Shakespeare Saved My Life Read online

  How do you say good-bye forever without a hug, a handshake, or even a pat on the back? As I stood locked behind the steel and glass of the sally port on my way out of the unit, I could see him being led down the hall in chains. I gave him a thumbs-up and forced a smile. He responded with a wink and a smile that was, I thought, equally forced.

  Whenever a participant left the program, I distributed a short survey in which I asked, “What has Shakespeare done for you?”

  “It helped me to expand my mind,” Green had written.

  “It introduced me to a whole new world,” Jones had written.

  “It got me out of my cell,” Guido had written.

  After I watched Newton disappear down the hallway, I took the folded paper out of my pocket. It was the survey. What has Shakespeare done for you? He had written, “Shakespeare saved my life.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Another Door Opens

  Each week when I drove home from the prison, I came to an intersection where the highway crosses a small country road. I usually drove straight ahead, but that night, waiting for the light to turn green, I recalled Newton’s words about freedom. I could go straight, as usual, or I could turn; either road would lead somewhere. That intriguing little road disappeared into a grove of trees. I’d always wondered where it might lead. That night, as I thought about the new roads that Newton would be exploring in his journey back into population, I turned.

  When I got home, my husband poured me a glass of wine, toasted my accomplishments of the past three years, and commiserated with me over the loss of Newton. The next morning, he also shared my jubilation over the email that I received from the SHU unit manager: “Offender Newton was transferred today into F-house. Thought you’d like to know.”

  F-house! He was not sent to the other end of the state, after all; he was sent to the other side of the facility! Immediately, I requested permission for Newton to be admitted into the Shakespeare group in open population. I learned that a ninety-day period of “quarantine” was required when prisoners transitioned from segregation to population, during which they were not permitted to participate in any kind of programming, work, or school activities. This struck me as a good idea, and especially for a prisoner who had spent so many years isolated as Newton had.

  That’s why it came as a surprise when the SHU manager suggested that I take advantage of Newton’s forced idle time to work with him—but I agreed, of course. And I suggested that we use the time to create a workbook for the Shakespeare program that could be used in the SHU, which would present segregated prisoners with Newton’s insights and questions, even though he was no longer there in person. Even more remarkable, the manager obtained permission for me to meet with this hard-core prisoner—one just released after ten years in supermax—face-to-face, one-on-one, alone and unsupervised. Absolutely unprecedented.

  CHAPTER 44

  Killer Dog Comes Inside

  I arrived at the prison the following week with a good deal of trepidation: Would Newton be able to handle the social contact after so many years of isolation? Would I be able to maintain my composure, or would my nervousness cause a similar response in him? And how well did I really know this prisoner? Could I trust him…with my life? Strangely, I felt the kind of anxiety that Newton had described feeling prior to the murder: “There is a point of no return,” he said, “when you have to fully commit to the deed.” That’s where I was now.

  “No way!” the officer on duty told me when I arrived at the appointed location for our first session. “You know who he is?” he asked his partner. “He’s the one that stabbed the sergeant.” He turned back to me and repeated, “No way I’m bringing him out!”

  My method of dealing with administrative adversity had always been nonconfrontational, friendly, even self-effacing. It had always worked—until that night. I hit a brick wall. To make matters worse, I was stuck at the prison for the next five hours because my husband was teaching two back-to-back classes there himself that semester. Adding insult to injury, I was battling the flu and would rather have been home in bed than sitting for hours in a cold, empty prison classroom. But it was Friday night, and all of the administration officials who had approved my session were gone. Utterly defeated, the only thing I could think to do was return to my home base, the SHU.

  “You can have anyone you want here,” the officers offered. I smiled at the irony: two hundred prisoners in the most locked-down unit in the state were more accessible to me than one prisoner in open population.

  “Who is it you need?” asked the sergeant on duty. It was Harper.

  “Well, uh…” I hesitated. “Actually, it’s Newton.”

  Harper picked up the phone, placed a call, then turned to me and said, “You’re all set.” As I walked away, he repeated, “He’s changed a lot.”

  Coming to our first-ever individual Shakespeare session would be Newton’s first free movement, unchained and unescorted, in more than ten years. The SHU manager had assured me that our first meeting would be supervised, held in the public visitation wing, but the officers on duty didn’t want to be near him, so they put me in an empty classroom down the hall. I asked them if I could at least prop open the door to reduce the suspicion of trafficking or any kind of inappropriate behavior. I was thinking more of protecting Newton than me, since my conduct history has always been spotless, but the officers removed my little pad of paper from under the door and shut me in. If they were that afraid of him, how worried should I be? As I sat and waited for his arrival, I recalled his earlier comparison of himself to a killer dog.

  “How do we know when the killer dog can come into the house?” I had asked him.

  “You never do. It’s still a dog, it’s still got teeth, it can still bite. There’s no line that lets you know it’s a safe thing to do. But if you are the owner of the dog, you’ve developed a trust.”

  “Okay, so I’m the owner of this dog—”

  “That’s right. You are the owner of this dog. We have a relationship. You just know what you know—hopefully.” He had laughed nervously. “Hopefully, you know. And then one day, you have to say, ‘I’m gonna let him in tonight.’ There has to be that first time, that barrier-breaking kind of time, with a little angst. You know, ‘Okay, come on in…’”

  Just then, the door opened and he came in. He looked around; he looked nervous. It was our barrier-breaking time.

  Later, he would describe for me the moment when his cell-house door rolled open and he stepped into the open evening air—alone. He just stood there, in the doorway. The prison yard was overwhelming, full of inmates walking past, running on the track, or playing basketball on one of several courts. He looked to his left and to his right. A few officers were standing in front of the cell house, joking with one another while keeping an eye on the yard. He told me he felt awkward having to go up to them and ask where he should go, since he was not at all familiar with the prison yard and the layout of the buildings surrounding it. One of the officers pointed across the yard to a small building that housed the visitation room. As he walked away, he felt that their laughter was directed at him. He was so self-conscious walking across the yard that he felt like everyone was looking at him, as if a spotlight was on him. It seemed like the longest walk ever! He told me that he felt “exposed and vulnerable”—and that when he entered the building and saw me, he felt “safe.”

  I watched him as he approached the window where the officer on duty checked him in behind the glassed-in pod. I saw him leaning down to speak directly into the microphone.

  “Newton,” I heard him state his name and then his number. “Ninety-one, forty-three, eighty-two. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  I walked over to him and reached out my hand. He hesitated a minute, not understanding what I wanted. I took his hand in mine, shook it, and, for the first time, called him by his first name.

  “Welcome to the world, Larry.”

  CHAPTER 45

  “Shakespearean Considerations”
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  Each week, Larry came to our sessions with a stack of pages he’d written for our first workbook, Shakespearean Considerations: Connecting Literature to Life. In his introduction, he encourages his fellow prisoners to accept the Shakespearean challenge: “Shakespeare offers us a challenge to connect his classic literature to our own lives today. Macbeth is no monster; he is more like us than he is different.” And he reminds his readers that a wise man learns from others’ mistakes.

  But it’s not as simple as those of us looking from the outside in would like to think.

  “I know what you want to hear,” Larry said to me, “that this guy, Macbeth, he went through hell because of what he did, so what I learned is not to do that because I don’t want to suffer. But that’s just the way it looks on paper. That’s not the way it works in real life.”

  “How does it work?” I asked, feeling that he was on the brink of unlocking the key to the whole problem of criminal behavior that has plagued mankind forever.

  “Well,” he continued, thoughtfully, “we’ve been hearing that message all our lives: ‘If you do this, then that will happen.’”

  “Pronouns, Larry!” The English teacher in me reminded him to be more specific in his use of language. “What’s ‘this’ and what’s ‘that’?”

  “Murder,” he replied, “and prison. If you kill, then you’ll be locked away—for life. But that doesn’t have the impact you want it to have. It’s really hard to appreciate the consequences of your actions if you haven’t experienced it.”

  “So what does work?” I asked.

  “You have to find a way for the guy to relate to Macbeth. And then, when he’s questioning Macbeth’s motives, he starts to question his own. And then he comes to his own conclusions—and then, real change is possible.”

  I pointed to our workbook. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

  “That’s right,” he said, “that’s what we’re doing.”

  For each of the workbooks, he presented thirty challenging “considerations” that address such weighty topics as honor, revenge, remorse, and conscience. For example:

  In act 1, Macbeth tells his wife that they will not be discussing the deed any more, that he is settled on the position he already has. Some people look at that as evidence that his conscience is having an effect on his resolve. So I would like you to consider the source of his changed mind—which, by the way, does not require much persuading to change back again. Is it his conscience? Look at his own words. He is not telling his wife that it is wrong, that it is evil, that you do not treat people you love this way, or anything of that nature. His concerns are what? One, getting caught: “If we should fail?” Two, what it will do to his reputation. He tells his wife that he has “bought golden opinions from all sorts of people” and that he should not throw that away so quickly. Every one of his concerns is about himself. His image. There is no concern for the life of King Duncan, or how wrong such a deed is. It is not our conscience that torments us over our image; that is our ego tormenting us. Our conscience torments us when we behave in ways that are contrary to our values. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of your shame, it is conscience. When you look in the mirror and cringe as a result of how people think of you, it is ego. Which of the two is more prevalent in your life?

  “You know,” he told me enthusiastically as we looked over the final draft of the workbook, “I got people in the cell house reading Macbeth, three different guys. They just begged me. They’re not even in the education program. They do it ’cause they just want to check it out. That’s kinda cool, I think. So I’m at work one day—”

  Larry’s job was working in the prison industries, making leather belts for the military. It was the first real job he’d ever had, and he proudly showed me his first check stub. It was not an easy adjustment into the “real world” of working full-time, while taking college classes at night…and leading a Shakespeare program.

  “—and one of the guys, one of the other line bosses, he’s on his machine, and I’m on my machine, and he says, ‘Yeah, they just killed Duncan.’ And I said, ‘Why’d you say they?’ I wanted to engage him in discussion, you know, deeper thought about it. And he’s like, ‘I mean Macbeth did, but Lady Macbeth, she pretty much made him do it.’ And I said, ‘That’s probably the most popular argument, man. I’ll wait till you finish before I try to tear it up for you.’ It’s cool, it’s really cool. I mean, I know the program is doing something, I know it’s going somewhere, but that was the first time it hit me: this really is gonna do something, it really might get to somebody. And I thought, man, that’s awesome!”

  CHAPTER 46

  Hamlet: to Revenge or Not to Revenge

  Our second workbook was The Tragedy of Hamlet, and Larry challenged the prisoners to consider alternatives to Hamlet’s revenge of his father’s murder. It is a difficult topic for prisoners to confront, so Larry introduced the play with his characteristically low-key style:

  Tell me if this has ever happened to you: Your uncle kills your father and marries your mother as he steals your inheritance. Your good friends try to trick you into your grave, but you trick them into theirs instead. You accidentally kill your girlfriend’s father, so she goes insane and kills herself. Her brother starts hunting to kill you, and you mother dies from poison that was intended for you. When it’s all said and done, you kill your crazy girl’s brother and he kills you—but not before you finally kill your uncle. It was a rough month, to say the least.

  Okay, even if you can’t relate to Hamlet’s specific circumstances, it is simple to relate to his condition. We have all felt the pain of loss, betrayal, perceived injustice, and the pressure of revenge. Hamlet is fighting the torment of what he could’ve done or should’ve done, or how he might have prevented the outcome. How many times have you laid there in bed fighting the torment of what you could’ve done, or should’ve done, or how you might have prevented the outcome? Do you know what separates you from Hamlet? Four hundred years. That’s it. We all share his condition of feeling vulnerable, scared, conflicted, pressured. We also share his courage, integrity, pride, sense of honor, and deep desire for justice.

  We are all heroes in our own tragedies.

  Then he explores the “prison of expectation” that Hamlet is in, and the reason inmates feel the same pressure to revenge any perceived injustice:

  The “Tragical History” of a prisoner’s life seems to be one of many abuses, and therefore one with many justifications for revenge. Shakespeare has articulated an issue at the very heart of behavior in our society. You see, Hamlet is chasing honor for his family’s name because that is what was expected of him. You are expected to seek vengeance for wrongs done to your family, even when you do not want to do it. In fact, to not seek vengeance is seen as cowardly and disgraceful to your family, and to a large extent your society.

  We relate to Hamlet because he is in the same kind of “prison of expectation.” His father has returned from the dead not to tell Hamlet how much he loved him, not to apologize for all the times that he worked late. He returned to make Hamlet revenge his death! It is that prison of expectation that we can relate to.

  Hamlet is not offering you hypocritical advice against revenge; it is reminding you that the choice really is yours to make! No matter what kind of social prison we are placed in, we are all empowered to make choices that are rooted in what we want, and not what others expect of us.

  Our workbooks were being used by nearly one hundred students: approximately twenty in the SHU program and thirty in my Correctional Education capstone course in general population, plus close to fifty in my Shakespeare class on campus. Every week, when I met with Larry to work on the next workbook, we also reviewed the homework of our students. I enjoyed reading some of the best—and worst—responses to our considerations and asking Larry to guess whether they were written by a campus student or a prisoner in SHU or population. It was often hard to tell. After considering our students’ responses to his
considerations, Larry spoke a response into my tape recorder, which I then typed up into a handout to the students that was distributed by the prison.

  “That’s really cool!” he said when he heard what one of the students had written about Hamlet’s urge to revenge. “I like that the guy—”

  “Or girl,” I reminded him.

  “That’s true—or girl—is considering why Hamlet wants to kill his uncle: it’s not for any noble reason; it’s for selfish reasons.”

  “You’re right,” I told him. “It’s a prisoner.”

  “Yes!” he shouted, smacking the table. “That’s the idea behind real change. The idea is that we make them question things that we don’t question. We don’t question why we feel the urge to revenge, we don’t question even what revenge is. We don’t question any of these things. The idea is not to give them the answers, but to make themselves question.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Othello: Girl Meets Boy

  I think this is my best work ever! I think I raised some really cool issues,” Larry said as he handed me a stack of handwritten papers, this week’s installment on our third workbook. “I can’t wait to see what you think, man!”

  As I looked over the pages, he fidgeted nervously. He bounced his leg, drummed his fingers on his Shakespeare book. Finally, he reached into his bag and unwrapped a Little Debbie cake. I never ate food in front of prisoners; it would seem rude because I couldn’t legally share it with them. Larry usually did the same, but after ten years without access to Commissary (the prison’s mini-mart), the luxury was getting the better of him and junk food became his passion. He spent a chunk of his weekly paycheck on Little Debbie cakes (the rest he sent home to Mom for his education fund).

  “Look at me,” he said between bites. “I’ve gained seventy pounds since I left the SHU!”