Bright Lights

Driving to school today in the morning darkness, I appreciated the usefulness of the car’s bright lights as I flashed them up occasionally, and it started me thinking about the kind of lights I shine for my students on certain obscure passages in the books we read together. Admittedly, much of A Tale of Two Cities remains in darkness as my students read the pages, just as the countryside is covered in darkness as I pass along the back roads on my way to school. It’s a veiled and baffling book, in many ways, and the best I can do for my students is shine the bright lights of my reading wisdom, as much as I have, on certain murky sections. They have possibly another 70 years in which to explore the great novel; what I want to do is drive them through it for the first time in a slow and exploratory way, appreciating the strange darkness and using the bright lights to occasionally shine some understanding on the road ahead.