Overview

Students continue to engage with works by Edgar Allen Poe (“The Black Cat”) in order to determine narrator reliability, and use alternate texts to continue to differentiate between reliable texts and unreliable texts, related to issues of mental illness. Students annotate the texts (song and text), isolating literary cues and tropes for unreliability in more complex literary texts. They use heuristics (following plot, characters, symbolism, unusual things, character map, and unreliability) to promote comprehension of the text. In the end, students develop an argument of judgment regarding the reliability of the narrator in “The Black Cat.”

Guiding Questions

  • What makes a character unreliable? What makes a narrator unreliable?
  • How do you know when someone (character or narrator) is telling the truth?
  • What does the truth telling of the character say about him/her (in terms of an individual, his/her world-view and human-nature)?

Texts/Materials

Activities

1. Famed Jazz singer, Nina Simone sung the Animals classic, “Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood.” Again, this song deals with mental illness. Have students annotate the song, and then fill out the heuristic to determine narrator reliability. Afterwards, play the song, and tell students to pay close attention to how Simone’s singing style contributes to the tone and mood of the song, and how it embodies the theme of depression. This should be followed by a whole class discussion.

2. Give students “The Black Cat.” Have students read the text slowly as it is challenging, and there are multiple vocabulary words that may require attention. Students should have access to a dictionary. They can annotate to document their thinking, ask questions, react, clarify, and dialogue with the text. Also, provide students with the heuristics sheets to fill out as they read.

3. Have students share their annotations and worksheet with a partner. Then, have students share out and discuss as a whole class, particularly focusing on issues around the reliability of the narrator.

4. If students have access to iPoe, have them independently examine the app. The teacher should facilitate around the room, asking students to share the ways in which the app is functioning differently than the text version of the story. The teacher can ask guiding questions as a means to encourage students to draw comparisons between the visuals they created in their mind as they read the text versus the visuals created by the app designer.

6. After annotating, gathering evidence, and examining the story through multiple avenues of exploration, it’s important to have the ability to transfer that thinking to a compelling piece of writing. Students should draft an essay, responding to the following:

  • Is the narrator of “The Black Cat” reliable? Defend your answer with textual evidence and be sure to explain why the narrator acts the way he does. What does this say about his world? What does this say about our world?

Assessment

The following are means of assessing students during activities so instruction can be adjusted and differentiated according to students’ needs.

  • Completion of “Hints From the Text” heuristic of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” sung by Nina Simone
  • Annotation of “Black Cat”
  • Completion of Heuristics for comprehension of text
  • Completion of argument of judgment regarding reliability of narrator