Overview

As a culminating assignment of the Beloved unit, students will attempt to replicate Morrison's style in the novel by writing a short chapter of a novel about a former slave who is remembering events from 1875. Students must construct and use the setting and a visit from a friend who lived on the same farm in the 1850s. The meeting leads to dialogue, but after the friend leaves, a flood of memories from different times comes back to the consciousness of the main character.

Student Objectives

Students will:

Demonstrate their understanding of how slavery rapidly grew after 1800, and how African Americans coped with that "peculiar institution" by:

• Describing the plantation system and the roles of the owner and his family, of hired white workers, and of enslaved African Americans (Compare and contrast different values, behaviors, and institutions);
• Identifying the various ways in which African Americans resisted the conditions of their enslavement and analyzing the consequences of violent uprisings. (Analyze cause-and-effect relationships); and
• Evaluating how enslaved African Americans used religion and family to create a viable culture for ameliorating slavery's effects. (Obtain historical data) (2C)

Skills Attained

Students will be able to:

• Write creatively;
• Integrate history into creative narratives; and
• Apply the stream-of-consciousness and recurring memory techniques that Morrison employs in Beloved.

Materials Needed

• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• "Excerpts From Slave Narratives" edited by Steven Mintz at: http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/primary.htm
• Writing Prompt Handout, at end of lesson plan

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

Review, with the class, how Seth's memory works in Beloved in a ten to 15 minute discussion.

Procedures

1. Assign students to read, using prompt handout as a guide, a five to ten page excerpt from a short novel similar to Beloved that employs the same flashback technique.
2. Give students two class days and homework time to complete their narratives.
3. Then, divide students into groups of four or five and have them review the narratives of others in the assigned group on the due date.
4. Ask students to read an excerpt from their narrative to the class.

Assessment

Here is a suggested breakdown of points for grading:

Evaluation Category	Points out of a Total 60
Believable setting in time and place	10
Authentic voice	10
Successful integration of historical episodes	10
Coherence	10
Technical quality of writing	10
Creative quality of writing	10

Connections

Students should examine Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Absalom to gain insight into the multiple-view point, multiple-memory approach to writing in American literature.

For a very challenging critical essay students can consult Katy Ryan, "Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction," African American Review (Fall, 2000), which they can find at: http://www.findarticles.com

1. Describe the time and place of your excerpt. List concrete details of the place: sight, sound, smell, touch. What year? What time of year?

 
 
 
 
 

2. What is the name of your piece's central character. Describe the personal qualities of your characters? Create a chronology of his/her experiences with slavery.

 
 
 
 
 

3. Invent a prompt to trigger memory in your narrative.

 
 
 
 
 

4. Review a few documentary episodes of life during slavery to integrate into your character's story. Browse documents 10-46 at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/primary.htm

 
 
 
 
 

5. Invent a scene to begin.

 
 
 
 
 

6. Write!

Rick Vanderwall is the Chair of the Language Arts Department at Malcolm Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Paul Horton teaches History at Holy Innocents Episcopal School in Atlanta, Georgia.

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