4. Activity: Illustrating the Story

The authors of the literature used in this project wanted their readers to understand how their characters—a dispossessed farmer, an unhappy wife, an overwhelmed worker—struggled with life. Although as authors they depended upon written language, the time in which they wrote was also an era of incredible development in the use of photography as a means of documenting society.

The Library of Congress has digitized and made available online at its American Memory website many photographic and film collections, three of which can be related to this project’s literature.

For this activity, you are asked to search selected American Memory collections to find photographs that would serve as appropriate illustrations for the stories.

Each story is linked to a collection. Choose two of the stories to illustrate. Search the collections using keywords suggested below (or any other keyword you think would be useful) to find a single image that illustrates one aspect of the story. Match the photograph or movie still you choose with a quotation from the story. (For example, a photograph showing the starkness of a Dakota farmstead, for example, might be matched with a quotation from "Under the Lion's Paw" about the harshness of life on the prairie.) The photograph or movie still and its matching quotation can be placed in a Word document.

For photographs of rural and small-town life on the Great Plains ("Under the Lion's Paw"):

The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F. A. Palzandak Photograph Collections

Suggested keywords to search: agricultural laborers, binding grain, drill, hay racks, harvesting, threshing, sod houses, town, snow, children, boy, girl, family, play, home, interior

For photographs of homes in small-town America ("The Yellow Wallpaper"):

Small-Town America: Stereoscopic Views from the Robert Dennis Collection, 1850-1920

Suggested keywords to search: houses, interiors, interior architecture, dwellings, family, furniture, women, women-clothing and dress (Note: Each search will lead you to a smaller collections of photographs to sort.)

For motion pictures of an early twentieth-century factory and environs (The Jungle):

Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904

Suggested keywords to search: factories, foundries, furnaces, industrial districts, industrial towns, time clocks, women