Third Project- The Dew Breaker Stories Analyzation Game

Kaitlyn Mader

Dr. Helms

Currents in Global Literature

18 November 2020

Third Project- The Dew Breaker Stories Analyzation Game

            For my third project, I decided to do another interactive and more visual project for the assignment.  I chose to focus my project on Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker stories.  I found The Dew Breaker stories very interesting, and I was very drawn into reading them.  I enjoyed how the stories were loosely related to each other.  I thought this really added to the overall effect that the stories gave off. 

            Because of the fact that the stories are loosely related, I wanted to do an interactive sort of matching game.  This game is inspired by the board game Dixit, however it is a bit different.  The players of the game will most likely be students, or people who have read and analyzed The Dew Breaker stories.  The teacher, or “storyteller”, or whoever is running the game will have a deck of playing cards with pictures of each of the characters from all of The Dew Breaker stories.  There will be another deck of cards with themes on all of the cards.  The players will be shown both decks of cards and they will have to match the cards with the players on them to the cards with the themes on them.  By the end of the game the players should have different piles of themes with several different characters in the piles that they have created.  After they have created their piles, the students will have to write about why they chose to put which players into which piles.  They will also have to write about how they found the different stories to connect with each other.

I really like this idea of a game for a classroom because I think it would be a fun way for students to engage in what they are reading about.  I also think this exercise would help the students to comprehend what is going on in the stories better, since they would have to discuss and match several characters to a specific theme and then write about their findings.  This might cause the students have to go back to the text and re-read so that they have a clearer understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.  I also think this game would be beneficial because I think a lot of people learn better and faster visually.  Having the physical playing cards in front of them with pictures of the characters on them and another card that they can physically match the photo to might encourage the students to do this activity, and it would probably be more enjoyable for them.  The outcome of this game can also be up for discussion between the students and the instructor.  There are several characters in this story who could belong in multiple categories, so this could cause a discussion to open up to have the students decide which categories the characters fit best into.  The instructor could encourage the students to pull quotes from the text to support their evidence of why they think which characters belong in which categories.  There wouldn’t necessarily be “winners” for this game, it is more of just a learning activity.  Unless there are students who would rather have there be a winner for the activity, then this could be discussed further with the instructor.

Themes Cards

-Guilt

-Grief

-Trauma

-Abuse

-Naivety

-Perpetrators

Player Cards

-Ka

-Papa

-Anne

-Michel

-Dany

-Eric/Husband

-Wife

-Nadine

-Emmanuel

-Rézia

-Mariselle

-Freida

-Aline

-Beatrice

THEME CARDS CATEGORIES	PLAYER CARDS
Guilt	Papa, Claude, Eric’s Wife, Eric, Nadine, Emmanuel
Grief	Anne, Rézia, Freida, Mariselle, Dany, Michel
Abuse	Beatrice, Rézia
Naivety	Aline, Ka
Perpetrators	Papa, Claude
Trauma	All Characters