Five Little Narrative Essay

The novel, Five Little Indians, was an emotional roller coaster for the class. When we
started the book, we watched Michelle Good, in her own words, say she wrote the book
to answer the question, ‘why can’t they just get over it?’ Hopefully, we now have a
deeper understanding of the point she was trying to make.

However, ‘why they can’t get over it,’ is not the only theme in the novel. As a class we
brainstormed numerous themes. We know now the best place to start a narrative essay
is with a theme. Below will be a list of themes we generated (don’t forget you can do a
different one, one not listed, if you clear it with Moore first), your task is to write a
narrative essay based on your life and the way the theme impacts your life. For
example, if I chose the theme of lost childhood, I may want to talk about my lost
childhood – how I saw things no kid should see, or how I don’t remember a lot of my
childhood because I think so much of it is repressed, how I had no idea what a healthy
relationship was supposed to look like, things like that. Also, remember many of topics
are heavy and if you need to, tell a story, don’t make it about you but about a different
character.

Themes:

 The past and shared trauma

 Hope – overcoming and persevering
 Survival – the loss of home, mental, physical, and sexual abuse, separation of
family
 Love – yourself, others and acceptance
 Healing – spiritually, physically, mentality, and culturally
 Identity – who you are, make makes you, you! How you see yourself, self-
identification
 Identity – embedded in history, memory, and story
 Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions
 The loss of family – destruction and found family
 Death and loss
 Reconciliation / forgiveness
 Coping in life – how we cope, individual, tragedy
 Alcohol and drug abuse
 Residential school impacts
 Knowledge involves generational roles and responsibilities
 Clear one with Moore