In my eighth-grade humanities class, we made a Found Poem out of the stories that we had read throughout the past week. A Found Poem is basically a poem that is free, made usually from the text of a story or a passage. Our theme for the poem is the conflict of the story. The story I chose for my poem is called “The Fan Club” by Rona Maynard. I think the conflict of this story is definitely internal, since it’s bullying with words, not physically, so peer pressure and bullying, also the freedom and discrimination of the “free” American people. I also think one of the most important symbols in the picture is a shell because a shell is what represents a person in the story, named Rachel, since her speech is about shells and that’s what brought upon the bullying. 

The single shell in the center represents Rachel, even though she is not the main character, she is the person who incites the bullying just because she’s “dumb” and comes from a poor household. She’s a different color because she stands out from the rest of the school, though not necessarily in a good way, and big because I believe she is trying so hard to ignore the bullying and be brave, and is also trying to be kind. So the largeness of her shell represents her personality. The little groups of shells scattered around the page represents the bullies around the school, each in their little group. They are small shells because I think they’re so shallow! In the story, Laura mentions that the “leader” of the group, a girl named Diane Goddard, doesn’t think about her grades at all, and only cares about her boyfriend and her reputation. The medium-sized shell in the bottom right corner is Laura, and I made her red and brown because it’s a mix between the bullies’ abalone, normal, whites and browns, and Rachel’s red. Since Laura, in the end, sided with the bullies after all, even when Rachel’s been really nice to her, I made her a mix. Bystanders are no use if they just stand there, and she chose to side with the bullies. 

Thank you for reading, and I hope you like my poem!

Links:

Here is the short story if you want to read it! Click here.

Here is a little more information about the author, Rona Maynard. Click here.