The “Gryphon” Experience Gryphon presents a fourth-grade boy, Tommy, and his class’s experience with a peculiar substitute teacher, Miss Ferenczi. Tommy narrates the story as a mature, experienced adult from afar. The students are confronted with more than just a substitute teacher. They are presented with an unaccustomed view of the world and are challenged to open their minds and think for themselves. Do not believe everything you hear and do not be afraid to go against the grain of humdrum normalcy, are central to “Gryphon”, whose key symbol (Miss Ferenczi) support its central theme: life is dreary and uninspiring without a sense of imagination and wonder. Tommy’s classroom is the typical fourth grade setting with arithmetic, spelling, and history lessons. The classroom itself doesn’t change throughout the story, but everything new to Tommy and his classmates is introduced in the classroom by Miss Ferenczi, whose thought provoking instruction techniques set “Gryphon” into action. Liken to a container, the classroom is filled with information, of which, the children pick and choose to take their “knowledge”. Before the substitute, the children’s teacher forced knowledge upon the students through memorization. Mr. Hibner’s teaching methods, selection of material, or mandated school lessons have exiled Tommy and his classmates into a conventional educational system that produces run of the mill people through mind-numbing fact recitals dubbed “knowledge”.

For Tommy, the classroom is his world and he attempts to make the most of it, prompted by the unorthodox Miss Ferenzci. Miss Ferenczi challenges her students to take her information for what it’s worth. Whether to agree or disagree with the literal meaning is of secondary value, but most importantly, actively engaging in the imagination marauding necessary to invoke self-actualization and decide for themselves what inspires them. Tommy’s fourth-grade classroom represents an idyllic setting for intense imagination of far off worlds and self exploration (with Miss Ferenzci substituting) where the students are finding their own truth, as opposed to Mr. Hibner’s mundane lesson plan of arithmetic and “the modes of Egyptian irrigation” (K&M 243). Miss Ferenczi’s tutelage represents a breath of fresh air and a new experience for her students. Everything about her is foreign to the students yet not inaccessible. Hope and truth are connected within Miss Ferenzci; her style of dress, lunch choices, and forthright speech are prime examples. Miss Ferenczi has found her own truth, herself, as evidenced by her nonconformist attitude, elaborate dress, delightful stories, and a touch of humility. She exemplifies that all adults are not like those the children are accustomed in their community. Miss Ferenczi’s symbolism of truth is foreshadowed by Tommy when he notices his substitute’s peculiar marionette lines reminding him of Pinocchio. Pinocchio is a wooden boy who wants to be real and is a liar. Miss Ferenczi may be a real, in the flesh, person, but she is very surreal to Tommy and his classmates; they’ve never seen anything like her. Also, Miss Ferenczi bends the truth and tells stories of myths in order to provoke the students’ sense of thought, imagination, and wonder. The truths the children seek are far beyond spelling and arithmetic, but constitute the character the students will eventually mesh with and emit.

Tommy and his mates are in a critical part of their lives. They are growing up and if they can’t find imagination now, they’ve likely lost it forever. Miss Ferenczi is the vessel for the children’s newfound knowledge of truths and not so truths, but she leaves the children to have their own experience with this newfound information, rather than teach her students what to think based on her largely personal, somewhat professional opinion. Miss Ferenczi is like a gryphon to her students. She is strange and exotic in her dress, food choices, and thoughts. The children cannot take their eyes off her when first introduced and quickly begin to question her mathematical knowledge. Miss Ferenczi states, “In higher mathematics, which you children do not yet understand, six times eleven can be considered to be sixty-eight” (K&M 241). The students feel uncomfortable with Miss F.’s arithmetic analysis because it questions what they already know to be true. They can either go along with Miss F. and imagine the possibility of her thoughts while exercising their own insight and imagination and be no worse (hopefully better) off than they already were, or disregard Miss F.’s thoughts as phony. The latter will not produce genuine thoughts of the students’ own and threaten to hinder their sense of wonder, leaving an uninspired, ordinary individual. Miss Ferenczi draws a tree on the chalkboard that is “…outsized, disproportionate” (K&M 239). The tree represents knowledge and wisdom in many a society’s educational system and does so here as well. Miss F.’s unbalanced tree signifies the imagination factor that is equally, if not more so, essential to learning and wisdom. Miss Ferenczi does a tarot card reading for her students, showing she is in tune with myths and folklore. She begins by saying, “…I shall tell your fortunes, as I have been taught to do” (K&M 247). Miss F. shows her students that even something as mythical and fabricated as a fortune can be taught, and thus be considered knowledge.
“When Miss Ferenczi, using Tarot cards, tells a boy named Wayne he will soon die, the story delivers a moment of shocking cruelty” (Winans 2). Molly Winans alludes to the mystery of the tarot reading as heartless at times. People usually don’t like change and the inevitable unexpected, because it can make people feel awkward and stressed. Wayne, very ill at ease with the prospect of death arriving, told on Miss F. to the principal which resulted in her being fired. Change, which is what the death card really meant for Wayne, is sometimes hostile and can be hard to come to terms with, but is an opportunity for growth of the imagination. She confronts her students with this to help them decipher their own truths from the information they’re confronted with and build their very own knowledge. Destiny mingles with the truths the children seek, whether they know it or not. A sick Mr. Hibner needed Miss Ferenczi to substitute for a few days, which changed Tommy’s outlook on life after finding truth through imagination. The universe has unfolded to show Tommy and his class different approaches they can take to their own life, shown through Miss Ferenczi. “Gryphon” also shows that destiny is always in motion. If the children accept where they are and who they are on the basis of who their parents are and what they do, or because of the typical people who surround them in their comfortable community, they are fighting against the supreme order and variable intricacies of the universe. To this end, self-actualization will never be found, leading to an unhappy life. Possibility is the spark of everything that exists. Miss Ferenczi, in Charles Baxter’s “Gryphon”, introduced wonder and possibility for Tommy and his classmates to experience, and apply to their own lives.

Works Cited
Kirszner, Laurie, and Stephen Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 6th ed. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007.
Winans, Molly. “Bigger Than We Think: The World Revealed in Charles Baxter’s Fiction.” Commonweal 7 November 1997: 1-6.