Totem Figures Goes to College! Nancy Barber, English prof at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, has been using the script and ideas of Totem Figures to teach her freshman English course. Here’s her description of what inspired this, how the course is set up, and how’s it’s gone.

Totem Figures 101

Early on in my Fringe Festival obsession, I happened to catch TJ Dawe performing The Slip-Knot and was immediately entranced by his odd weaving of rhythmic narrative, real-life experience, and sharp, witty commentary on the world at large. Every Orlando Fringe Festival after that, I always made sure to catch TJ’s latest show.

In May 2008, he débuted Totem Figures, which is all about how the iconic stories and people/characters in our lives impact us and reveal patterns that tell us more about ourselves. TJ begins the show by talking about one of his own totem figures, Robertson Davies and his novel Fifth Business.  He moves on to other texts—The Hobbit, the Bible, the Star Wars Trilogy, Watership Down, and many more.  Fifteen minutes into the 90-minute show, I was already thinking about how I could base an entire university English course on this show.

I’ve taught English, largely freshman English, at Stetson University since 1998, and I’m always looking for ways to get to the students to connect with the course texts—or any texts for that matter—at a deeper, more personal level.  A long-time fan of Joseph Campbell, I also try to encourage my students to think about their lives in mythic terms, and, as Campbell would say, to “follow their bliss.”  As soon as I saw TJ’s show, I felt certain that Totem Figures would help inspire students to do those very things.  The show is largely about the personal interactions we have with stories and figures, and many of the texts TJ talks about have a recurring theme: this connection between mythology and our “ordinary” lives.

Students don’t naturally see their lives as “epic adventures,” and most don’t consider their own personal mythology without prodding.  One male student, early in the semester, suggested that it’s easier for them to consider themselves as characters in “chick flicks”.  Less ambitious, more mundane. 

But neither Totem Figures nor the texts TJ talks about in the show nor Joseph Campbell nor I believe that’s a good model for living a life. So, I designed an Analytical Reading and Writing course with a Totem Figures theme. We read the script of the show first, then over the course of the semester, we analyzed a number of the writers and texts TJ cites as his own “totem figures” and “totem myths,” including Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, the Star Wars Trilogy (IV, V, and VI), George Carlin’s It’s Bad for You, and Joseph Campbell’s structural analysis of “the hero’s journey.” Through all these analyses and corresponding papers, I was constantly reminding the students that this sort of study was all a preparation for them to discover and write about their own totem figures and myths. Along the way, I would assign informal writing assignments where they would analyze important texts from their childhood or analyze a parent or guardian’s totem figures. They made lists early on in the semester of their totem figures and totem myths, and they refined and expanded those lists as the semester went along. 

Finally, they started bringing their own lives into the last two significant essays.  In one paper they had to analyze a scene or character from a particular movie or book in terms of a story from their own life.  I was amazed to see that suddenly many students’ writing improved considerably. 

When their own lives had a stake in the analysis, their writing became fresher, more specific, more thoughtful and engaging. 

In the final paper, a “totem map” of their own lives, using the script of Totem Figures as a model, the students’ writing jumped remarkably.  Their ability to analyze and pick out crucial details, cut out the fluff in their writing, and both entertain and move their reader with genuine insights increased exponentially.  The first semester I taught the class, I was shocked and amazed to receive eloquent, thoughtful “totem maps” written by students who were, up to that point, failing the class. It was as if the students’ own lives and the stories and figures inspiring those lives infused vibrancy into their writing and analytical abilities. 

The students also did a class presentation in which they performed a more or less dramatic reading of a portion of their totem map.  The presentations had a way of forging a bond among the students in the class who had all gone through a similar process during the course of the semester and all come up with very different results: different voices, different totem figures and myths, different patterns.

By the end of the semester, students had started taking more seriously the notion that their personal mythology is important and does have much in common with the great mythological traditions of the world.  And perhaps most important of all, the students began to see patterns in their choices of totem figures and myths,

Check out some of Nancy’s students’ totem maps:

Kaylyn Varnum

Timothy Ali

Jaclyn Ferris

Marco Hoilett

Taylor Hetherington

Andressa Santos

Rachael Peck

and those patterns helped them understand themselves better: their strengths, their weaknesses, and in what directions they might want to aim themselves.

I’m now in my third semester of teaching a course or courses with a “totem figures” theme.  The pattern I thought might be a fluke during the first semester—significant spikes in the students’ writing abilities as soon as they were relating their own lives to texts and analysis—has proved to be the norm rather that the exception.  Totem Figures the show and Totem Figures the model for how we might research and present our own lives, both have the capacity to transform us in ways not initially apparent.  I feel honored to be a conduit, bringing the show’s ideas into my classroom on a regular basis.