BLIND

BLIND

• 8.1(A)
• 8.1(D)
• 8.2(B)
• 8.5(C)
• 8.5(E)
• 8.5(F)
• 8.5(G)
• 8.5(I)
• 8.6(A)
• 8.6(B)
• 8.6(C)
• 8.6(D)
• 8.6(E)
• 8.6(F)
• 8.6(G)
• 8.6(H)
• 8.6(I)
• 8.7(B)
• 8.10(C)

LESSON STANDARDS

By the end of this lesson, students will understand the central themes and characters in the novel "Blind" by Rachel DeWoskin, and they will be able to analyze how the author uses personal experiences and ideas to convey a perspective and describe situations or events. Students will also make connections to real-life experiences and culture.

Learning Intention

• I will use appropriate literary terminology to discuss the novel.
• I will practice summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing information from the text.

Language Objectives

• Students will be able to identify and discuss key themes in the novel "Blind" and provide textual evidence to support their understanding.
• Students will be able to use appropriate literary terminology to analyze characters and the author's writing style.

• Students will connect the novel's themes and characters to real-life experiences and culture.

SUCCESS CRITERIA

“I can’t stop thinking really fast, so fast it’s scary. And I can’t sleep. And I can’t stop making up weird refrains —like ‘dark is cool, light is heat’—and repeating them to myself,” What do you think this quote means?

Rachel DeWoskin’s novel Blind tells the story of Emma Silver, a teenage girl who loses her eyesight in a freak accident and is forced to adjust to a life without vision—in addition to dealing with the usual trials and tribulations of high school. Emma describes her life in the months and years after the accident, as she struggles to accept her disability and find normalcy amid the physical and emotional changes of adolescence. This excerpt revolves around Emma’s relationship with her therapist, Dr. Sassoman, who is there to help Emma deal with the pain and disillusionment of her sudden blindness. *Watch StudySync Video

INTRODUCTION

a repeated phrase or statement, usually in a poem or song

refrain

helpful in dealing with something difficult (often used with strategy, mechanism, or skill)

coping

to persuade by offering money or other incentive

bribe

a strong liking for something

appetite

I couldn't find a picture example of "utter" so here is a Bitmoji of my face.

to the highest degree; absolute

utter

• Blind people often have trouble sleeping because of changes in lifestyle and because lack of light perception interrupts the normal day-night cycle.
• Dr. Sassoman is a therapist, a trained professional who helps people with physical or mental health problems cope with challenges in their lives.

Specific Vocabulary

• Braille is a system of writing that uses raised dots on paper. It allows blind people to read using their fingers.
• A brailler is a machine for writing using the braille system. There are also computers that can be used to read and write braille.

Connection of Ideas

• Dr. Sassoman’s treatment for Emma’s problems plays an important role in this excerpt. The therapy process typically involves identifying the issues, determining strategies to help change behaviors, assessing the progress, and making adjustments if necessary.

CONTEXT

After losing her eyesight, teenager Emma Silver struggles to adjust to a life of blindness. Emma tells her therapist about her rapid, anxious thoughts and how she keeps creating “weird refrains,” such as “dark is cool, light is heat.” Her therapist explains that she is developing coping strategies. Emma has a hard time believing this and worries about going back to school. Emma’s therapist visits her at home and asks where she stores her anger, but Emma just shrugs. The therapist hands her a carton of eggs and tells her that she can throw them wherever she wants. Emma counts her steps across the porch and tosses eggs at the unseen world outside. Then, she goes back inside and hurls eggs throughout the house. Hearing the eggs smash against the walls, Emma realizes that this sound is something that she would have never heard if she hadn’t had the accident.

SUMMARY

GLITTER PRESENTATION

From Chapter 2 Last winter made me realize that even if I stayed on the gold couch without moving for fifty years, we would all still get old and die. In case getting blinded hadn’t made it clear, recovering taught me that my small life didn’t matter to the world overall, which I don’t think is something you’re supposed to understand until you’re old. But I had to learn it early for some reason. My mom would say it made me smart, but actually it just made me desperate. When it snowed in December, I knew in this weird, sudden way that after winter it would be spring, which meant summer would come again. I’d have been blind for an entire year, the year itself another utter loss. I told Dr. Sassoman that I was scaring my little sisters and myself and losing my mind. It was snowing outside of her office window, and I was trying to feel the cold sound of it. “I can’t stop thinking really fast, so fast it’s scary. And I can’t sleep. And I can’t stop making up weird refrains —like ‘dark is cool, light is heat’—and repeating them to myself,” I admitted, scared, and suddenly embarrassed, too. But to my surprise, she clapped her hands together. The pop made me jump, and she touched my wrist with her cool, papery fingers. I thought of snowflakes cut from coffee filters, wanted to use scissors again. “I’m glad to hear about the sayings, Emma,” she said, squeezing my wrist a bit. “Those are coping strategies you’re creating for yourself.” She waited. Dr. Sassoman has a big appetite for awkward pauses.

“No!” I said, my voice too loud and hard for the soft white room, the snow, the moment. “I’m not coping! I’m crazy. I’ve missed an entire half a year of school, and I’ll never catch up, and if I have to be in a different grade from Logan and all my friends for the rest of my life, I’m going to die. And I can never go back. How can I go back like this?” “You are not going to die,” she said, as usual. “And you are coping. That’s what those ‘sayings’ you’re making up are—that’s you coping. Human beings are capable of curing our own miseries if we are courageous enough,” she said. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m not courageous enough.” “I think you are,” she said, and then she repeated it, like I was deaf, too. “We have to figure out a way to help you sleep better, though.” That night, right before bed, I asked my mom if my brailler had cost six thousand dollars. “I don’t remember the exact price, sweetie,” she said, “but we got a good one, so you’ll have it for a long time and it can be both your laptop and your brailler. And we wanted to…” “To what?” I asked. “I don’t know—make braille more fun?”

We both waited, me because I wanted to punish her—for trying to bribe or comfort me, for pretending there could be anything fun about this. She was quiet because she wanted to get this right, but couldn’t. Finally she just said, “Please, don’t worry about it, Emma, okay?” I wanted to rat Sarah out, to tell my mom that she had made sure I knew how much that stupid thing cost. But I didn’t, not because I’m kind—or even because I’d rather be nice than right—but because I knew my mom already knew. She bent to kiss me and left, and like so many nights that have followed it, I lay with my arms around Spark, thinking, Okay, dark is safe, dark is water, light is terror, light is fire, focus in, focus in, until I thought my mind would snap with the effort. Then I used, Dark is cool, light is heat, and then, Relax and close your eyes, close your eyes, relax. And, Feel it, Emma, feel it, Emma, read it to feel it, feel it to read it. Finally I fell asleep. The next time Dr. Sassoman came for one of her home visits, she talked with my parents for a while and then asked me privately where I was “keeping my anger.” I didn’t answer. “Is it in your stomach?” she proposed. “Your heart?” I shrugged. She handed me something it took me a minute to recognize. Eggs. A carton of eggs.

“What is this?” I asked. “A dozen eggs,” she said. “Do you want to throw them?” This suggestion made sense to me, and I nodded. “Where? At the walls inside? Or outside? Anywhere you want.” We went outside first, even though it was brutally cold: step one, step two, step three, four, five, end of porch, here’s the grass, the walkway, sidewalk, maple, crosswalk, traffic, oak tree. I listened hard for the engines, and then, instead of sticking my cane into the street, I threw some eggs, hard, at the sidewalk, at trees I couldn’t see, into the crosswalk I hadn’t realized I hated. Here’s a shoreline where the shell meets the pavement, shatters, yolk, white, blood. Your light, my light, red light, egg light. I listened for the cars to come and smash what was left of the eggs into nothingness. Then I felt around in the carton. I still had four eggs. “I want to throw these inside,” I told Dr. Sassoman, and she said that was fine; that she would clean them up afterward and I didn’t have to worry about whatever mess we made. Hearing the eggs crack into the walls—of our living room, Naomi’s and my bedroom, the kitchen, and the upstairs bathroom, I thought, This is a sound I never realized I’d hear, an experience I wouldn’t be having if my accident hadn’t happened. But that was it. I didn’t feel anything about it one way or another, and I didn’t stay to listen to Dr. Sassoman or my mom —or whoever did it—clean the egg off the glass cabinets in the living room,

the bathroom mirror, or the wall above my desk. When Dr. Sassoman asked later whether it had helped, whether I was feeling any better, I said nothing. Because I had no idea. How can you know the truth about anything you’re still inside of? Excerpted from Blind by Rachel DeWoskin, published by the Penguin Group.

THANK YOU!