Symbols are things that represent ideas, places, or people. The American flag is a symbol of the United States and of patriotism. Places that symbolize, or represent, the United States include Mount Rushmore, the U.S. Capitol, and Ellis Island.

Famous sites in your state can symbolize your pride in where you live. For example, the people of Nebraska have Chimney Rock, a 300-foot-tall rock tower in the western part of the state. It is the symbol of Nebraska, and it is the image Nebraskans chose to include on their state quarter.

In this lesson, you will meet a young girl named Keely who loves a mountain near her home. Keely is part Nipmuc. The Nipmucs are a Native American tribe that once lived in central Massachusetts, northern Connecticut, and northern Rhode Island. You will learn why the mountain is symbolic for Keely, and how it affects her sense of her own identity.

Goals
Here are the big ideas you will learn about in this lesson:

• Places can have symbolic meaning for people.
• Symbolic places affect people’s personal identities—their sense of who they are.
• Writers use symbolism to give meaning to their writing beyond what they have actually described.

Strategies
You will be using many reading and writing strategies to complete this lesson. The key strategies that you will focus on are:

• Making inferences
• Determining important information
• Comparing and contrasting ideas
• Making connections

• sacred
• symbolism

When she was 12 years old, Keely made a video about being part of the Nipmuc Nation. The Nipmucs are Native Americans who originally lived in New England as a tribe, or group, but now live all over the United States. As you watch this video, think about Keely’s sense of her own personal identity as part Irish and part Nipmuc, and how it is affected by her feeling that:

• The Nipmuc reservation is so small that she and other Nipmuc people could never live there together
• The Nipmuc tribe has lost its way
• There is no longer a strong Nipmuc community in Massachusetts

Click "View" on the left to watch the video.

In one to two sentences, explain what Keely means when she says she grew up with "mixed feelings about how to be Nipmuc."

In this video segment, Keely describes how she once wanted to create a Nipmuc community center on Wachusett Mountain, the highest mountain in central Massachusetts. Also known as Mount Wachusett, the mountain was once part of Nipmuc land and was sacred to the Nipmucs. Today it belongs to the state and includes a ski resort, a place where people pay to go skiing. As you watch, think about what the mountain means to Keely—what it symbolizes for her. How does it connect to her desire to bring her people together in one place so they can teach young Nipmucs like herself more about their culture?

Click "View" on the left to watch the video.

What does Wachusett Mountain symbolize for Keely? Write your answer in two to three sentences.

The Nipmucs used to live in parts of what is now New England, along with other Native American groups. They had their own culture, including language, clothing, traditions, and religion. That’s what gave them their community identity. Once their land was taken over by European settlers in colonial times, the Nipmucs began to move to different regions of the country. They are no longer all in the same area, and Wachusett Mountain, in central Massachusetts, is no longer part of their land.

For Keely, the loss of the mountain is symbolic: she feels that Wachusett has lost its Nipmuc identity, just like the Nipmuc people. That’s why she once wanted to get the mountain back—she wanted to change it back into a center of Nipmuc culture. If this could happen, more Nipmucs would come to it, and the sacred mountain could once again be a symbol of Nipmuc pride and community.

In this lesson, you have learned about symbolic places, including Wachusett Mountain and what it symbolizes for Keely. Now you will read about symbolism in literature.

Click "View" on the left to open the reading passage.

How are symbols of nature, like the Great Plains or the tiger, used in literature to represent ideas like freedom and danger? Write your answer in two to three sentences.

The videos you have seen and the text you have read describe Keely’s feelings about her Nipmuc identity, and how Wachusett Mountain is a symbol for her of the lost Nipmuc community in New England.

Now show what you have learned so far about Wachusett Mountain, symbolism, and personal identity by answering these three questions. Be sure to save all your answers before you go to the next screen.

You will now check your understanding of the vocabulary words for this lesson by placing them in sentences. Click "View" on the left to begin the activity.

Before moving to the next screen, choose two words from the vocabulary list and write a new sentence for each word.

Vocabulary words: community, culture, identity, sacred, symbolism

As the videos and the reading have shown, Keely once felt that the Nipmuc people needed a symbolic place to gather in order to be able to share and celebrate their culture. In this activity, you will read about how Keely's feelings about the Nipmuc community have changed now that she is older.

Click "View" on the left to begin the activity. Your teacher will review the answers with you.

Then, before moving on to the final assignment, you may want to watch this lesson's videos again or reread the passage.

Keely's Personal Identity

Video: 1m 52s

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Wachusett Mountain

Video: 1m 31s

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Symbolism in Literature

Document

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In this lesson, you have learned about symbolism in our lives and in literature. You will now write an essay that shares what you have learned and what you think about it.

Begin by reviewing your notes. Click "review my work" above and view or print out the screen that pops up.

Final Assignment Instructions

• Click Symbolism: Keely's Mountain—Final Assignment (PDF).
• Choose one of the topics in the PDF and write an essay.
• Organize your response so that it includes at least three supporting details that you have learned from the reading passage, videos, and other materials in this lesson.
• Use at least three vocabulary words (or a form of the words) as part of your supporting details. For example, for the word jump, you could use jumps, jumped, or jumping.