Description
“The Hand” by Guy de Maupassant (1883) is a classic gothic short story that works beautifully in a gothic literature or short story unit. Dark, suspenseful, and psychologically unsettling, this text draws students in while challenging them to analyze ambiguity, fear, and the limits of human understanding.
This lesson supports students through before-reading, during-reading, and after-reading activities that strengthen close reading and literary analysis skills. Students begin with an anticipation guide to activate prior knowledge and set the tone for the story. They then read the full text while working with academic vocabulary through a graphic organizer and responding to twenty close reading and reading comprehension questions designed to guide understanding and textual analysis.
After reading, students deepen their comprehension using a short story elements graphic organizer and extend their thinking through a creative writing learning menu, allowing them to respond imaginatively while still grounding their work in the text. Complete answer keys are included to support instruction and assessment.
This story is especially effective for teaching embedded narrative structure and unique point of view, while also covering a wide range of literary elements, including allusion, foreshadowing, suspense, dialogue, gothic motifs, theme, plot, conflict, characterization, setting, mood, and tone.
“The Hand” pairs exceptionally well with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as both texts explore imagination versus reality, mystery, storytelling, and the supernatural. Together, they provide a strong foundation for rich discussion and an in-depth text-dependent analysis (TDA) essay in middle school or high school ELA classrooms.