And the Story Continues...

Picking up where we left off yesterday, the students of Room 503 continued on the second and, then, the final "layer" of their Gilgamesh art activity.

After beginning the activity yesterday with a pencil drawing of one of the "main events" from chapters 1-4 of Gilgamesh, the students went over the drawing with either black pencil and/or black marker. The black pencils and markers were used to enhance, accentuate or highlight the first "layer" of the drawing.

Finally, the students used water color paints to add a third and final "layer" to their work - mood, tone, texture. The water colors were to be used to help the artist get across a greater feeling for what the event was being depicted.

The exercise was used to demonstrate the "layering" that occurs in all stories. When creating a story, one has a basic plot and/or outline. The plot is then filled with characters, locations and events. Then it is decorated with details and, of course, different tones and textures. It is told from a specific perspective, or from several, each adding a point of view that can be accepted or rejected by the reader.

When an actual event occurs, and someone who was present tells the story of the event to someone else, it is, of course told from the witness' point of view. It is colored by that person's memory and that person's style of storytelling. When the story is told again, by a secondary source, the story changes somewhat in the re-telling. That person's recollection and style come into play, and so on.

And so it is with a series of twelve tablets written in cuneiform long ago, unearthed by archaeologists, translated into many different languages, and then translated and re-translated again many times over. What does the reader of one translation receive? What does another? And how is it actually taken in and processed?

Our classroom gets a taste of this every day in the re-telling of each chapter. What do we remember? How do we remember it? What images stand out? What feelings are evoked?

Is your head swimming with "layers" of thoughts? Mine is!

Cheers,
Ms. Pitman