Introduction
What will the world look like 50 years from now? It is human nature to ponder about the future and what parts of it may be similar or vastly different. For many, the future can be an overwhelming topic to ruminate about given the current state of our world. In today’s society, there are global issues such as climate change, immigration, artificial intelligence, economic stability, and many others that are looming over the upcoming generations, leaving them to wonder what may occur in the near or distant future. With the world being jam-packed with potentially detrimental problems, it leaves little room for children and teens to attach positive imagery to the future.
Coming from a ELA teaching background, I connect the future with the genre of speculative fiction. According to Marek Oziewicz1, speculative fiction can be defined as, “a subgenre of science fiction that deals with human rather than technological problems…distinct from and opposite to science fiction in its exclusive focus on possible futures”. Within this broad genre, there are subgenres that contribute ideas of how we imagine the future. The subgenres that can be seen coming from speculative fiction are fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, dystopian & utopian fiction, etc. This unit will have students analyze, read, and critically think about two subgenres of speculative fiction: dystopian and utopian fiction. Using both types of fiction, students will be exposed to different versions and interpretations of the future.
There are several texts that come to mind when beginning this unit like Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale or Brave New World. However, these texts can be challenging for students, especially struggling readers or multilingual learners. In the past five years, I have observed the majority of my students struggle to finish a whole novel or even a whole chapter of a book. Many of my students have struggled reading novels due to the lack of reading stamina, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. However, during our class independent reading time I noticed that almost all of my students gravitate towards the graphic novel section in our classroom library. I would look around my classroom and see students who were just asleep after reading a short story, now fully engaged with a graphic novel. Graphic novels have won over many of my students, even my reluctant readers. Some of my favorite things about graphic novels are that they have helped my students visualize the story, boost their reading comprehension, and made reading more enjoyable for them.
Therefore, the idea of this unit was born: using graphic novels to explore the genre of speculative fiction. In this unit, students will be using the lens of graphic novels to analyze topics such as: class, climate change, privatization, and power. This unit will take parts of dystopian novels such as Parable of the Sower and 1984 and compare them to their graphic novel adaptations. Within this unit students will analyze and dissect how graphic novels portray futuristic societies. Additionally, students will ponder upon the questions of how does one predict the future and how do graphic novels play a part in illustrating what a society looks like in the future? The central texts that will be used in this unit will be: Parable of the Sower: Graphic Novel Adaptation and 1984: The Graphic Novel.
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