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.)

Part B: Write the narrative:

• Write 1-2 pages in which the person recalls a significant experience that taught them how the outside world is different from the Compound.
• Make the setting of the memory clear and express the memory as an abbreviated story that has a beginning, middle, and end.
• Write in a distinct narrative voice. Given what you know about the child from the text, what kind of adult have they likely become? What should that person’s “voice” sound like, and what will that person find important enough to talk about?
• In your narrative, incorporate details from the person’s experience inside the Compound to clarify why this experience in the outside world is significant to them.

Teaching Suggestion: Writing from a minor character’s voice allows students to consider the novel from a new perspective, and extending the character’s future beyond the novel promotes critical thinking skills. This assignment also offers them the chance to write creatively while still demonstrating their understanding of The Compound. If time permits, consider having students share their stories and discuss what choices they made to create an older voice for one of the Supplements. Have them discuss how writing from this perspective shifted their understanding of the novel, and what kinds of new stories they were able to make from the themes of The Compound.