Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What stories, shows, or games have you encountered in which a person is trying to survive in the wilderness? What are some of the reasons they are in this situation? What kinds of outcomes do these stories, shows, or games have?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may enjoy answering this question aloud, or sharing their written answers, so that they can consider other wilderness survival stories. Sharing will also acquaint them with a wider variety of reasons a person might be attempting to survive in the wilderness as well as a wider variety of outcomes. Knowing that there can be many different setups and outcomes for a story like this will increase their curiosity about the specific story they are about to read and prepare them to consider the novel’s theme of The Relationship Between Humanity and Nature. If students struggle to come up with examples of survival stories, you might offer them ideas from the resources listed below.

• This page on Backpacker Magazine’s site collects a range of true wilderness survival stories.