Brief Overview: In this activity, students are asked to examine the practice of adaptation by reading the short story “The Cask of Amontillado” and listening to its radio adaptation from The Hall of Fantasy. They consider the changes and continuities between the two versions and how those changes do or do not work better for the radio medium. They then apply these concepts of adaptation by brainstorming how they would adapt the story into a short film.

 

Learning Objectives: This assignment takes place in a unit focused around adaptation, where, for the final project, students are asked to adapt a previous paper into a new medium or genre. This assignment scaffolds this final project by helping students to see adaptation as an act of active translation from one medium to another by considering the ways different mediums convey the same general story or message and the changes needed to make those adaptations effective in the new  medium. 

 

By completing this activity, students will:

• Better understand the work of active translation they will need to perform when adapting their own writing from one medium to another

• Gain insights into the rhetorical practices and genre conventions  of prose, radio, and film

• See adaptation as a fluid process that centers the near infinite changeability of their own writing.

 

Assignment Length: This assignment requires the length of a one-hour class plus additional time for students to complete readings prior to class.

 

Required Materials: Access to a copy of “The Cask of Amontillado” as a short story (I typically link them to this free resource: https://poestories.com/read/amontillado).

Access to the Hall of Fantasy’s radio adaptation of it (available here: https://ia800500.us.archive.org/34items/470213ThePerfectScript/530119_The_Cask_Of_Amontillado.mp3). Both of these require the use of a computer.

 

Materials Summary: Poe’s original short story centers around a narrator named Montressor, who is incensed at Fortunato for undisclosed reasons. Montressor thus lures Fortun down to the catacombs with the promise of the titular cask of amontillado. Once there, Montressor entraps Fortunato in one of the catacombs and buries him alive. Throughout the story, Poe keeps motives and dialogue sparse, focusing instead on building an atmosphere of terror via his chilling (albeit occasionally challenging to modern readers) prose.

 

While the radio adaptation keeps the same general plot of the short story, it expands on the material (necessary to fill out the episode’s runtime) by adding details about why Montressor wants to revenge himself on Fortunato, introducing new characters, expanding on the dialogue dramatically, and giving each character much more distinct personalities. It also changes much of the language to be more accessible to a broader audience. Some aural specific modes it uses include music, sound effects, and the expressive voices of the actors.

 

Materials Explanation: I use “The Cask of Amontillado” first because the length of both the short story and radio play make it suitable for an assignment of this nature. Additionally, I have found students enjoy the horror aspects of both and the personality of the radio play in particular, making the students more invested in the assignment.

 

In addition, “The Cask of Amontillado” is a useful case study for adaptation because, while the radio play keeps the central idea and plot of the story, it makes a variety of changes to better suit the medium and genre that are easy for the students to pick up on and analyze. Moreover, I have found many of my students like to adapt their previous writing assignments into audio formats (particularly podcasts), so using a radio play helps center how to adapt a textual genre into an aural one. Finally, it is a story and adaptation I love, and I have found this love translates to my students.

 

If the teacher wishes to choose a different set of texts for this project, I would recommend the combined time spent needed to consume to the text take no more than thirty minutes.

 

Skills Necessary: The teacher should have already discussed the five modes of multimodal rhetoric (Linguistic, Aural, Spatial, Visual, and Gestural) and adaptation as the act of translating a central idea from one medium to another.

 

Access and Adaptability: This assignment requires access to a computer, the internet, and the Canvas site.

 

Teacher Preparation: The teacher should be familiar with the story and radio adaptation and be ready to prompt students about different rhetorical strategies each uses to convey their central message.

 

Student Preparation: In the class prior to when the teacher plans on using this assignment, the teacher will notify the students that they will be reading “The Cask of Amontillado” and listening to its radio adaptation. The teacher may also alert students that this story features a man being buried alive, offering a possible alternative reading if that is uncomfortable for any student.

 

After reading the story and listening to the adaptation, students will be asked to complete a short homework assignment to prepare them for class discussion. For this, they will respond to the following questions:

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1. What do you think is the essential idea of the short story? What is the overall purpose of the story? There is no right or wrong answer here, just say what you thought as you were reading it.

2. Is the essential idea of the radio adaptation the same as that of the short story? Or do you see them as different?

3. What are at least three changes the radio adaptation makes to the short story? These can involve plot, characters, descriptions, structure, multimodal modes, or anything else you can think of that was different.

4. What are three medium specific choices the radio adaptation makes? Essentially, how does the radio play represent the story in ways that only make sense as a radio play (where they would not be possible in a written down short story).

5. Why do you think the radio play made these changes? Do they alter the essential idea of the story? How do they possibly make more sense within the context of this being a radio play?

6. Which version did you prefer? Why?

 

Class Assignment: Once class starts, the teacher will briefly remind students of adaptation as an act of translation and how different mediums determine rhetorical choices for both modes of persuasion and content.

 

The students will be broken up into groups of 3-4. Students will be asked to discuss what they felt the central message of the short story was, list all of the changes they noticed from the short story to the radio adaptation and why these may have been made (especially as it relates to fitting the story to the new medium of a radio play), and whether they think a radio play is a good fit for the story.

 

The class will then come together and share their responses. The teacher should ask clarifying questions (for example, most of my students simply reply “revenge” as the central theme of the story, so I often ask what they think it is saying about revenge, from which I get a more diverse set of responses) and write the students’ answers on the board to demonstrate how their knowledge is valued.

 

Following this, the students will return to their groups and come up with a brief plan for adapting the story into a short film. They will be asked to consider the following questions to guide them:

1. Discuss how you would carry over the central idea to this new format. What would you change?

2. What are some medium specific choices you would use to better sell the film’s central idea?

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The class will then pitch their responses to the rest of the class. Once again, the teacher should ask clarifying questions about why they would made certain choices and what they think the rhetorical impact of these choices would be.

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Finally, the teacher will conclude class by reiterating how this is the same work students will engage with in their own adaptation projects, centering how they can still convey the main idea of their own works while making a variety of changes to better fit the new medium and, in fact, that such acts of translation are necessary.