Harriet Jacobs - The Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Harriet Jacobs - The Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Harriet Jacobs - The Kansas City Repertory Theatre
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PRE OR POST-SHOW ACTIVITY<br />
HARRIET JACOBS<br />
LEARNING GUIDE | 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> Rep’s production of <strong>Harriet</strong> <strong>Jacobs</strong> is based on <strong>Jacobs</strong>’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.<br />
Below is an excerpt. (<strong>The</strong> full text of the book can be found digitally here:<br />
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html.)<br />
Literary Value<br />
Read the selection aloud and discuss. Ask students to find imagery, alliteration, metaphor and other literary techniques.<br />
Discuss how <strong>Harriet</strong>’s storytelling affects the reader.<br />
Vocabulary<br />
Identify unknown words and define them. Discuss how the “new” words clarify <strong>Harriet</strong>’s narrative.<br />
Personal Response<br />
Isolate images and draw, paint or sculpt a visual art piece reflecting images or thoughts in <strong>Harriet</strong>’s narrative or students’<br />
responses to the words.<br />
How does this section of source material influence your ideas about what the performance may look or sound like?<br />
If you have seen the play, how were <strong>Harriet</strong>’s thoughts and observations reflected in the performance?<br />
XXIII. STILL IN PRISON.<br />
When spring returned, and I took in the little patch of green the aperture commanded, I<br />
asked myself how many more summers and winters I must be condemned to spend thus.<br />
I longed to draw in a plentiful draught of fresh air, to stretch my cramped limbs, to have<br />
room to stand erect, to feel the earth under my feet again. My relatives were constantly<br />
on the lookout for a chance of escape; but none offered that seemed practicable, and<br />
even tolerably safe. <strong>The</strong> hot summer came again, and made the turpentine drop from the<br />
thin roof over my head.<br />
During the long nights, I was restless for want of air, and I had no room to toss and turn.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was but one compensation; the atmosphere was so stifled that even mosquitos<br />
would not condescend to buzz in it. With all my detestation of Dr. Flint, I could hardly<br />
wish him a worse punishment, either in this world or that which is to come, than to<br />
suffer what I suffered in one single summer. Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the<br />
free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up in here, as the only means of avoiding the<br />
cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me! I don't know what kept life within me.<br />
Again and again, I thought I should die before long; but I saw the leaves of another<br />
autumn whirl through the air, and felt the touch of another winter. In summer the most<br />
terrible thunder storms were acceptable, for the rain came through the roof, and I rolled<br />
up my bed that it might cool the hot boards under it. Later in the season, storms sometimes<br />
wet my clothes through and through, and that was not comfortable when the air<br />
grew chilly. Moderate storms I could keep out by filling the chinks with oakum.<br />
<strong>Kansas</strong> <strong>City</strong> <strong>Repertory</strong> <strong>The</strong>atre: <strong>Harriet</strong> <strong>Jacobs</strong> | 25
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