 |
Teaching Literature at Key Stage 3 and 4
Prose
Teaching Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat
Further activities (either individual, pair, or small group based)
- Develop the last activity further to come up with a series of comprehension questions on the story, which should focus on the areas of
- language
- plot
- character
- style of writing.
These can then be collated and discussed with the whole class, or exchanged with another pair / group for consideration and 'answering'.
- Research and collect into an anthology other texts which relate in some way to The Black Cat, including poems and other stories (including, possibly, others by Poe), audio and video materials, and pictures. Be prepared to present your collection to the rest of the group, pointing out how it affects your understanding of the original story.
- Explore the question of point of view in the story, focusing on the narrative voice, its placing in the third person, and the possibility of other viewpoints which remain silent in the story itself. The narrator's wife, for example, may have an interesting story to tell, perhaps in the form of a hidden diary up to the point of her death.
- Other 'empathetic' explorations are possible; for example:
- the final police report, detailing the investigation and arrest
- the narrator's own final statement and confession
- the report of the American equivalent of the Cats' Protection League.
- Re-write the story in the form of a ballad, for which it is very suitable: it has the macabre and supernatural elements, sense of tragic decline and disintegration of love, and an atmosphere of dark sensationalism. In terms of the apparently motiveless taking of life leading to a train of self-destruction, the story may relate to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
- The story also lends itself to other kinds of adaptation; there are opportunities in the following to choose from:
- a short film, storyboarded and scripted
- an artistic design, possibly for the cover of a new edition, or to advertise the film just mentioned; there are numerous examples on Google Images
- a dramatic interpretation, perhaps using mime and music to create the right sort of atmosphere.
- Consider what may have occurred before the start of the story and write a 'prequel', concentrating on the psychology of the central character.
 
|
|
