Unit Summary
This is the new 2023 edition of our 9th Grade unit on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns.
"They argue that Reyes's culpability does nothing to contradict the guilty
verdicts of the five young men, despite the overwhelming forensic evidence
and the teenagers' confused and contradictory confessions."
—The Central Park Five
"'Lennie never done it in meanness,' George said.
'All the time he done bad things, but he never done one of 'em mean.'"
—Of Mice and Men
In this unit, students read John Steinbeck's classic novella, Of Mice and Men, and the 2011 nonfiction text, The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns. Although these texts are set in very different time periods and address seemingly disparate topics, we have chosen to place them together because of the opportunity each provides to complicate students' understanding of power, justice, and culpability. These texts don't "speak to each other" so much as they provide students with drastically different lenses through which to explore larger ideas about human nature.
The unit begins with an analysis of Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck's 1937 novella about two migrant workers and their experiences on a ranch in Salinas, California. Over the course of the unit's first nine lessons, students will closely read the text, paying careful attention to elements of craft. Students will discuss Steinbeck's use of setting to establish mood, the development of foreshadowing as a means of creating tension, his use of dialogue to reveal aspects of characters, and the way that the text's structure contributes to meaning. This text provides students the opportunity to grapple with questions about how power and perceived vulnerability affect the way that characters see themselves and treat others. Students will wrap up their close analysis of this text with a Socratic seminar that prepares them for an analytical essay in which they take a position on one of three prompts, focusing on providing the strongest evidence to support their claims.
Students will then spend three lessons considering the concept of culpability, particularly in the context of the criminal justice system, and how aspects of a person's identity can shape whether a person is perceived as guilty. They will learn about a Supreme Court decision that forbids the execution of people with intellectual disabilities and a case where the character of Lennie was used as a benchmark of guilt in a real-life crime (and the horrified response of the Steinbeck family to this decision). Students will then learn about situations where people have been wrongly convicted of crimes, and the role that racism can play in these convictions and in perceptions of guilt more generally.
This leads students to the second core text of the unit, The Central Park Five, where they will continue their analysis of the way that power dynamics – and particularly racism and classism – intersect with perceptions of culpability. The book tells the true story of five young teenagers who were falsely accused of a brutal rape in 1989. Students will read the first several chapters of the text, paying close attention to author Sarah Burns' structural choices as she develops her argument about this tragic miscarriage of justice. The text pushes readers to consider the role that the media played in both reflecting and shaping public opinion of this case, and particularly the way that the media used specific words and phrases to dehumanize the boys.
The unit concludes with a Performance Task through which students will demonstrate their understanding of the larger themes raised in the core texts. Furthermore, this unit will offer students daily opportunities to engage in discourse, craft written interpretations of text, and synthesize themes across texts.