This Train is Bound for Glory, 1951, color serigraph, 15” x 18”
1. Project this image and after an appropriate length of time ask the class to make a list of what they see. Present and discuss the word “metaphor” for students and ask them to look at their lists and identify any potential metaphors and use them in a sentence or a short narrative. Have them meet in groups or pairs to discuss, and then have them share their examples with the class.
2.Express to your students that for many Black people at the time Heaven represented a world of freedom beyond the constraints of segregation. They believed that even though their lives on Earth had been full of hardship, their time in Heaven was going to be full of all the good things they had always wanted and that the train was the path to Heaven.
3. Talk about how the Moaney Quartet ( a musical group made up of one of the most prominent Black families on the Eastern Shore at the time) would fill the church with their voices in such a way that it sounded like a loud locomotive engine about to take off. ( Good lead-in to a lesson on similes) The people are seen spilling out of the church and onto that train bound for Heaven. Discuss how the horses are so mesmerized that they want to go, and the devil looks to be shoveling coal. It’s a really tremendously descriptive scene! You could have students write a description of it, describing why they think each event is happening.
4. Have students come up with other examples of metaphors and similes and illustrate them.
MD State Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.1/CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.1/CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1/CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.1/CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.1/CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.8.1