And it did all the things we designed it to do

The final class I taught at BC was a section of Lit Core, the introductory class non-majors take to fulfill their English gen ed requirement. Professors are permitted to get a little fun and funky with their Lit Core syllabi (as opposed to more advanced courses, studiously focused on exposing English majors to significant literary periods and theories). I called my Lit Core class "Fictional Science and the Body Monstrous," and we spent the semester reading works that use representations of science and experimental medicine to think about what it means to be human -- Frankenstein, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Never Let Me Go, stories by Ursula Le Guin and J.G. Ballard, etc. 

One soggy spring morning in 2018, our class was studying a short story by Octavia Butler called "Speech Sounds." The story is set in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles, which (along with the rest of the world) has been ravaged by a pandemic that has left survivors unable to use or understand written or verbal language. Everyone is also more emotionally volatile, aggressive, and prone to violence in the wake of this loss. A woman named Rye attempts to take the bus to Pasadena to meet up with her brother, and this previously simple journey is made terrifyingly perilous by the widespread mayhem wrought by the pandemic's aftereffects.

Science fiction often leans didactic: pretty much everything we read for my Lit Core class had obvious messages for the reading audience (e.g., Frankenstein as a commentary on scientific hubris). So, we tended to spend class time probing texts for their less obvious themes (e.g., Frankenstein as a commentary on formal versus informal education systems), learning how to close-read the text to discern and appreciate the subtleties. Butler's story -- rife with miscommunication, suspicion, and violence -- clearly wants us to consider the extent to which humanity, and the noble qualities we like to associate with it, depends on language. 

So, I would ask my students, pointing them to specific passages or language patterns, what else is going on in this text? What other social dynamics or themes does Butler's story want us to think about? How do you know?

The first student who responded to this prompt that day in March had a surprising take: She felt like the story was about screen time, she said. The detachment of the characters, their inability to empathetically interact in casual in-person situations, reminded her of the increasing sense of isolation people are experiencing as they get drawn further and further into their phones. The societal breakdown in the story seemed to her a dramatization of the "smart phones and social media are ruining society" rhetoric she routinely sees, taken to its natural/extreme conclusion. I saw nods of agreement ripple across the class as she spoke.

I reminded my student that Butler published "Speech Sounds" in 1983, well before widespread use of the internet, let alone smart phones, and that the specific set of concerns associated with "screen time" just didn't exist then. Still, I reassured her, that didn't make her interpretation invalid. 

In fact, there's a whole domain of literary criticism, called Reader Response Theory, that foregrounds the ways texts will resonate differently when encountered by different audiences and contexts. A Reader Response critic will pay special attention to something that other critics tend to downplay: the fact that we don't experience art in a vacuum, that the things we notice and appreciate about art depend (sometimes a lot) on when and where we were born and what experiences we've gathered along the way. Consider how differently you and I experience Romeo and Juliet compared to an Elizabethan playgoer. Sure, Butler didn't intend for her story to be about screen time, but does Butler's intent actually matter? If her story inspires a contemporary reader to think deeply and differently about how they engage with social media, isn't that interpretation valuable?

Plenty of literary critics out there, dusting off the shoulders of their tweed, will respond to those questions with a hearty Yes and No. Reader Response doesn't have a very prestigious reputation in the annals of literary theory: it's often caricatured as a Get Out of Jail Free card for any zany interpretation, the worst kind of hippie-dippy "No wrong answers here!" approach to English class. (To do this type of criticism, you certainly need to know your limits: it's fine to compare the cultural importance of Achilles for Greeks to Captain America for us; it's ridiculous to suggest that The Iliad is about Captain America.)

All this is to say, if you're ever confronted with a bespectacled skeptic who doesn't understand or see the validity in Reader Response Theory, send them "Speech Sounds." Not because of my student's screen time interpretation (which, despite her earnestness, wasn't very convincing, though it earned her literal points for effort), but because... well, scroll up and read my summary of the story again. If anyone can read "Speech Sounds" in 2021 and not have their inner Reader Response Critic come roaring out, their brain seizing on the seemingly obvious parallels to our present pandemic and societal disintegration, I'll eat my syllabus.