My Friend Dahmer

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.

“Creative Writing: Dahmer’s Friend’s Perspective”

In this activity, students will write a creative journal entry from the perspective of another of Dahmer’s friends (or a family member) during his high school years.

Derf Backderf’s graphic novel provides insights into Dahmer’s life during his high school years, but it is just one friend’s perspective on Dahmer’s life. For this Activity, you will write a journal entry from the perspective of a friend or family member of Dahmer’s during his high school years. This person does not have to be a friend or family member who actually existed; they can be entirely fictitious. Use the following guidelines as you draft your journal entry:

• First, select one of the scenes from Backderf’s novel to write from the perspective of a friend or family member of Dahmer’s. This could be an imagined student he went to school with, a teacher, or his parents or brother.
• Then, consider how that friend or family member might have felt during this particular scene. Try to consider what their feelings would be both during that moment and also looking back on the scene with the knowledge of what Dahmer had done.
• Finally, incorporate your notes from above and the novel’s themes of Lack of Social Support for Vulnerable Individuals, Nature Versus Nurture, and Economic and Social Status of 1970s America in your journal entry.

After drafting your journal entry, share your work with the class, and reflect on the variety of approaches of your classmates’ entries. How do all of these entries fit together? For example, do all the entries touch upon the themes of Lack of Social Support for Vulnerable Individuals, Nature Versus Nurture, and Economic and Social Status of 1970s America?

Teaching Suggestion: This Activity invites students to consider other perspectives on Dahmer during his formative high school years. It allows them to reflect on the variety of ways that Dahmer was failed by the system that he lived in, and some much larger philosophical ideas about Nature Versus Nurture.

Differentiation Suggestion: For students with anxiety around public speaking, it might be helpful to break the class into small groups for presentations instead of doing them as a whole group. For students who struggle with written expression, it could be helpful to have partners or small groups and develop a story together. For an extra challenge, encourage students to write from the perspective of someone different than Backderf. This could be a girl, an adult (at the time), or a family member. This creates a bit more challenge and encourages students to consider how another person might have seen Dahmer differently. For visual learners, invite students to share their journal entries in the format of a graphic novel, using Backderf’s text as an example.