Threshold concepts: on the shortness of life, and the indifference of the universe
MACBETH
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare (Macbeth), 1606
No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
William Wordsworth (The Prelude), 1850
Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling, and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved farther along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea.
William Golding (Lord of the Flies), 1954
Surely our most memorable lessons are those where a teacher managed to take an abstract and antique idea and relate it closely to our own experience. English (Literature and Language) offers many such opportunities for teachers, if only we know where to look for them.
Exploring how writers use their work to explore humanity’s relative insignificance compared to the universe’s vastness, nature’s majesty, or the relentless march of time is, in my experience, one such opportunity. Most obviously, these ideas are explored through the Romantic poets and their treatment of the sublime. Wordsworth’s description of a sublime experience is perhaps the most orthodox description of what Edmund Burke characterised as “a sort of delightful horror.” Wordsworth felt humbled by nature’s vastness, its supreme power, and its timelessness. He was terrified by it. He rowed back with “trembling oars,” and yet it was also a moment of spiritual clarity and awakening. Shelley’s Ozymandias reflects on our numerous ambitions and caprices, and how ultimately futile they are when compared to eternity.
The motif though, goes far beyond Romantic painting or poetry. Writers throughout English Literature draw heavily upon it. It is a concept woven deep into our collective consciousness and, once students grasp it, they begin to see it everywhere. A previously unseen text prompts hands to shoot up with thoughts of nature’s terrible beauty, or the futility of the human ego. The Language Paper Extracts are littered with texts that touch upon the idea. Here are a few examples from recent papers
“I watched as a vast wave gathered behind the boat, soaring above the cabin, a wall of white water towering over our tiny boat” June 2019
“In the distance, a low rumble of thunder began rolling towards us, the starter flag for any decent storm, and the rain which had an individual and random quality became more pack-like, shifting shapes like a flock of starlings. The storm was circling the area before clattering in to do its worst. Soon, the rain was slashing down, the relentless battering against the tent canvas loud and frightening.” June 2022
“Jagged black cracks appeared in the snow in front of her. She angled her skis towards the side of the slope, heading for the trees, but it was too late. She saw Jake’s black suit go bundling past her as he was turned by the great mass of smoke and snow.” November 2019
Armed with this concept, students are able to plumb new depths of analysis, and to climb to new heights of the mark schemes.
This is how I approach the teaching of it:
Step one: we are all going to die
What can be more engaging on a mundane Tuesday morning than to be confronted with one’s own mortality? The idea that all these seconds, minutes, days, and years are slipping by constantly, never to be reclaimed or repaid? It is a confronting thought. What if it leads to a sense of rising panic, what if they go home and tell their parents that their teacher was telling them that in a few short decades they would all be dead, along with everyone who ever knew them?
In my experience, the topic invariably creates an almost instant hush of thought and reflection. It is a truth implicitly known but rarely discussed. It verges on taboo, and so is naturally intriguing.
Step two: anxiety
Students studying for their GCSEs are, by definition, anxious to some extent. They have important examinations looming. Their futures are in question. They carry the weight of expectation from their families and, in order to fulfil that expectation, they must demonstrate capabilities in a dizzying range of disciplines. Added to the usual teenage social anxieties, their lives can feel quite overwhelming.
Discussing time, nature, and the shortness of life can therefore be a welcome tonic. Spinoza counsels us to view our lives under the aspect of eternity. When our paltry eighty years are stacked up against the billions that have been and the billions that are yet to be, what importance does a grade hold? A relationship? A university course. Suddenly, mortality brings with it a little consolation.
Step three: nature and connection
For many Romantic writers, nature became a source of spiritual meaning in its own right, sometimes reinforcing religious belief and sometimes challenging established religious orthodoxies. It shows that even rationalists and atheists could not tolerate a vacuum in the spiritual, non-rational, illogical parts of their being. They filled it with nature, art, music, and anything that could bring them close to a sense of divinity. Wordsworth’s description of “huge and mighty forms, that do not live/ Like living men,” conveys the terrible power of nature, and its utter incomprehensibility to the human mind. Importantly though, this terrifying experience helped to reshape Wordsworth’s relationship with nature. He starts the episode as an arrogant, self-assured exploiter, and finishes it humbled and trembling. He had experienced the beginnings of a Romantic awakening.
Nature is today prescribed as an antidote to stress, anxiety, depression. It is no longer a connection with the divine, but an evoker of specific hormones that alters our mental state. The language has changed but the effects remain.Students can readily see how writers place their characters as Rückenfiguren, tiny specks that give scale to the vastness of nature, and they can also importantly see themselves through that lens.
Once the idea is embedded, you should have a classroom of students a little richer for the experience, a little more prepared to process life’s anxieties, and, of course, much better equipped to hoover up marks across English Language and English Literature.
