Lesson 32: “The Comet” and The Last Cuentista

Turn and Talk

Instruct students to partner with another student. Have students take out their copy of “The Comet” and their annotations from the previous lesson’s homework.

Say these Directions: Turn and talk with your partner about the conclusion of “The Comet.”

Display the following question.

• Ask: What happens in the conclusion of the story?

  • Jim and Julia set off rockets from the roof of a building, and Julia’s father and boyfriend arrive to find them. They are overjoyed to see Julia, tell her that New York was destroyed, but the rest of the world is fine, and then notice Jim and use racial slurs and ask Julia if he has hurt her. She explains that he rescued her, more survivors arrive and make racist statements and threaten Jim’s life, and Jim starts to walk through the crowd. He takes a baby’s hat out of his pocket, and then a woman in the crowd sees him, and he hugs her with “a sob of joy.”

After partners discuss, invite a few volunteers to share their annotations about the conclusion of the story.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Today, you will analyze the conclusion of “The Comet” and start making connections to The Last Cuentista.

Introduce New Words Using Morphology

Display the target word.

Target Word: telegraph

• Say: We’re learning about the word telegraph today. It appears in “The Comet” as Jim explains what he and Julia will do after they have searched the city and found no one. Let’s explore this word more deeply.

Introduce the Word: Present the word telegraph to students and pronounce it.

• Ask: Have you seen the word telegraph before? Where?

Identify the Root: Underline the root -graph in telegraph. Explain that graph comes from the Greek graphos and Latin graphus meaning “written” or “writing.”

• Ask: Do you know any other words with the root -graph?

  • autograph, photograph, bibliography

Identify Affixes: Circle tele- in telegraph.

• Ask: What do you think the prefix tele- might mean based on words you know, like telephone or television?

  • far off/distance

Determine Meaning:

• Ask: Using what we know about tele- and -graph, what do you think telegraph means?

  • a tool for written communication at a distance

Build Word Relationships: Write telephone next to telegraph.

• Ask: What is the relationship between the telephone and the telegraph?

  • The telegraph communicates across distances using written code, while the telephone transmits sounds across distances.

• Say: In the story, Jim states that they will use “the long distance telephone” followed by “the telegraph” to attempt to contact other survivors.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Now that you have practiced using word parts to unlock the meaning of telegraph, you are ready to analyze what Jim and Julia are learning about each other and how the ending of the story changes everything.

Part A: Analyzing the Conclusion of “The Comet” (RL.8.3) (15 minutes)

Begin the analysis of the conclusion to “The Comet” in a whole-class discussion.

Display the following quotation from “The Comet.”

• “For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,—with a man alien in blood and culture—unknown, perhaps unknowable.”

• Say: Together, we will use this quotation as a starting point in our analysis of the events and characters in the latter half of the story.

Display the following questions, and engage students in a whole-class discussion.

• Ask: In what ways are Julia and Jim “strangers” to each other? Think about the word stranger and its different meanings in the quotation.

  • Julia and Jim are strangers in two ways. They literally just met during the disaster of the comet’s aftermath, so they don’t know each other at all. Another way that they are strangers is that they come from completely different worlds. They are strangers to each other because of their respective social classes and racial segregation. During the time period that the story takes place, Black Americans’ access to basic rights, wealth, and power was restricted in the U.S. through racist laws and practices, such as voting restrictions, redlining, discriminatory banking policy, and racist hiring practices. Due to these laws and systems of oppression, Jim and Julia have access to very different life experiences. Because of her whiteness and financial privilege, Julia lives in a world of wealth in which she has always “been idle,” while Jim lives in a Black world of “hard” work and poverty.

• Ask: What does Jim and Julia's conversation on the roof reveal about their different experiences in the same society? What do Jim’s reflections reveal about the power dynamics between him and Julia?

  • As they begin to share about themselves, they note that they come from entirely different worlds. He’s “poor”; she’s “rich.” He worked hard; she was “idle.” Because of their respective races, they have had access to or been denied access to different experiences and lifestyles. As a result, Julia has lived a life of comfort and leisure, while Jim has had to work hard to survive. When Jim says, “‘I was not—human, yesterday,’” he is pointing out that before the comet, Julia would not have seen him as a fellow human being. The divisions of race in society are such that Jim and Julia have essentially lived in two different worlds their entire lives.

Transition students from the whole-class discussion into small groups to analyze the rest of the questions about the conclusion of “The Comet.”

Say these Directions: Discuss the following questions in your small group. Use your homework annotations to support your ideas.

• What revelation does each character have when they realize they may be the last man and woman on Earth?

  • For a moment, the two transcend the structures and social constraints of society, each in their own turn. Julia understands that “she [is] no mere woman. She [is] neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor.” As Jim contemplates this new life, “the shackles [seem] to rattle and fall from his soul,” an allusion to the history of enslavement and the continued oppression and racism that the Black community endures. With these revelations, they “[see] each other face to face—eye to eye. Their souls [lie] naked to the night. . . . It [is] a thought divine, splendid.” Now that they are the last two humans on Earth, they both realize that there are no true differences between them. They are both simply human beings, and without society telling them differently, that makes them truly equal. Jim is no longer “a thing apart” or “a strange outcast of another clime and blood”; they are instead each other’s siblings in “Humanity.”

• How does the return of Julia’s father and the young man change the understanding that Jim and Julia have come to?

  • The ending crashes down on their understanding and destroys any hope of transcendence or change, as the racist social order is immediately reestablished. As soon as they see him, Jim is accused and denigrated by Fred, who is presumably Julia’s husband or boyfriend. In response, Julia “look[s] at her late companion curiously and then drop[s] her eyes with a sigh.” Instead of possessing “power in his eyes,” Jim becomes “hollow-voiced.” Even though she “thank[s] him—much,” Julia “[does] not look at him again.” She no longer acknowledges his humanity, now that society and its constraints and prejudices have returned in the form of Fred and her father. Jim’s humanness and heroism are further undermined by Julia’s father, who refuses to see Jim as an individual when he tells Jim, “I’ve always liked your people,” and says to call him if he wants a job, emphasizing his power and privilege over Jim.

After the small groups discuss the questions, reconvene the class and pose the following question.

• Ask: How does Du Bois conclude his story in a way that emphasizes that, despite society’s oppressive systems, there is still hope for humanity?

  • At the end of the story, Jim is reunited with a woman he clearly loves, holding the lost baby we assume is Jim’s child. The woman cried his name, and he turned and “with a sob of joy, caught her in his arms.” This reunion highlights Jim’s humanity, his connections to others, and his inherent worth, despite Julia’s (and by extension, white society’s) refusal to acknowledge him after they are discovered by her father. The survival and reunion of Jim and the woman he loves end the story on a note of hope for the future; the idea that even though the racist/oppressive structures still exist, there is still love and connection for Jim.

Part B: Comparing and Contrasting Narratives (RL.8.5) (15 minutes)

Students will now compare and contrast the structural choices that Higuera and Du Bois make in their respective stories.

Tell students that they will now look at the structure of The Last Cuentista and compare and contrast it to “The Comet.”

• Say: We have now read and analyzed two different dystopian stories. One is a short story, and the other is a novel. From here, we are going to consider how the two authors structure their dystopian stories to achieve different meanings and styles.

Distribute a 3-Column Chart graphic organizer to each student. Have the students write the following headings in the three columns. Next, have students write the questions in the left column.

• Say: Now we will compare and contrast the structures of “The Comet” and The Last Cuentista.

Teach: Comparing and Contrasting Text Structure

• Say: Narrative structure can vary greatly across texts. Writers make choices about structure and presentation to create specific effects and elicit responses from readers. For example, fast-paced action can create a sense of urgency, whereas detailed descriptions might slow the pace of the story and create a more intense focus on events and characters.

• Say: When you’re comparing structures, think about the aspects of text organization: how events are sequenced, who tells the story, where the story takes place, and how setting and time shift over the course of the story.

Model identifying an element of structure in “The Comet” and The Last Cuentista and an analysis statement from that comparison.

• Say: The first element I consider when I think about the structures of two texts is the type of literature or form each one is. In some ways, the type of literature controls the basic organization and pace of a text. I’ll record the literary forms of the texts in the first row.

Write “short story” and “novel” in the appropriate columns, and have students copy into their charts.

• Say: Once I have identified the form of literature, I can make a statement that compares how this element of structure contributes to the organization, meaning, or style of the work.

Display and read this statement:

• Say: “The Comet” is a short story that is told in quick moments and events over a few brief pages, whereas The Last Cuentista is a full-length novel that allows for experiences, events, and characters to be more fully developed.

Invite students to rejoin their small groups from Learning in Action: Part A.

Say these Directions: Now it’s your turn. Work with your group to record your answers to each of the questions in the first column of the chart and discuss a comparison statement for each row.

Students will likely be unable to finish the chart in the designated lesson time. Tell them they can complete their charts for homework if they do not finish.

Provide students with a Reflection (i.e., 1–5). As needed, model how to demonstrate a level of confidence using the continuum.

Turn and Talk

Transition students into pairs to reflect on their learning from the lesson.

Say these Directions: Turn to your partner, and state one clear way The Last Cuentista and “The Comet” are structured differently. Then explain the impact of the difference.

• The biggest structural difference is that “The Comet” is a short story in which everything happens fast and in chronological order. The Last Cuentista is a novel that takes place over a very long time (400+ years) and includes cuentos woven into the story, like the fire snake story, plus a circular ending that brings you back to the beginning and shows Petra’s full character development as a storyteller. In “The Comet,” everything builds to the reversal when Julia’s family comes back, and the oppressive racist systems take over again. While the ending of The Last Cuentista demonstrates hope for a future in which they might find the other survivors, and the ending of “The Comet” shows a return to systems of oppression and violence, both highlight the importance of community, love, and resilience, as Jim finds a loved one and Petra enjoys connections with the other Zetas.

Instruct students to complete their 3-Column Chart graphic organizers comparing text structure between The Last Cuentista and “The Comet.” Tell students that by completing the chart, they are preparing for the Socratic Seminar in the following lesson.

Complete your 3-Column Chart graphic organizer comparing the text structures of The Last Cuentista and “The Comet,” and consider this question for the next lesson’s Socratic Seminar:

• How do differences in time period, pacing, and structure affect how we understand the characters and the meaning of each story?