Perspective

After yesterday's discussion in class about Dorian Gray, with special attention added to the preface, I realized that most literature--how it and characters in it are perceived--is all about perspective. This adds to the extremely difficult task teachers already have of grading papers or open-ended questions on tests because there are multiple ways a person could interpret the meaning of the question and the meaning of a term used in that question.
To use an example from the discussion we had yesterday, each individual perception of what a "villain" and a "victim" are is going to differ based on experiences with characters (or people) who have been labeled as such. Many of my classmates thought Dorian was the villain, however, I argued that Lord Henry was the villain because he was imposing his own ideas upon Dorian, influencing his way of thinking which ultimately influences his actions. Another peer mentioned that Lord Henry was only saying things so, in a way, he was more like a writer while Dorian was the one acting on behalf of the words as an actor.
As you can see, the question "Is Dorian the villain or is he a victim?" can have many different answers, not one direct, clear answer. Therefore, it is difficult to grade such an answer unless you have unbiased criteria. In this situation, I would change the question a little bit so the student knows what they will be evaluated on. Facing a question like the one mentioned above could cause some students to worry about their answers not being "right" because it is unclear what the teacher is looking for. So, to clarify and ease some of my students minds, I would add: "Use three examples from the book to support your answer." This way students will know that they can answer any way they wish as long as they can support it with evidence from the book.

These kinds of open-ended questions promote different perspectives, though they might be less popular, to be equally valid. This connects back to my last post about building respect in the classroom because these questions don't have a right or wrong answer so all students can be right even though they have different opinions. Showing students multiple perspectives encourages diversity and acceptance of different, opposing view points. To point out that both stances (or a combination of stances) have supporting evidence allows students to look into each others minds and broaden their own perceptions of what a villain is or what a victim is.
To take this one step further, I would propose students apply their new definitions or perspectives on the terms of villain and victim to their previous understanding of these terms. Then I would challenge them to be critically thinking about these definitions when they categorize a character of media they come across from now on into those boxes. I want them to think about why they categorize the character this way and, further more, I want them to notice that characters (and people) don't fit into simple labels such as "victim" or "villain." Hopefully, my students will see that these characters have traits that break these categories and that there are so many more elements to a character (or to human kind) than binary labels.
Sure, there will be many times in fiction where there is a definite villain or victim who fits into the stereotype. However, in real life, and literature that reflects reality, I hope my students will notice and respect that these labels we use to classify others do not fully encapsulate the whole essence of their character.