The Haunting Of Hill House

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.

“Sense of Belonging Mind Map”

After discussing the psychological effects of isolation, students design a mind map portraying the impact of social isolation in The Haunting of Hill House and how that isolation created Eleanor’s final circumstances.

Create a mind map presentation that portrays Eleanor’s state of mind throughout the novel. Include details from Eleanor’s development before, during, and at the end of the novel, and how her circumstances might have been different if she had had a place to belong.

• Review the text of The Haunting of Hill House and make a list of the ways in which Eleanor is isolated from others. Consider her relationships with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law and the years she has spent caring for others without creating a space or partner relationship of her own.
• Using a graphic design tool or pen and paper, create a mind map with Eleanor at its center. List details of Eleanor’s character surrounding her image or the symbol you choose to represent her.
• Surrounding the image of Eleanor, create at least five bubbles that include evidence of her gradual possession. What makes her vulnerable? What circumstances lead her to become gradually closer to the house? What causes her eventual demise?
• Share your findings with your audience. Your intended audience members are people your own age, so use words and images that will engage and inform this audience. Be sure to cite all evidence from the text and create a visually engaging mind map.
• After the presentations, discuss the various ways students created and presented their mind maps. Which approaches or details were especially effective? What new insights did you gain from your classmates’ mind maps?

Teaching Suggestion: This activity allows students to synthesize information across the text and create a memorable, visual representation of one of the text’s main themes: belonging. Some students may need reminders of where to find evidence in the text, but the recall and intellectual struggle involved with generating evidence is the most productive part of this exercise. It might also help to ask students to create symbols representing each part of the mind map to visually record and remember details from the text.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students may complete this activity with a partner or in a small group, which will make this assignment more manageable for students who struggle with larger tasks. For these students, you might also consider assigning roles or jobs—one student may focus on generating evidence from the opening chapters, while another may consider evidence from the middle of the book, etc. Also, this activity can be chunked into segments in which students focus on one bullet point at a time.