Name:___________________________
Summary and Soundtrack Example
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Your outline included all the
important details about your text.
All those details showed up in your
summary. For your soundtrack, you
wrote in complete sentences,
described what was happening in
the story, blended your words with
a quotation from that part of the
story and explained why the song or
type of music you chose fits that
part of the story.
Your summary is
missing one of the
requirements to
meet standard.
Your summary is
missing two
requirements to
meet standard.
Your summary is missing
three or more of the
requirements to meet
standard.
Outline for the summary:
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Title, author, text type:
o The Veldt
o Ray Bradbury
o Short Story
Describe the main conflict: [Write]
o Character vs Character
o Parents vs kids
o Kids are putting their thoughts on the walls of a nursery, parents don’t like this
Main characters and any important details about them: [Write]
o George and Lydia Hadley
o Their children who don't do what their parents say
Important details about the setting: [Write]
o There is a nursery in their house that can put people's thoughts on the wall
o Over the course of the story, the things in the nursery start to come to life
List important events in the main conflict that led to the end of the main conflict, including how the
main conflict ended: [Write]
o Parents see a veldt scene in the nursery with lions
o parents tell kids to make the veldt go away
o kids lie and say ok, but they don't
o parents threaten to turn off the nursery
o kids promise to do what their parents say
o but then they don't
o
o
o
o
parents are going to to turn the nursery off
parents go in to the nursery one last time
kids lock the parents in the nursery
parents get eaten by lions
Summary: [Write:]
The short story, 'The Veldt,' by Ray Bradbury, is about two parents, George and Lydia Hadley, who struggle with
their children over control of a nursery in their house. The nursery is no average nursery though. It has the ability to
project the thoughts of any person who is inside it onto the walls in very real detail. Throughout the course of the story,
George, the father, becomes increasingly concerned about images of an African veldt his children are creating on the
nursery walls, and the images of lions on those walls, who are always eating something in the distance. At a certain point
in the story, real objects such as George's wallet and his wife's scarf start showing up in the nursery, covered in blood,
suggesting things in the nursery that were imaginary can somehow become real. The children deny creating the images
of the nursery at first. However, when they admit that they have been making the images, they then threaten their
parents not to turn the nursery off. It is at this point in the story that George decides he will shut the whole nursery off
and take his family on vacation. Just before he does this, his children convince him to let them play in the nursery one
more time. He and his wife hear their children calling to them from the nursery, and when they go to see what they
want, the children lock the parents in the nursery. The main conflict in the story ends with loins approaching George and
Lydia and we as readers must infer that the lions then eat George and Lydia.
Soundtrack:
1.
Track #1: In complete sentences, describe what’s happening in the story, blend your words with a quotation
from that part of the story and explain why the song or type of music you chose fits that part of the story
2. [Write:] In the in the part of the text where the children lock their parents in the nursery and, “The lions
on three sides of them [the parents], in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the dry straw, rumbling
and roaring in their throats,” I’d play a gangster rap song. Some vintage west coast stuff like Tupac. A
song about straight thuggin’. The reason I’d pick this song is because the children couldn’t be any more
gangster than they were in this moment.
3. Track #2: In complete sentences, describe what’s happening in the story, blend your words with a quotation
from that part of the story and explain why the song or type of music you chose fits that part of the story:
4. [Write:] In the part of the story where George, “…bent and picked up a bloody scarf,” I’d pick the song
‘Tin Man’ by Future Islands to add a surreal, 80’s vibe to the story. In the same way that the nursery
should have never been able to create real items, the song ‘Tin Man’ should never be as good as it is.
The growling, weird vocals and synthy beats shouldn’t add up to such a great song, but it does.
5. Track #3: In complete sentences, describe what’s happening in the story, blend your words with a quotation
from that part of the story and explain why the song or type of music you chose fits that part of the story:
6. [Write:] During the part of the story where George is first entering the nursery, I would have slow,
synthesizer heavy techno music playing. As the, “…sun…[was on George’s] neck, still, like a hot paw…”
I’d have a long, drawn out note on the synthesizer grow louder and louder to make the viewer feel as
uncomfortable in an auditory sense as George must have felt in the nursery.