Your Name: __________________

Teachers Name:_______________
Class/Period:__________________
Date: ______________
My title is: _____________________________________________
Assignment: Summer Reading Mini-Collage

1. Make a Mini-Collage representing the choice book you read for summer reading.

Your collage should:

cover the entire 3 x 5 card
have little, if any, background of the card showing
include pictures that symbolize something from the book
include text that connects to the book
include colors that connect to the book
the title and author of the book noted in small font at the bottom of the
collage


2. Write a 1-page paper which explains the symbolism in your collage.
Your paper should:
explain the images, texts and colors you used in your collage and how they
relate or reveal the choice book you read for summer reading.
include a quote(s) from the book that connects to your collage.
be typed in MLA format (see the heading on this page for the heading format),
MLA format: double spaced, 12 pt. font, header for page numbers with last
name and number (Smith 2)
printed and attached to this cover sheet

Self Evaluation
What do you like best about your collage?



What did you do well in writing up your reflection about the
symbolism?



What is one thing you would like to change about your written reflection before turning it in?



Peer Evaluation
What do you like the best about your partners summer reading collage?



Choose 1 item from your partners collage. In no more than 2 sentences, explain how it
represents the book he or she read.


Hunger Games collage
Students Name
Teachers Name
English II
September 2014
Equalitys Secret

For the main character of Ayn Rands Anthem, writing is sin. Individual thought is
prohibited. People are a numbered we. The novel opens with Equality 7-2521 sitting in an
underground hide-away writing by candle light. Equalitys life is filled with secrets.
Secrets stalk the perimeter of my collage. The top left quadrant of my collage represents
the secret life of Equality after dark. His days, a dull repetition of duty and requirement are grey
as shown by the barren branches in the background. Like those bare branches, Equalitys heart
and mind are bare at the prospects of his prescribed life. Secrets save him. His feelings for a
woman he calls The Golden One (represented by the golden elephant) must remain secret as
must his underground hiding place, a long abandoned tunnel he explores at night (represented by
the map fragment). Equalitys secret literally and figuratively light up his life. He discovers
electricity and makes a light bulb work by figuring out the ancient wiring. Though assigned the
job of street sweeper by the Council of Vocations, Equality secretly wishes to join the scientists
in the Council of Scholars. He believes, The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but
only for those who will seek them (52). He seeks and admits to studying a secret power (the
light bulb). His secret desires are a shame, a sin in the collective society Rand creates.
What tensions exist between individuals and society? What defines an individual? Rand
explores these issues in Anthem by pitting Equality against his society. The elephant on the
collage represents not only The Golden One, Liberty 5-3000, but also the idiomatic elephant in
the room, the tension between what one thinks or believes and what one is allowed or willing
to discuss or acknowledge. For Rands characters the elephant in the room is individual
preference. Everything must be done for the good of the whole. From the start, characters do not
even have language which would enable them to consider themselves separate from society.
Equalitys secrets enable his freedom.
Equalitys quest for individual freedom, originally penned in 1937, mirrors quests taken
up by D 503 (We), Katniss (The Hunger Games), Tris (Divergent), Jonas (The Giver), Hannah
(When She Woke) and a host of other freedom fighters. Rands message to readers is to know
what you want in life and go after it. Her characters and indeed an entire cast from works across
time echo the importance of the individual.