The Hunting Accident: a true story of crime and poetry and Leopold and Loeb Crime of the Century

The Hunting Accident: High School Teacher’s Guide

The Hunting Accident is, at its core, the story of Matt Rizzo and his relationship with his son Charlie. It is a narrative shaped by mistakes, sacrifices, love, and friendship, and to what extent loyalty must be honored. It is also a story about education - what it means, how it trqnsfoms, Iand why it matters.

At the center of the book is Matt's journey: how he was sent to prison, how he met the infamous killer Nathan Leopold, Jr. (of Leopold and Loeb, perpetrators of what was once called “the crime of the century”), and of how, through that unlikely relationship, he was introduced to literture, Lphilosophy, music and art - tools - lifelines really - tht allowed both men, in very different ways, to rise out of despair and move towardstheir own ways to raise themselves from their individual pits of despair to lead lives of hope and purpose.

 It is a book for mature readers as it deals with serious topics including the facts of a brutal murder. For that reason, it is most appropriate for high school and older readers.

The Hunting Accident is exquisitely designed, told, and illustrated by David Carlson and Landis Blair. With richly drawn black and white illustrations gracing brilliantly designed pages and panels, part of the genius of this storytelling is its complex use and integration of the graphic medium itself to create a compelling, engaging storytelling experience one cannot get from prose alone. That this is a story about a blind man, told through richly detailed visual imagery, only deepens its impact.

The Hunting Accident received significant critical acclaim, including the prestigious Fauve D’or (Album of the Year) 2020 award, and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. It was also voted Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year. 

PLOT SUMMARY

The story opens in Chicago, 1959. Charlie, a young boy, meets his dad Matt, for the first time at a bus stop in front of the main library. We learn that Charlie’s Mom recently died and he’s coming to live with his father he haas never known - a father who is blind.

curious and uncertain, Charlie asks Matt about his life. Matt begins with a story from his own childhood: in 1925, when Matt was about Charlie’s age, he and two friends (Enzo and Messina) took Matt’s father’s gun and went hunting near where the infamous Leopold and Loeb had kidnapped and brutally murdered Bobby Franks in Spring, 1924. Not far from where Bobby Frank’s body was found, Messina takes the gun to shoot a deer, and Matt is blinded after being hit “square in the face with the blast from the shotgun” (p.14). This account initilly frames how Charlie - and the reader - understand Matt.

As Charlie grows older, however, he begins to follow a troubling path. Alongside friends, he becomes involved in burglaries. When caught, the police pressure thim to identify his accomplices in exchange for leniency. Charlie refuses, invoking omertà—a code of silence rooted in loyalty.

Recogniing the stakes, Matt asks to peak privately with his son. It is here that the truth emerges: The hunting accident was a lie. Matt reveals that he was actually blinded during a robbery he committed as a teenager. Like Charlie, he refused to betray his accomplices - and paid thte price by being sent to Stateville Prison in Joliet, Illinois.

From this point, the story shifts to Matt's experience in prison. His circumstances are especially brutal. As a blind inmate, he is denied basic accommodations and is forced to rely on othes who exploit him.

It is in this environment that Matt encoutners Nathan Leopold. Following the brutal murder of Leopold's accomplice, Richard Loeb, Leopold is placed in a shared cell with Matt under heightened supervisio. Initially, the arrangaement is tense. Mat, isolated and despairing contemplates suicide.

Leopold intervenes - not by offering comfo, but by offering a condision. He agrees to help Matt if Matt first engages with literature, beginning with Dante's Inferno.

This presents an immediate obstacle: Matt cannot read. In response, Leopold (intellectually brilliant and versed in multiple lagnagues) teaches himself Braile and then teaches Matt. What follows is one of the most poerful tranaformations in the book. Through literature - Dante, Plato, Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Keats - Matt begins to develop not just literacy, but a new way of seeing the world.

At the same time, Matt transforms Leoppold. While Leoppold is intellectually brilliant, he struggles to communicate effectively with other inmates. Matt helps him translate complex ideas into accessible language, enabling thtem to teach others. In one striking example, Matt reimagines Inferno as a shadow puppet play, using the structure of Dante's nine circles of Hell to reflect life inside prison.

Gradually, Matt's perspective shifts. What began as a life defined by darkness and despair becomes something else entirely. By the time he complete Inferno, he no longer seeks escapte through death.

Ultimately, Matt’s story serves its intended purpose: it reaches Charlie. It provides him with a framework for making his own decisions - about loyalty, truth, and responsibility.

After Matt’s death, Charlie honors his father by submitting Matt's writings to the Newbury Library and continues to engage with Matt’s work and ideas to this day.

In short, The Hunting Accident offers a rich framework for discussion - particularly for high school students navigating questions of identity, morality, friendships, and purpose

At its core, the book explores:

• The complixity of father-son relationships

• The intricacies of love and friendship

• The possibility - and limits - of rehabilitation

• The transformative power of the Arts, classic literature and meaningful education

• The role of imagination in shaping how we perceive reality

• The idea that people - and their stories - are rarely what they first appear to be.

  
  

ABOUT THIS TEACHING GUIDE 

The Hunting Accident has layered stories, themes, characters, and literary and cultural references. Below, I present you with select options and teaching suggestions to choose from: I give an overview here and then go into greater detail below:

• Plots and themes

  • Seeing 

  • The powers and perils of the mind and imagination

  • Truth and honesty

  • The goals of education

• Character development and analysis

  • Leopold, Matt, and Charlie

  • Father/Son relationships

• Critical Reading and making inferences by analyzing:

  • Language Usage

  • Close reading: 

    • The Voice of the poet

    • Discussing Keats

    • Discussing Keats’s truth of the Imagination, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Leopold’s Life of the mind

    • Discussing Emerson

• Reading, Writing, and Communicating Effectively

• Social Studies Correlates 

  • Capital punishment, prison and rehabilitation 

  • Benefits and challenges of teaching the great books

• Modes of Storytelling, Design, and Visual Literacy, and the Role of Imagination

PLOTS AND THEMES 

Seeing.  What makes this so interesting is that through text, images, and design Carlson and Blair relay to readers how a blind man sees. Here are some points you may want to explore and discuss around the concept of “seeing”:

• Introduce the concept of ‘seeing’ as portrayed in The Hunting Accident and discuss how the authors use the graphic novel medium to relay "sight". You may also want to discuss the irony and challenges of such an endeavor. 

• Follow up: Have students search for references for ‘seeing’ sprinkled throughout the book’s text, illustrations, and/or design. This can be done individually (in class or as a homework assignment) or in groups. If done in groups, you may want to do this as a fishbowl activity, having each group taking turns presenting an example they found and discussing the success and/or challenges of these references. For example:

  • Pp. 67-68: Matt asks Charlie to, “Come here, let me look at you…” and the next panel is a ⅔ page illustration of Matt ‘seeing’ Charlie.

  • Pp. 150-151: Matt “sees” his cellmate Leopold for the first time.

  • P. 222: Matt is talking to Charlie about the power of poetry and Charlie then reads an inscription in Matt’s book - one that Leopold wrote, but Matt never saw until Charlie read it to him, “You’ll never be free until you free yourself from the prison in your mind.” Matt responds, “Ha! Leopold must have written that... So I could end the darkness, once and for all.”

  • P.389: Matt is telling Leopold and the Warden how he started the library fire to prevent Leopold from going to the “hole.” As he tells his story, he narrates his thoughts: “I had heard plenty of stories about guys that lost their minds after they went into the Hole. Fear is an interesting emotion. When it’s present, you can almost touch it. Leopold carried his fear in his hands. I could feel them trembling through the table.” Here Matt sees Leopold’s fear by feeling it.

• Incorporating Matt’s discussion of Keats’ “truth of imagination” (found on pages 108, and 190-191) ask students: How might imagination affect how we see and interpret beauty or the world around us? How do our experiences influence our imagination and our ability to see and understand the world around us? 

• You may also want to unpack how Carlson and Blair show us how Matt sees through the use of sound, image, and text. Here are just a few examples:

  • Pp.18-23, in illustrations we see how Matt lives in the dark and through image and text we learn how he navigates the dark. 

  • Pp.28-29, Charlie “sees” and hears rhythms of his house that define and underscore his life with Matt and notes, “Living with my father made me aware of the sound of our home. The rhythm of his Brailler, the drip of his coffee, and the flick of his zippo lighter, punctuated by the old Pablo Casals record that underscored our lives.”

  • P. 34, we see how Matt sees and writes words through Braille. 

  • P. 75, “My father saw the world through his fingertips. They were thick and calloused from looking at everything. And yet he could still read the smallest detail.”

  • Pp.132-135, containing predominantly illustrations depicts what Matt saw and heard when sentenced and sent to prison.

  • Pp.276-278, illustrates how Matt sees/imagines Leopold’s scratched recording of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major.

The Power and Perils of the Mind: How objective is our sense of perception? 

At first, Matt sees prison as ominous and dangerous. Through talking with Leopold about Dante, Plato, Keats and others, Leopold helps change Matt’s perceptions. Matt discovers the power of the mind to free or imprison and to see death or hope. 

In this section we unpack the concept of the mind and how it influences perception:

• Discussion suggestion: What is Leopold trying to teach Matt through the classic works of Dante, Plato, Keats and others about perceiving the world around him: 

  • How does Leopold get Matt to “see” that prison and life isn’t dark enough to jump from the top prison floor? 

  • How does Leopold help Matt adjust his perception of the reality of prison? 

  • Have students support their opinions with concrete examples. 

[For example, (pp. 190-191) Leopold tries to illustrate to Matt how powerful his mind is by showing him how he can still see without his eyes: “… Most people think the world is out here but seeing things is a distraction… You’re living proof that the world you see lives inside your head.” He then tells Matt about Keats’ “truth of the imagination” and explains Matt’s story of hobos on the train - which turns out to be Plato’s cave allegory, where “we were never meant to be satisfied with mere shadows. But it takes courage to move beyond the shadows...” (p.204).]

• An alternative discussion: You may want to take a closer look at what we sense as real by looking more closely at Plato versus Keats. More specifically, Plato believed that while reality exists, we don’t immediately see it. Initially we only see what is real through reason and philosophy. On the other hand, Keats believed in the power and truth of the imagination. Keats, attempting to understand and explore beauty, believed that all things possessed potential beauty. It was his job as a poet to find this beauty and capture it in his poetry. In his poems (such as his Ode on a Grecian Urn), Keats would describe the beauty of a particular object and build an imagined narrative around that object to better see and understand its intrinsic beauty. Given these two perspectives, ask your students:

  • How do they make sense out of the world around them? 

  • Do students rationalize what they see or is seeing simply believing? And if so, what happens when we see something that contradicts what we initially saw and thought? 

  • How quickly, if at all, do we change our perceptions?

Truth and Honesty Matt’s lying to Charlie is something that Charlie wrestles with throughout this story. Below are teaching suggestions exploring the themes of truth and honesty. [Note: in the Character Analysis section on father/son relationships we deal with how Matt’s lies affected their relationship. Here we deal more with the theme of truth itself.] 

• Optional introduction for this theme: Discuss the following Jimmy Fallon quote: “Thank you, people who say ‘Wow, you're really photogenic,’ for not saying what you really mean: ‘Wow, you’re really ugly in person.” 

  • Have students discuss the powers and the dangers of white lies. 

  • Debate: Was Matt justified in not telling Charlie the truth on the bus their first day together? Why/why not. 

• Discuss the intricacies and challenges of telling a hard truth versus lying (for the benefit of others and/or for oneself) and the ramifications of each. Below are a few discussion suggestions: 

  • When analyzing The Hunting Accident why couldn’t Matt tell Charlie the truth about how he was blinded? 

  • Do these reasons justify his not telling the truth initially? Why and why not? 

  • OPTIONAL discussion question OR follow-up/writing assessment: Is one ever justified in withholding the truth? Is it ever appropriate to withhold truths from people you care about? Why or why not. 

Goal of Education. In this book someone always seems to be teaching someone something. Matt teaches Charlie; Leopold teaches Matt; and Matt and Leopold teach fellow inmates. Below are lesson/discussion suggestions taking a closer look at education and students’ perspectives about what educational goals should be today.

• Analyze/discuss what Matt taught Charlie (jigsaw activity): 

  • Break the class into three groups along the following themes:

    • What Matt teaches Charlie about life in general- and why he felt that was important.

    • What Matt teaches Charlie about the power of imagination - and why he felt that was important.

    • What Matt teaches Charlie about the importance of expanding horizons out of school by participating in the arts- and why that was important to Matt.

  • Once each group has exhausted their discussions (or within the time allotted), have them present what they’ve discussed. 

• Analyze/discuss what Leopold taught Matt: In a class discussion or a writing prompt, have students relay what Leopold taught Matt, making sure students relay how what was taught was so pivotal to Matt (and later to Charlie).

• This final bullet can be a class discussion (discussing the first two bullets) and using the last as a writing/assessment activity. Our goal here is to relay the above discussions on education in The Hunting Accident to a general discussion on education and educational goals: 

  • Ask students how they think Leopold might have defined the goals of education. What were Leopold’s goals (in their opinion) for the classes he taught in prison?

  • Similarly, ask students how they think Matt might have defined the goals of education? Do students think Matt’s goals were similar/different to Leopold’s? Why?

  • Finally, have students relay what they believe the goal and role of formal education should be, why they believe this, and how it should be taught to students (who often have diverse learning preferences, experiences, and skills). When introducing this assignment, assure students that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer for what to teach or how to teach it. They should also understand that different goals and methods of teaching lead to different outcomes. 

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND ANALYSIS 

• Leopold

  • Have students chart and discuss how Leopold changes over the course of the story. 

  • How does the reader’s perspective and opinions of Leopold change, if at all? Why did opinions change or why didn’t they change?

• Matt 

  • Class discussion or writing assignment: How does Matt’s writing reflect who he is? How has he changed over the course of his life? 

  • Optional: Collect and then reread Matt’s writings throughout the book. Does reading his work separately (as opposed to intermittently throughout The Hunting Accident storytelling) influence or change your understanding of Matt or the importance this writing had to him? Why or why not? You may also want to discuss how in Matt’s writings, the main character is named “Scorto.” Scorto is Italian and means seen, perceived, or noticed. How does this influence your understanding of the content and of Matt himself?

• Charlie

  • Discuss how Charlie changes over the course of this story.

  • Discuss how Charlie’s view of his father changes. What led to these changes?

• Matt and Charlie 

  • Compare and contrast Matt and Charlie’s lives, making sure to critically evaluate how they are similar and how they are different. Make sure students can bring in concrete examples to support their positions.

• Father son relationships. There are two father/son pairs in this book: Matt and Charlie, and Nathan Leopold Sr. and Nathan Leopold Jr. There are times when both pairs struggle to be open with each other, yet they are portrayed quite differently from each other. This section explores both relationships.

  • In groups, individually, or as a class: Chart and discuss how Charlie and Matt’s relationship develops. Discuss how one influences the other. Make sure students bring in concrete examples to support their positions.

  • Discuss why Matt initially lies about how he lost his sight and its consequences. [Note we discuss Matt’s motives in more detail in the section above on truth and honesty. Here, we look at its effect on the father/son relationship.] Ask students: 

    • Why was Charlie so devastated upon learning his father lied to him… twice?

    • How might your students have reacted if they were in Charlie’s position?

    • How might they have handled it if they had been Matt, and why.

  • Compare and contrast Matt and Charlie’s father/son relationship with Leopold Jr. and Sr.’s relationship. Compare and contrast how each father/son dyad deals with honesty and truth. Discuss how the Leopold relationship was different from the Rizzo relationship, and how each relationship seemed to be a foil to the other relationship. Was this effective for successful storytelling and in accenting nuanced character development?

  • Discuss how honesty and truth influence and affect parent/child relationships. Is it ever wise to withhold truths - why or why not, and when might that be?

Critical/Close Reading and Making Inferences 

Note: While the suggestions are written out as discussions, they can be used as writing and assessment prompts as well. 

Close Reading: Language Usage in The Hunting Accident

• On page 9 Charlie tells us that, “In 1925, Leopold and Loeb were the bogeymen of every boy’s nightmares.” 

  • Optional: Create a class definition of “bogeymen”

  • Discuss why bogeymen are so effective in folktales/children’s tales. What role do they play and what lessons, if any, are they trying to teach? You may want to discuss the following article - or selected excerpts (presented below) - with your class: “What’s the Bogeyman?” by Krystal D’Costa on October 27, 2016 Scientific American online blog found at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/what-is-the-bogeyman/

    • Here are some excerpts you may want to discuss:

• “Bogeymen may very well be a universal; some variation is found in almost every culture. It goes by many names: jumbie, bhoot, Krampus, Der Schwarze Mann, Baba Yaga--however named, it’s purpose is to steal and/or punish children.”

• “The Boogeyman is there to ensure that we follow the rules...It gets its power from the persistence of folklore...This oral exchange educates on and reinforces the expectations for members of the community.”

• Discuss the quote(s) above and how they mesh with the class’ definition. How is it similar/different? What are the grounds for those differences? Why might differences exist? Where does one or the other definition fall short, if at all? 

• How is Matt’s vision of Leopold and Loeb as bogeymen similar and/or differ from what is discussed in the Scientific American blog post or the excerpts you share? Have students support why they say this. What role does the mentioning of Leopold and Loeb as bogeymen play within the storytelling? How effective is it?

• On page 36, Charlie is reading/editing some of Matt’s transcribed writing and Charlie asks Matt what truculent means. Matt defines truculent (“eager to argue or fight”) and Charlie asks, “Then why not just say that?” Matt responds, “Because truculent requires something of the reader. And the written word, in its best form, is a two-way street.” 

  • Discuss what Matt means when he says, “truculent requires something of the reader.” What does it require of the reader and why might that be an important aspect of the reading experience?

  • Discuss what Matt means when he says, “And the written word, in its best form, is a two-way street.” Ask students whether they agree with Matt about this. Should a reader be expected to put in some effort to understand what is being said or should the writer try to make his or her writing as clear as possible? Why/why not? 

  • Have students supply examples of when a written text is a successful two-way street and when it may not be. Why does it work sometimes and not others? [Note: you may want to bring in the Sender-Receiver theory of communication. See more details below.]

• Pages 134-135 are emotionally powerful pages. Page 134 consists of simple dark hashtags covering the page with an Emerson quote (from “The Tragic”): “He has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the House of Pain.” Opposite this on page 135 we see flames lapping up Matt and two black bogeymen with images of Matt with his eyeballs dangling from his hands, blood seeping from his sockets (being recently blinded) with his glasses behind him serving as windows with bars and opening to a white outside.

  • Discuss the quote - what it means, and how the image adds additional content and meaning.

  • Time permitting, you may want to have students read the essay in its entirety as there are some very interesting larger connections that can be made to themes of truth and rationality.

• On pages 191-204, readers are introduced to Plato’s cave allegory. Matt talks to Leopold about his experiences as a hobo riding the trains from Chicago, where James read (and then reenacts) Book 7 of Plato’s Republic containing Plato’s cave allegory. 

  • Background on Plato you may want to share with students:  Plato believed that reality exists, but we don’t know how to translate what we see into understanding the world around us on a fundamental level. The only way to see it is through our use of reason and philosophy. So, while we initially can only see reality’s shadows, through philosophy (and rationality) we can begin to see what truth and reality are. Plato relays this in the allegory of the cave (which is found in Book VII of The Republic, arguably Plato’s most famous work).

  • Here are some discussion suggestions when unpacking Plato with your students:

    • Discuss what allegory is with your students. 

    • What makes Plato’s story of the cave allegorical? 

    • Why is allegory used to help relay a concept or idea as opposed to just saying it? Why does (or doesn’t) it succeed here?

• On page 241, Leopold tells his prison students that, “Poetry will make you a better person.” Ask students:

  • If you had been in that room, how might you have responded to a convicted murder saying this to you? 

  • Did poetry make Leopold a better person? How/how not? Make sure students support their positions. 

  • Did poetry make Matt a better person? How/how not? Make sure students support their positions.

Close Reading: “The Secret Language of the Poet. 

In The Hunting Accident (pp.37-40), Matt and Charlie talk about “the secret language of the poet” and “the Voice”: 

“Then even as Dante, in fear of the truculent religious establishment, thought it the wiser to remain silent, he caught wind of a Voice that had long been silent.” Charlie clarifies, “The “V” in voice is capitalized. Is that right?” and Matt responds, “Yes. That’s right. Because the Voice did not just speak to Dante. The Voice has spoken to many writers throughout history. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Whitman, Emerson. It speaks in the secret language.” To which Charlie responds, “Secret language of the poet.” 

Then on page 42, Matt elaborates a bit more: 

“All men are poets, Charlie. We’re always using language as symbols to describe our reality… POETRY, the naming, is how the soul finds its place in the divine order.”

Later still, on page 222, Matt tells Charlie, “It is the skill of the poet to help us transcend that which is merely human… to point beyond our time-bound worries and reveal the heart of the matter…”

Here are some teaching suggestions:

• Given these quotes, 

• Ask students to unpack what they think Matt means by the secret language of the poet and the poet’s Voice. 

• Does Matt literally mean that poetry is a secret language? If it is secret, how is it that we’re reading it? Or are there secrets within the text that we must discern to fully understand? Or is the language of poetry not so much secret as it’s rhythm, or its beat or its underlying content which uncovers ‘gems’ not initially recognized or observed? 

• Carlson and Blair intersperse various classic works throughout the story (there are two examples below). Discuss the placement of these poem(s) and what they add or reveal about Matt's story and/or the characters in The Hunting Accident. 

  • On page 42 we see a quote/excerpt from Emerson discussing the poet’s voice. “To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publication. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no frequency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize…” What is Emerson’s excerpt trying to say? Why is this excerpt placed here?  In what ways might this work add to our understanding of Matt, or of the poet’s “Voice”?

  • On page 93, we see A.E. Housman’s “Now Hollow Fires Burn out to Black”: 

“Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go.  Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread, Look not left nor right: In all the endless road you tread, There’s nothing but the night.” 

Ask students to unpack this poem and what it’s trying to say. How does this poem’s placement here add to the story or to our understanding of Matt and Charlie? Why is this poem placed here? Was it a good choice? What other song or poem might you have placed here and why?

Close and Critically Reading Keats and his “truth of the imagination”

Note: Background on Keats is given in some detail above in the last bullet under the theme of “seeing.” In short, Keats believed that it is the poet’s job to find truth and beauty in this world and relay insights through their poetry. In his poems (such as his Ode on a Grecian Urn), Keats describes the beauty of a particular object and builds an imagined narrative around that object to better see and understand its intrinsic beauty.

• As a fishbowl activity or as a class, discuss “truth of the imagination” with your students. Do they agree with Keats? Why/why not? What truths might your students find in imagination?

• Keats’ poem Ode on a Grecian Urn can be found in many high school curricula. You therefore may want to bring in Ode on a Grecian Urn to give them a more comprehensive introduction to Keats and to his understanding of imagination and its power to reveal truth and beauty. 

  • Read and unpack the poem with students.

  • Probe their understanding by comparing the excerpt of Keats’ essay The Authenticity of the Imagination (found in The Hunting Accident, p. 108) with Ode on a Grecian Urn. Ask what insights are gained from each work.

• Discuss the use of visual media and its impact on imagination:

•  Read aloud - or have students read the following text found in The Hunting Accident, page 283 (panels 1 and 2) translated from Dante’s Inferno, Canto 1:

“Midway through the journey of my life I found myself lost in a dark forest, for I had wandered off from the straight path. How hard it is to tell what it was like, this Wood of Wilderness, stubborn, so savage, that just the thought of it renews my fear!”

“Okay, hold it right there. What do you see?” [Leopold asks his fellow inmate prisoners.

2. Have students draw or describe what they see when reading the text.

3. Show the following rendering(s) of the text (if you use both you may want to compare and contrast these renderings along with class renderings):

Image #1: by Paul Gustave DoŕeImage found at: https://wyomingcatholic.edu/wp-content/uploads/dante-01-inferno.pdf 

Or at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dore_Inferno1.jpg#/media/File:Gustave_Dore_Inferno1.jpg

Image #2: by Salvador Dali 

Found at: Rauner Library Dartmouth College Library blog “Dali, Psychoanalysis & Dante’s Divine Comedy” Friday, August 29, 2014 https://raunerlibrary.blogspot.com/2014/08/dali-psychoanalysis-dantes-divine-comedy.html

4. Discuss: How does/do the illustration(s) change or limit students’ understanding of the text. In what ways might the illustrations broaden and/or limit one’s imagination? Do students feel these illustrations limit their ability to construct or imagine text/prose? If so, how?

Close and Critically Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson (found on page 42)  

• Background: To Emerson, a poet’s gift is their insights of wonder/enlightenment that are conveyed in simple terms and examples. Such examples make life’s wondrous insights observable and comprehensible.

• Why, in Emerson’s view, does the revelation of poetry always feel like a “miracle” which “leave(s) the inquirer stupid with wonder”?

• How does Emerson’s work help explain and fit in with Matt’s understanding of the mind and imagination? 

• How does Emerson’s work mesh with Keats’ views on “truth of the imagination”?

READING, WRITING AND COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY 

Communication Theory. As Leopold tries teaching fellow inmates, he uses erudite words and phrases to the extent that others couldn’t or simply didn’t want to follow or participate. It is Matt who teaches Leopold how to relate and communicate with their students more effectively. This section explores what is necessary for effective communication. 

Background: Sender-Receiver Theory is one of the more basic theories of communication. It essentially details five essential components necessary for, and involved in, communication. They are:

1. A sender (who constructs and sends the message)

2. A receiver (the targeted audience of that message)

3. Feedback the sender and receiver give to each other (for example: nodding or “likes” or blank stares)

4. The Medium or media channel – how the message is relayed (i.e., text, podcast, emoji, video, photograph, etc.)

5. Noise or barriers that interferes with the sender, receiver, message, medium or feedback, preventing the receiver from fully understanding the message.

From: Schramm’s Model of the “Sender, channel, receiver” model. Schramm, W. 1954.

According to Sender-Receiver Communication theory:

• The sender formulates (or “encodes”) a message that is intended to elicit a response from a particular person, audience, or receiver. 

• Creating the message, the sender must decide what text, image, or 

materials to use to best relay and communicate his/her message in a format the audience or receiver will best understand. 

• The message is relayed through a channel - whether it’s via spoken word, phone, email, printed material, a poster, icon, famous saying, etc. 

• Once the message is constructed and sent, the receiver must decode the message’s content and its intent, after which the receiver will provide some form of feedback or reaction to the message.  

• Both sender and receiver, however, must recognize that there will be some form of noise or barriers or elements outside their control that may somehow impinge or affect the transmission and comprehension of the message. Noise may result from:

  • The sender not understanding the experiences, affinities, and skills of the receiver (making wrong word/argument choices) 

  • Physical barriers (i.e., distracting noise outside or around the sender or receiver, phone calls, sirens, wind, poor equipment connections, etc.) 

  • Semantic barriers where the sender uses poor word choice, diction, and/or grammar and sentence structure, or misunderstands the nuances of language, text, or images

  • Cultural barriers; and/or 

  • Emotional barriers.

Lesson suggestions: This section focuses on how students can be more thoughtful about how they communicate.

• Once the Sender-Receiver Theory is explained:

  • Discuss how this theory impacts on the way we speak, the way we write, the way we draw/illustrate, and the way we listen. What are some factors or variables communicators should keep in mind to communicate across mediums more successfully? 

  • Have students brainstorm ways noise might interfere when communicating through speech, writing, illustrations, and listening. How might they avoid such noise sources? How are the noise sources different across mediums?

  • Discuss how different media within The Hunting Accident relay information or tell a story in similar and different ways. For example:

    • Within this work there are puppet shows; composed music; works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy. Have students discuss (as a jigsaw activity - each group taking one particular medium - or as a class) in what ways each of these mediums relay content and how does the variety aid (or complicate) the storytelling? When does communication work and when does it fall apart?

    • How does communication theory apply to the father/son unit? How might the fathers and sons have communicated more effectively?

    • How does communication theory apply to Leopold’s successes and challenges when teaching?

    • How does communication theory apply to effective storytelling in a graphic novel? 

CIVIC RESPONSIBILITIES AND SOCIAL ISSUES 

The Hunting Accident touches upon social issues that were pertinent to life in the 1920’s (when Matt was growing up), in the 1960’s (as Charlie was growing up) and are still pertinent today. Capital punishment versus incarceration versus criminal rehabilitation, and education, are two such examples that can help you discuss and unpack with your students below. 

NOTE: Discussions on these topics may become heated and opinionated. For example, when discussing capital punishment, incarceration and rehabilitation, the discussion may cover racial justice in the American penal system and the degree to which Matt and Leopold’s status as white men helped shape their fates in prison. Even discussions on the goal and role of education can be quite personal. I recommend that you set up discussion rules emphasizing empathic and respectful listening and speaking before introducing these discussions.

Criminal sentences: capital punishment versus incarceration and rehabilitation: Background: While death sentences and capital punishment have been recorded as far back as the Bible, prisons are a relatively modern phenomenon. Some origins for modern-day prisons can be traced to the Middle Ages (such as oubliettes in France), but it's only really with the Enlightenment and Jeremy Bentham’s work that the idea of using prisons as means of rehabilitation became popular (moving away from a punishment model using the stocks, hanging, branding criminals, etc.). However, despite the lofty goals people tend to have for prisons, very few would say that prisons accomplish what Bentham imagined them to do. Furthermore, debates currently exist around whether incarceration versus community rehabilitation centers and opportunities are most effective. 

The goal of this section is to help students look at judicial sentences and actions from a perspective of civic responsibilities and social justice:

• Optional: Have students research and discuss your state’s penal system. You may want to compare various state systems or compare your state’s system with other international systems. Discuss how public/civic perspectives have and have not changed from the 1920’s when Matt and Leopold were in prison. 

• Discuss Clarence Darrow’s defense of Leopold and Loeb:

• Read excerpts of Darrow’s defense (found on page 183). You may also have students research this trial, discussing its merits and weaknesses (please see suggested resources/links below). 

• Discuss Darrow’s strategy (not arguing their guilt but instead arguing for life sentences versus the death penalty) and how it influenced public policy. Optional: Discuss why this was so controversial at the time (see resources below to help familiarize students with this trial before having this discussion).

• You may want to create a mock trial with students preparing briefs, opening statements, closing statements and examining/cross-examining witnesses. Discuss how a trial today would look/sound/be similar and different from the original trial. For example, it is probably very likely that Darrow’s plea for mercy from the judge for Leopold and Loeb - particularly considering that it happened in the 1920s - would not have worked had Leopold and Loeb been black. That said, you may want to ask students whether such a plea for mercy would have worked today? Why/why not?

• Are Leopold and Matt “rehabilitated” during their time in Stateville prison? In what ways are they or are they not rehabilitated? In what ways did prison help or hinder their rehabilitation? Was it the prison system itself that may have rehabilitated Leopold and Matt or was it something else? Make sure students can support their opinions with concrete examples. 

• As a class debate or writing assessment discuss the pros and cons of capital punishment versus incarceration versus community rehabilitation through a lens of civic responsibility and social justice.

Benefits and challenges of teaching the great books 

The Hunting Accident provides moments where classic works of literature and philosophy are forces for improvement. While The Inferno helped Matt decide not to commit suicide, as briefly mentioned in The Hunting Accident, Nietzsche’s work Thus Spoke Zarathustra (in addition to its use justifying Nazism, misogyny, and domestic violence), inspired Leopold and Loeb to kidnap and murder Bobby Franks. As such, you may want to have the following discussion(s) around education and its goals:

• Understanding how “great” or “classic” texts can influence readers, discuss what makes a text “great” and how a reader should approach and consider a text and/or an author's dark past. If a text can be easily misconstrued to justify genocide or unconscionable crimes - even if that wasn’t the intent of the author - how should society mediate such dangers? Should society mediate such dangers? When, if ever, should books be banned or challenged and why?

• When looking at The Hunting Accident, what did Matt think education should accomplish? Why? What did Leopold think education should accomplish and why? You may also want to expand the conversation to today and what your students think modern education should accomplish?

MODES OF STORYTELLING, DESIGN AND VISUAL LITERACY

Storytelling through design 

• The Hunting Accident’s design and illustrations shape and influence the story as well as the rhythm and flow of the storytelling. Here are a few visually stunning page examples you may want to unpack and analyze with your students:

  • The cover: discuss how the design informs and engages readers about what is about to unfold - from the use of Braille to the glasses with the only color shining behind the bars within the lenses. What do the glasses with prison bars represent? 

  • Pp. 28-29: discuss how the images complement the text - adding depth and detail; discuss the shading techniques and how they add mood and emotion; discuss how sounds, smells, and tactile stimuli create what life was like for Charlie living with Matt.

  • Pp. 66-69: discuss the very different art styles of these pages and what the images, design, and layouts relay. How does the change in design and style affect the storytelling? How does it affect the rhythm of the read and its unfolding story? How does it influence the reading experience?

  • Pp. 212-213: have students chart what is relayed about Leopold’s relationship with his father through text versus what is relayed through image. Discuss your findings. 

• The above relays only a few examples of the richness of illustration and design in storytelling. There are plenty more. Have students (independently or in groups) collect their favorite examples and explain why they found them creative and effective. Meet back to discuss these examples, discussing what the designs add to the story content and meaning.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Life Plus 99 Years, the autobiography of Nathan Leopold. By Nathan F. Leopold, Jr. Doubleday, 1958.

• Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy’s Own Story by (criminologist/sociologist) Clifford Shaw, (1966[1930]), University of Chicago Press - is a classic in criminology that follows a sixteen-year-old juvenile offender (named Stanley) over six years and describes the milieu Matt grew up in on the west side of Chicago. 

• Dante

  • Dante’s Inferno - Powerful teaching resource. This resource has the text in English and Italian, with links to translations, art and illuminated manuscripts, music, teaching guide, and much more: http://www.worldofdante.org/resources.html

  • Danteworlds provides an integrated, multimedia journey combining artistic images, textual commentary, and audio recordings--through the three realms of the afterlife (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise) presented in Dante's Divine Comedy.  http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/index.html

  • The Princeton Dante Project PDP combines a traditional approach to the study of Dante's Comedy with new techniques of compiling and consulting data, images, and sound. https://dante.princeton.edu/index.html

• A.E. Housman “Now Hollow Fires Burn out to Black” (p.93)

  • For a brief  biography and listing of his poems and publications please visit https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/A._E._Housman or https://poets.org/poet/e-housman

• Keats’ “Truth of Imagination”

  • “The Authenticity of Imagination” was from a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey, written on November 22, 1817. To read the complete letter visit: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_Benjamin_Bailey,_November_22,_1817 or to https://www.jstor.org/stable/24039167?seq=1 (note the letter is contained within the journal article “Keats and the Truth of Imagination” by Robert M. Ryan and published in The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 4, No.4 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 259-26  by The University of Chicago Press

  • For a nice introduction to Keats and his letters, please visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69384/selections-from-keatss-letters

  • For details on Keats’ life and poetry please visit:

    • https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-keats

    • https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Keats (note students can explore Keats's life through a dramatization by Archibald MacLeish - narrated by James Mason).

• Plato’s Cave allegory

  • https://youtu.be/1RWOpQXTltA - a short (six minute) TED-Ed animated video lesson by Alex Gendler, narrated by Addison Anderson, produced by Stretch Films, Inc. 

  • A longer (31 minute) video by Dr. Harrison Kleiner (University of Utah) found at: https://youtu.be/aBPd7getIcM Dr. Kleiner gives an overview of Plato and of Plato’s Republic; clearly explains what an allegory is; and delves into the Cave allegory.

• Clarence Darrow’s Defense of Leopold and Loeb

  • Northwestern University houses a massive archive that includes the entire transcript of the trial. 

  • The Chicago History Museum houses an extensive collection of Leopold’s personal artifacts including his glasses dropped at the crime scene and handwritten notebooks detailing his language studies in prison.

  • An overview of the case “Bill of Rights in Action: Saved from the Gallows - the Trial of Leopold and Loeb” Bill of Rights in Action, online article, Spring 2015, vol.30, no.3, published by the Constitutional Rights Foundation and found at: https://www.crf-usa.org/images/pdf/gates/leopold_loeb.pdf

  • Multiple resources of the trial by Professor Douglas O. Linder, UMKC School of Law can be found at: https://famous-trials.com/leopoldandloeb contains links to: an account of the trial; a map of the scene of the kidnapping; Leopold’s confession; Darrow’s plea of guilty (transcript); Judge Caverly’s decision and sentence; a bibliography, videos, and more.

  • Text of Darrow’s closing argument, found at: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/darrowclosing.html

  • Accounts of the trial with transcripts, newspaper articles, photos and databases from the University of Minnesota Law Library found at: http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/trials.php?tid=1

• Communication theory

  • The sender-receiver model: Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press.

  • Adding an element where society helps guide the way a receiver understands the message being communicated: Lazersfeld, P., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1948). The people’s choice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

  • The importance of feedback in message generation: Wiener, N. (1961). Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine. New York, NY: MIT Press.

  • An overview of different fields in communication theory: Littlejohn, S. W. (1983). Theories of human communication (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.