Disguises

For the last several weeks I have been volunteering at the St. Ignatius Middle School in downtown Baltimore. The middle school is actually located in a building that Loyola used to use as its own campus. It is a remarkable school that attempts to remove its students from their environments as much as possible. It keeps them busy with sports and extracurricular activities throughout the school year. Students are in school from seven a.m. to seven p.m. for ten months out of the year. Each summer, the school takes its students to a summer camp in order to keep them out of their environment to an even greater extent. A student’s typical day consists of classes during normal school hours, until about three. Afterwards, students either participate in a sport, music, or in some other extracurricular activity. From five until pickup at 7:15 the students do their homework. This is when I volunteer. I participate in St. Ignatius’ homework club program and I go each week, get paired with a specific student, and help him through his homework.
One thing I have found in the past several weeks is that the students I have worked with have tended to start off our sessions guarding themselves and not opening up. When they meet me they tend to start off cold or indifferent towards me. However, throughout our two hours of homework time the students usually warm up a great deal and start joking with me. They become more and more comfortable and, as they do this, they reveal more and more about themselves. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night tells the story of, among other things, a woman who has disguised herself as a man so that she can work as the servant of another man. Throughout the play Viola does reveal certain things about herself. She does not reveal the whole truth, but she never actually lies. Instead, she tells small parts of the truth at different points throughout the play. In a similar way, the boys of St. Ignatius reveal themselves slowly. These students and Viola both show that, despite one’s best attempts at concealment or disguise, the true self will fight to get out and can slowly win.
One student that I worked with that showed this most overtly was named Chris. He is a very lanky sixth grader with thick glasses and a great sense of humor. However, I did not find out about the sense of humor until halfway through our session. When I was first paired with him, he barely mumbled a hello and did not speak to me as we sat down and began his homework. He worked first on math. That is how he revealed to me that he is a very smart, hard working kid. He did not require any assistance on his worksheet and worked through each problem slowly yet steadily. Since he did not need any help, however, our stretch of almost silence continued. It continued until I started joking with my friend who was working with another student at the table next to us. With the first joke Chris started chuckling to himself as he worked. With each successive joke he started laughing more and more. After a short time, we were all laughing together and he was joining in with his own jokes. From that point on we worked together on his homework in spurts that were interrupted by playful joking. By the end of the night, it seemed that Chris and I had formed a bond because he was able to break through his guarded disguise brought about by his discomfort in the situation. What started with a quick laugh escalated and turned into a night full of jokes as Chris slowly allowed his full self to be revealed.
In Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, Viola disguises herself as a man but still allows small parts of her true self to shine through. She sets herself up as a very loyal and truthful person in the beginning of the play when she says that she will work for the Duke’s marriage to Olivia despite her own love for the Duke. Throughout the rest of the play Viola speaks the truth always (although not the whole truth) even though it will call her into question. She even says, more than once, “I am not what I am” (III.i). When the Duke and Viola are speaking about who Viola loves she knows she cannot give the full answer (that she loves the Duke), but she answers his questions truthfully even though her answers could easily call her disguise into question- she claims to be in love with a woman who looks just like the Duke. She knows that she should not jeopardize her disguise, but she is truly an honest person and she cannot keep this honesty from shining through.
Disguises are often hard to maintain because people forget that they are not themselves. They lose character because it is hard for a person to maintain a disposition that is not them. Somehow, the true character shines through and this is seen explicitly in the students of St. Ignatius Middle School and in Viola from Twelfth Night.