Final Project

Excerpt from Anne Frank's Diary
Wednesday, July 8, 1942
Hiding...where would we hide? In the city? In the country? In a house? In a shack? When, where, how...? These were questions I wasn’t allowed to ask, but they still kept running through my mind. Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a schoolbag. The first think I stuck in was this diary, and then curlers, handkerchiefs, schoolbooks, a comb, and some old letters. Preoccupied by the thought of going into hiding, I stuck the craziest things in the bag, but I’m not sorry. Memories mean more to me than dresses. (Frank, 1991, pg. 20)

Many of the Holocaust novels involve characters forced to flee from their home and to reduce the importance of their lives to the meer contents of a suitcase. Metaphorically, the luggage creates a text – images that suggest a multiplicity of possible narratives – about people forced into exile, forced to search for identity; luggage carrying uprooted and imprisoned identities, a testament to human life and complexity. The collection of baggage evokes images of the great loss of human life. Therefore, as fragments of the characters' past, these suitcases immediately become suggestive of displacement, dislocation, and annihilation. It stands as a memorial.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum depicts the story behind suitcases: A Forgottten Suitcase and suitcase used (ca. 1939) by a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe to Japan. At the Children's Holocaust Education Center in Tokyo, people come to see Hana's Suitcase, sitting in a glass case. The owner of the suitcase was Hana Brady. She died in Auschwitz in 1944 at age 13.

For a culminating project, you are to collaboratively represent your novel’s character’s life within the confines of a suitcase. You and your blogging partner are responsible for completing the project together!Collaboratively, you must consider what the character’s values and to consider issues the character might have faced as he/she prepared to leave their home.

To complete the suitcase project, you and your blogging partner must collect or create the following:

1. A suitcase to hold all the items. Your character MUST be able to carry the suitcase for at least 20 kilometres.
2. A list of the packed items. Everything you intend to pack must fit inside the suitcase.
3. A suitcase tag listing the name of the character and the novel.
4. A list of items that your character had to leave behind because there was not enough room or it would be too heavy to carry.
5. The contents of the suitcase must be a memorial to the protagonist in your novel:
- Three diary excerpts – entries that depict the character’s life in the beginning, middle, and end of the novel. Text excerpts would be advisable to include.
-Photographs – A visual documentary that depict the character’s life in pictures. All pictures must be cited.
-Research – Summaries of historical events that occurred in the novel. Research must be accompanied with citations.
-Realia – Items that the protagonist would pack. Each of the items must be accompanied with the reasoning of their inclusion. In other words, you must explain and justify their importance to your protagonist.

The reading of your novel must be complete by the end of this week.
All blog comments must be published POST #6 to be published.