AP Language: Quote Displacement Activity

In this lesson, students will choose pages from a scene from an assigned novel (this can be done with a shorter text, too). Students will start by choosing significant dialogue and writing in the middle of a blank page (included in the template). They will reflect on the context of the quote and consider the images, actions, details of the setting that surround the dialogue.

They will illustrate this scene. Either switching with a partner or for their own quote, students will then imagine that quotation in a different context, a different setting and illustrate the scene. After, students will turn their reimagined dialogue and setting/scene into a narrative.

Before the Lesson

Students should be familiar with setting and how writers establish influential settings in narratives, specifically fiction. Before starting the activity, have students read a portion of a longer work so that they can understand the context behind the scenes and be able to discuss the deeper meaning of their images and setting. 

Materials and Resources: 

• downloadable lesson template 
• colored pencils or markers for illustrating

What to Do:

1. As a class, review the power of imagery in creating settings.

2. Ask students to work in partners to find key images from the assigned reading, identify the targeted sense, the tone, or significance of the image (significance might include effect on character, action/plot/conflict, reflection of cultural values, for example), and words that describe the setting overall. This can also be done as a class to get them thinking about how and why readers respond to key images.

3. Be sure to state whether or not students can pull from this list or if they need to find their own images and scenes for the remainder of the activity.

4. Ask students to choose a scene from assigned reading pages from a novel (or this can be done with a shorter text). Students will start by choosing significant dialogue and writing in the middle of a blank page (included in the template). Remind students that they need to defend why this dialogue and scene is integral to the reading as a whole thus far.

5. Prompt students to spend time reflecting on the context of the quote and consider the images, actions, and details of the setting that surround the dialogue. Students should spend time carefully illustrating this scene. 

6. Either switching with a partner or for their own quote, students will then imagine that quotation in a different context, a different setting, and illustrate the revised/new scene. To further engage the class in this process, the teacher can put commonly chosen quotes on a Jamboard page, and ask students to identify scenes in which that dialogue would be found to help students find inspiration.

7. After, students will turn their reimagined dialogue and setting/scene into a narrative.

Quote Displacement Activity 

The sensory details or figurative language are used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions. On a physical level, imagery uses terms and descriptions related to the five senses; we refer to visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory imagery. Sometimes, the imagery is static, meaning it does not change. For example, in the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the man and the boy travel between houses, stores, and wooded areas, and each is described with its own specific characters, but most are illustrated in the same way. Reflect on your reading for the assigned pages, and make note of the following details, descriptions, images, and tones.

Imagery is often used to specifically describe setting, especially when the setting directly influences the characters, such as their motivations and their relationships with one another, as well as the conflicts that they encounter throughout the story. Similarly, sometimes images that are included in the story juxtapose, or contrast, with the other images that surround it. When this happens, it is possible that the image can become a symbol or a way to heighten the event, action, setting, context, character relationships, etc.

Directions: Return to the assigned pages of your text. Identify the most significant images that you feel have the most influence on the characters, the action, and/or the way the readers understand the events and meaning.

In the space above the line, illustrate the scene. Be sure to show the relationship between the specific images and the surrounding environment or context of the novel. How does it work in conjunction with the literal and figurative place and events surrounding the images? Put your key quote from the scene in the middle of the box, illustrating the scene around it.

Then, annotate your drawing to include:

• keywords/phrases/imagery examples that inspired your drawing.
• the implicit symbolic meaning that emerges from these images in this scene.

Below the line, draw your revised context interpretations. Reimagine the same quotation in a different context. Illustrate the scene in which this quotation could appear. You should change the setting to reflect a different cultural milieu, genre, and character composition.

Download the activity