Trail of Lightning

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Borrowing from the Present to Write the Future”

In this activity, students will choose one location, character, symbol, story, or relic from Trail of Lightning to research and then create a visual report of the cultural and historical significance of this topic and how Rebecca Roanhorse has reimagined it to support themes and to fulfill a specific role in the story.

Choose a location, character, symbol, story, or relic from Trail of Lightning to research, paying particular attention to its cultural or historical connotations. Then, create a visual report informing the audience about the item’s historical and cultural background and analyzing how it has been reimagined to support themes and fulfill a specific role in Trail of Lightning.

• Brainstorm: Which location, story, character, or relic most interested you? Make a quick list of possibilities and narrow your choice to one.
• Research: Using reputable sources, research your chosen topic. In addition to notes on the topic’s cultural and historical background, images and artistic representation may help you visualize the topic.
• Analyze: Using the information from your research and Trail of Lightning, compare the original topic to how it appears in the story. Determine what aspects of the topic remain the same and what Roanhorse has reimagined. Identify its role in the story, connecting it directly to key themes and events. Conclude by answering the question: Why is this topic a good choice for this role and these themes?
• Create: Using digital or physical mediums, create a visual report poster or infographic that informs the audience of your topic’s historical and cultural context and demonstrates how the author has reimagined it to fulfill a role in the novel. Strike a balance between using text and visual imagery to convey key information.

Students will present their visual reports to the class. Reports can be posted for public display.

Teaching Suggestion: Students may benefit creatively from a whole group brainstorming of the many possible topics that can be posted publicly for reference. To expand coverage and limit the overlap of topics, consider encouraging students to explore cultural aspects that fulfill smaller or more indirect roles in the story, such as the Pendleton and Two Grey Hills blankets, the role of elders like Tah, Changing Woman, or the history of the Checkerboard Zone. ELL students, emerging readers, and students with attentional or executive functioning differences may benefit from graphic organizers, pre-highlighted or annotated sections of the novel, and research resources related to their topic to guide them through each step. Students with visual impairments may not be able to complete this assignment as written. A reasonable alternative would be for these students to write a report and present it to the class rather than a visual poster.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. One of Maggie’s inner conflicts involves her identity and the possibility of corruption by the violence she witnesses and the violence in which she participates.

• In what ways does violence shape Maggie’s relationship with herself, and how does it both serve her and hinder her? (Topic sentence)
• Describe how violence helps and hinders Maggie, including how she must use it to save herself from corrupting influences.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain what lessons Maggie learns about the nature of violence and her own identity.

2. As a central theme, Trust and Betrayal in Relationships inform and shape the major characters’ interactions, creating tension and conflict. Choose a single character when responding to this prompt.

• How do this character’s secrets and ulterior motives create tension and conflict that drives the story toward its conclusion?
• What important secrets and motives does this character keep from others? Describe how these secrets or motives overtly and covertly undermine a relationship with another character and lead to a betrayal by the end of the novel.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, identify the nature of the betrayal this character orchestrates and what it reveals about proper care in relationships.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Power, both supernatural and mundane, is a motif in Trail of Lightning. Trace the development of this motif throughout the novel, noting the differing manifestations it takes and when power is used both justly and unjustly. How do major and minor characters use and misuse their power, and what are the results? What is the overall message regarding power and the potential for corruption? Ultimately, is power a positive or negative force within the story?

2. Familial obligations and responsibilities, or k’é, is a foundational concept within the novel. Explore the many ways it manifests, whether through characters adhering to or violating this concept. In what ways does this concept help solve both Maggie’s internal conflicts and the external conflicts facing all Dinétah?

3. This novel presents a view of a post-apocalyptic Indigenous world driven to scarcity by climate change and colonization. Unlike in typical climate narratives, Rebecca Roanhorse’s characters are not struggling to respond to an apocalypse but, in many ways, have already adapted and found ways to survive. In what other ways does Trail of Lightning subvert mainstream climate and disaster narratives? How does it promote a hopeful narrative of Indigenous resilience despite the Big Water and lingering impacts of colonial and environmental exploitation? What message might it share about the future and humankind’s responses to the environment and each other?

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Why do the Begays fear Maggie as other?

A) She is not from Lukachukai.

B) Her clan names mark her as a true Monsterslayer.

C) Maggie is reluctant to find their missing daughter.

D) Maggie insults their trade.

2. Why must Maggie kill the Begay girl?

A) She is too far from medical care to save.

B) The monster has already killed her.

C) She will betray Maggie’s clan secrets.

D) The girl is infected and will turn the monster’s evil onto others.

3. What principle does Maggie honor when she declines the Two Grey Hills blanket?

A) The Monsterslayer Covenant because she must not be paid for her services

B) K’é because she could not restore the girl to her family alive and is not owed more

C) The Lifeways because the girl is dead

D) Justice because she brought them the offending monster’s head

4. What does Tah say Kai will bring to Dinétah?

A) Balance for Maggie’s troubled spirit

B) The return of Immortals like Ma’ii

C) Big Medicine and Weatherways

D) Justice and sovereignty

5. Why are the oral histories Kai seeks important?

A) They preserve Diné stories despite colonizers’ deculturation attempts.

B) They are the last archive left after the Big Water.

C) Ma’ii tells them the witch uses them to create monsters.

D) Kai lies to Maggie and tells her they are important to delay her.

6. What do the lightning marks in Crownpoint lead Maggie to suspect?

A) That dry lightning killed the townsfolk

B) That Neizghání causes the monster attacks

C) That the Ghosts are now Immortals too

D) That Kai has used Weatherways

7. Which of these actions reveal Maggie’s internal conflicts?

A) Her impatience with Ma’ii’s request for hospitality

B) Her fear of Kai’s silver eyes

C) Her use of force to get Ma’ii to speak

D) Her repeated attempts to push Kai away

8. What character traits do Kai and Ma’ii share?

A) They both have an unpredictable mean streak.

B) They both dislike speaking of death and violence.

C) They are both charming and manipulative.

D) They both have nightmares they refuse to share.

9. Whose trust does Maggie fear she has broken when Longarm beats Kai?

A) Kai’s

B) Tah’s

C) Her náli’s

D) Ma’ii’s

10. Though she is not Diné, in what ways does Grace show an understanding of k’é?

A) She accepts Maggie as kin after Rock Springs despite the trouble she brings.

B) She introduces herself using her maternal and paternal clan names.

C) She gives Kai 24 hours of safe refuge to recover.

D) She tells Maggie that guns have no place in her establishment.

11. What is ironic about the Monsterslayer clubwear Clive dresses Maggie in?

A) It belonged to Clive’s ex.

B) It makes her look terrifying.

C) It does not match the silver makeup Kai puts on her eyes.

D) It exposes her rather than protects her.

12. Why does Kai feel guilty about Maggie’s upcoming fight?

A) His charm does not influence Immortals like Mósí.

B) He feels responsible for the mental cost of her using violence to keep him safe.

C) He secretly knows she will face Neizghání.

D) He secretly knows Ma’ii has the fire drill, not Mósí.

13. What is significant about Black Mesa?

A) It symbolizes the destruction of the environment and of Maggie’s closest relationships.

B) It is historically one of the Four Sacred Mountains.

C) The Tribal Council mined the turquoise out of it to build The Wall.

D) Maggie killed the first Bad Men on Black Mesa as an apprentice.

14. Why does Maggie sever Ma’ii’s head?

A) She fears he will kill Kai.

B) To punish him for his role in flooding the five worlds.

C) She does not want to give him the satisfaction of winning.

D) Severing the head keeps a monster from returning.

15. What might Tah’s presence at the end of the story suggest about Maggie’s future?

A) That she will be filled with guilt forever for killing Tah’s grandson

B) That Maggie will choose to build healthy relationships rather than run from them

C) That she and Tah will never see Kai again

D) That she must atone for her crimes and rid herself of her sickness

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Why are clan powers regarded with suspicion and fear, even by those who have them?

2. Why is Maggie unable to walk away from the grudge match despite knowing she cannot defeat Neizghání?

3. What does Maggie mean when she says the lightning sword is “as light as freedom and as heavy as grief”?