Reading Strategies for the Deciphering of Persuasive Texts: Heinrich von Kleist's "Der Zweikampf"

Abstract

Recent articles on teaching literature to undergraduates have argued for a shift away from conventional approaches such as lectures in which students are passive recipients of towards a more active involvement in interpreting narratives.1 Many scholars of reading comprehension have been influenced by schema theory, which argues that language comprehension of a text does not carry meaning in itself, but, rather, furnishes readers with that enable them to discover or recreate the implicit meaning by drawing upon previously acquired knowledge.2 Readers attempt to fit the various bits of into their schema and reconstruct a consistent interpretation of the text. This more active role in interpreting fiction involves focusing on the dynamic process of interacting with the text rather than merely on the end product, a correct interpretation. In order to engage students in actively deciphering texts, one must help them to become aware of this reconstruction process. As James Davis has suggested, a teacher should provide students not only with background information on a text such as linguistic (vocabulary, etc.), historical and cultural knowledge and competence,3 an understanding of the conventions of a literary genre, but also should help students monitor their responses while reading.4 One way teachers can enable students to observe their reactions while reading is by making them aware of techniques of persuasion present in many literary works. The instructions intrinsic in a persuasive text, one that blatantly attempts to persuade a reader of a particular viewpoint, are more explicit and easily examined by an inexperienced reader than are texts with subtle messages because the manipulation is obvious. I have chosen Kleist's Der Zweikampf to demonstrate how students can learn to read with more self-awareness for several reasons. First, the narrator's conspicuous manipulation of facts establishes the novella as a prime example of a persuasive text and contains persuasive techniques I wish to discu s. Second, Kleist's work, which can be read in a fourth-year German college course (or in a German literature in English translation course) serves as an ideal reading assignment for undergraduates as it contains an engrossing detective story, an ideal ge re for students who are beginning to read a foreign language. Rather than reading carefully for character development or philosophical themes, the reader of a detective story simply follows the plot, the dominant narrative element in this genre. Third, although the main plot focuses on a murder mystery that has a definitive, correct solution, the work also contains an ambiguous subplot, which encourages various interpretations. Finally, the narrator is simultaneously omniscient and reliable (regarding the murder mystery), and biased and, therefore, unreliable (concerning the subplot's enigma). This situation creates skeptical and more sophisticated readers who initially trust the narrator's opinion, yet later question it when his unreliability is obvious. The main plot of Der Zweikampf consists of a murder mystery. As Duke Wilhelm is returning fr m a meeting with the German Emperor, he is murdered. His brother Count Rotbart, the legal successor to the throne, is the prime suspect, because the Duke legitimized his natural son as the heir to the throne during this meeting. Consequently, the son displaces the Count as the heir apparent. Although the Count had a motive to assassinate his brother, he apparently lacked the opportunity to do so, because he has an alibi. The alibi issue introduces a subplot that overshadows the murder