Lesson Plan II
I will begin by introducing a poem entitled "Never Shall I Forget" by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish poet, essayist, and advocate who was deported with his family to Auschwitz, where they perished and he survived. After liberation he settled in Paris and eventually moved to the US. He is the Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986. I will have the students read the poem and answer the following question: Who is the speaker of these lines? Once the students have brainstormed and shared their answers, I will ask them to read the entire poem and answer questions that align with the six facets of understanding. I will ask the students to answer the following questions and respond to the following prompts:
- What does Wiesel mean when he writes, "that night…which has turned my life into one long night?"
- What types of figurative language does Wiesel use?
- Explain why Wiesel's use of figurative language helps the reader create an image.
- What is the tone of this poem? Chose specific words to support your answer.
- What feelings does this poem evoke in the reader?
- Could this poem be the voice of the victim in Jan Komski's painting "Ecco Homo?"
To introduce a poet and victim of segregation from the Jim Crow Era, I will focus on the poem, "Lunch in a Jim Crow Car" by Langston Hughes. This poem is short, only four lines. However, Hughes uses many forms of figurative language to illustrate an oppressed voice. I will ask my students the respond to the following questions and prompts:
- Interpret the line, "Get out the lunch-box of your dreams."
- What types of figurative language does Hughes use in this poem?
- Analyze the effectiveness of a four line poem. Do you hear the voice of the oppressed person in only four lines? How?
- Chose an image from the Jim Crow Era that depicts a crime. Write an ecphrastic poem from the victim's point of view. Imitate Hughes's style and structure in "Lunch in a Jim Crow Car."
- Imagine you are riding in the Jim Crow car, and write two more stanzas to add to Hughes's poem.
- Find an image that could be the scene that is illustrated in this poem.
Once the students have analyzed the poems and shared their responses, I will use this same type of questioning with many other poems written by victims and survivors of each era. I will use the following resources for these poems:
- A Classic Collection of Poems by a Master of American Verse: Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
- The Book of American Negro Poetry
- Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945
- Holocaust Poetry
The final focus of the unit will be organized around the category: Whose Voices Are Left? In this section I will have students analyze poems written by people who have taken on the person of the oppressed. This part of the unit will have the students critically analyze poems for voice, make connections with their own poems, and gain self-knowledge about the human condition.
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