My Concepts of Nature class was discussing "A White Heron," Sarah Orne Jewett's lyrical story about a young girl whose love for a bird causes her to sever ties with the human community, when my students started riffing on alternative endings.
She could have fallen out of the tree--or jumped!
And landed on a white heron!
Or the white heron could have magically saved her.
Or the hunter could have shot her--intentionally (to punish her for not revealing the location of the heron) or accidentally (not realizing that the innocent girl had been transmogrified into a heron).
I had to stop them before they started inserting vampires and zombies into Jewett's bucolic setting. Sarah Orne Jewett couldn't have written "The Writhing Bloodstained Zombie-Bird of Doom," but the task would give my students no trouble at all.
1 comment:
This made me smile.
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