Reader: Jennifer Horner

Respondent: Kathy Martin

Indian Boarding School:

The Runaways

UA 26-27

Louise Erdrich

More about Louise Erdrich:

Tiffany went over most of her biography last week however I have a couple of things to add. In Louise’s life she has wrote and published 9 novels, 2 books of poetry, 2 children’s books, 1 book of essays, and several short stories and poems. She now lives in Minnesota and owns a small independent bookstore, Birchbark Books. Her motto is said to be “Overdoing It”. She is recognized in most of her work for her humorous and sarcastic voices. Most of Louise’s poems are poems of tension between the Indian and white worlds.

Term:

Metaphor- A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using the word like or as.

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_l.htm

Objectives:

3b. "Quick check" on minority status: What is the individual’s or group’s relation to the law or other dominant institutions? Does "the law" (e. g., the police) make things better or worse?

2c. "Quick check" on minority status: What is the individual’s or group’s relation to the law or other dominant institutions? Does "the law" (e. g., the police) make things better or worse?

5e. To emphasize how all speakers and writers may use common devices of human language to make poetry, including narrative, poetic devices, and figures of speech.

Interpretation of poem:

It seems that this poem is very personal to Louise. She seems to put a lot into this poem. This poem demonstrates the truth of what it was really like to have lived through such bad treatment. In this school the children are learning what it feels like to be hated instead of just learning.

I think that the children are not actually running away; running away is something that the children have dreamed about for so long it they make it feel real. It seem like a dream because in stanza two, line five it talks about the sheriff waiting to take the children back to the boarding school. The children know that they can not run away for a place that is familiar, known as “home” because they will always be caught at “midrun” and will be returned to the boarding school.

Questions for Class:

1. In using objective 5e, name some of the metaphors and what they might really be talking about?