The Compound

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

ACTIVITY 1: “The Supplement’s Memoir”

Choose one of the children referred to in The Compound as the “Supplements.” Imagine that it is many years after their escape into the outside world, and the person is now a teenager or young adult. From this perspective, write a brief first-person narrative about an experience that led to an important discovery about life outside the Compound. Your narrative should continue one of the major thematic motifs from the novel.

Part A: Decide some basic information about your narrative:

• Which child’s perspective will you take?
• What idea about the difference between life in the Compound and life in the outside world will the narrative communicate?
• How will your narrative continue one of the book’s thematic motifs about relationships; power, control, and intimacy; or innocence and experience?
• What specific experience will the person write about, and how will this communicate the idea you have chosen to express?
• When did this experience occur—soon after their escape, or more recently?
• What will the tone of your entry be? (Emotional? Humorous? Make a choice appropriate to the subject you have chosen.