Jonas and "The Journey"

It's great to be able to analyze a book for theme, conflict, or character development.  This is something that we practice regularly throughout the school year.  However, I often find that the best student writing comes when they are given the task of making text-to-text connections.  In order to facilitate this type of thinking and analysis, we've been reading a couple of poems and analyzing each for its possible connections to Jonas in The Giver.   We started with Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken."  We discussed how this poem can serve as a metaphor for decisions we make in life.  (We go down one path, but we may always wonder how life would be different if we had chosen a different path.)  Next, we read Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey."

In case you aren't familiar with this poem, here's the full-text to "The Journey." (It's worth the read.)

 

Students worked with a partner to identify possible connections between the narrator of the poem and Jonas.  As you can see, they had a lot of ideas!  Next, students will choose one of the poems and write a brief essay of the connections they found.   

Allusion in The Giver

In Lois Lowry's The Giver, Jonas, the main character, plays a game of catch using an apple.  Initially, this scene may seem unimportant; however, if we take the time to go deeper, we can recognize and appreciate Lowry's use of allusion.  When given the chance to pause and think about what the apple could symbolize, it didn't take too long for one or more students to see the allusion to the biblical Tree of Knowledge and its forbidden fruit.  This was the starting point for a discussion of all the "forbidden" knowledge that Jonas receives from the Giver.  Students worked with a partner to list examples which were then shared with the class and displayed on the board.