense of place, their place, while in their home with their new identity. Accordingly, the girls’ presence in their home at the end of the story emphasizes the importance of regional identity.

Finally, painting the finishing colors in the story comes with Daugharty’s extensive use of vivid imagery to describe the geographical region. In the very first sentence of the story, Daugharty illustrates the “spits of white-hot fire” and the “parched dirt road” to establish the summer setting (122). She goes on to describe the scenery with “carousel colors of pewter and pink” and the “umbrella shade of a chinaberry tree” (122,123). The chinaberry tree accustoms the reader to a rural southern setting for the story. Once again, Daugharty exemplifies the importance of a “sense of place” and regional identity in a southern writer. Eudora Welty strengthens the significance of place and time in southern literature:

…farther back than history, there is the Place. All Southerners must have felt that they were born somewhere in its story, and can see themselves in line. The South was beautiful as a place, things have happened to it, and it is beautiful still--sometimes to the eye, often to the memory; and beyond any doubt it has a tearing beauty for the vision of the Southern writer, in whose work Place is seen with Time walking on it--dramatically, portentously, mourningly, in ravishment, in remembrance, as the case may be… (548)

Not only does the imagery provide a more visual picture for the reader, but it also establishes the southern “place and time.”

Ultimately, Janice Daugharty integrates the different mediums of linguistics, religion, and colorful scenery to assemble a worthy piece of southern literature. The intense effect of “Shorn Glory” results from her implementation of the appropriate medium in the southern-based story. Daugharty’s use of southern dialect allows the reader to experience the everyday language of her story’s setting. Her focus on religion as a major factor in the seriousness of the girls’ haircuts represents the importance of religion in the South. Additionally, as Daugharty comments setting and imagery make a story alive:

If your settings are merely backgrounds for your stories, you’ve left out a potential character, a potential catalyst for action. A rising fiction writer who has mapped out her fiction’s home turf describes how her settings jump out of the background to play a surprisingly active role in the evolution of her stories. (32)

Without a doubt, “Shorn Glory” is alive in so many different ways.

Works Cited

Conyers, A.J. “Why the Chattahoochee Sings: Notes Towards a Theory of

‘Place.’” Modern Age Spring 2001: 91-106. Academic Search

Premier. GALILEO. Valdosta State University Library, Valdosta,

GA. 23 November 2003. <http://www.galileo.usg.edu>

Daugharty, Janice. Personal Interview. 27 October 2003.

Daugharty, Janice. “Shorn Glory.” Going Through the Change.Princeton:

Ontario Press, 1994, 123-131.

Daugharty, Janice. “Write Where You Know.” Writer’s Digest, 77, 5, May

1997, p. 32. Galileo.

O’ Connor, Flannery. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern

Fiction.” Mystery and Manners. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

1962.

Welty, Eudora. “Place and Time: The Southern Writer’s Inheritance.”

Mississippi Quarterly Fall 1997: 545-551. Academic Search

Premier. GALILEO. Valdosta State University Library, Valdosta, GA.

23 November 2003. <http://www.galileo.usg.edu>