Synthesis- Putting it all together…
Fiction…
· Analyze it with SOAPTSTone: subject, occasion, audience, purpose, theme, tone.
· Figure out the theme or message of the piece you read.
· Figure out the purpose of the piece- why did the author write it?
· How does it relate to the topic of your writing prompt?
· Highlight a quote or text you could use in your essay.
Nonfiction…
· Analyze it with SOAPTSTone: subject, occasion, audience, purpose, theme, tone.
· Summarize the main argument.
· Identify the claims or assertions (evidence).
· How does it relate to the topic of your writing prompt?
· Highlight a quote or text you could use in your essay.
Writing Assignment:
Making choices is a natural part of life, from seemingly small choices such as what to wear each day, to obviously more significant ones, such as what career one should choose. Students are often encouraged to consider their choices carefully by parents and teachers, and to consider the consequences of their choices. Writer J. K. Rowling has said, “It is our choices…that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Jazz singer Midori Koto commented that, “Honor isn’t about making the right choices. It’s about dealing with the consequences.”
Carefully read each selection, then synthesize information from all three, and include it in a coherent, well-developed essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies the idea that our choices, both small and large, affect other people, and reveal our true character.
Argue for, against, or a little of both, in your essay, and use text evidence from these pieces to support your points. DO NOT SUMMARIZE THESE PIECES. Use the TLQ strategy to incorporate quotes, or paraphrase from these texts. You may identify the pieces as Source A, Source B, or Source C.
SOURCE A: From The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers
(fiction)
January 1964: Johnson City, South Carolina
Tommy arrived home at the same time that the white man was getting out of his car. He was carrying a black medical bag. Mary Lewis was standing in the doorway and signaled to him.
“Wait here,” Tommy said to Jennie. He let his bike fall to one side and headed for his house, just vaguely aware that Jennie was right behind him.
Inside, the room was full of fresh cooking smells. Three matrons from the church, all dressed in white, were sitting near the window. Cleon Davis was sitting at the window, a shotgun cradled in his arms.
“What happened?” Tommy asked.
“Skeeter Jackson,” one of the white-clad women said. “They caught him after the march and beat him up bad. Dr. Calloway thinks he may lose his eye. That’s why he called that white doctor over.”
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs in your room, I think.” The answer was flat, dry.
“Anybody else hurt?” Jennie asked, looking toward Cleon Davis.
“No, but it don’t hurt to be ready. You ‘member they bombed that church after the march on Washington.”
Tommy nodded and started upstairs. His mother was standing in the hallway with Mrs. Calloway. Tommy nodded to the bosomy woman even as his mother was reaching for him. She pulled her son to her and held him close.
“I didn’t see you,” she said. “Didn’t know where you were. You okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said. “How’s Skeeter?”
His mother shrugged and released him.
The white doctor was looking at Skeeter’s eye. Dr. Calloway was on the other side of the bed. From where he stood, Tommy could see that there was blood on the pillow. He suddenly felt tired, so tired that even standing was difficult. He stepped forward and held on to the bedpost. The white doctor turned and looked at him.
“It doesn’t look like nerve damage,” Dr. Calloway said.
“No, but there’s a lot of bleeding into the retinal area. What we have to check for is possible retinal detachment. I don’t think there will be permanent damage, maybe just a lot of floaters, but he won’t lose vision. Can you get him over to me tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’ll take him home tonight,” Dr. Calloway said. “And I’ll give his folks your number. I don’t know if they’ll want a Negro driving him around.”
“He took a real beating.” The white doctor was large, round-shouldered. “You report it to the police?”
“What for?” Dr. Calloway asked. “He was beaten for associating with Negroes. You think they’re going to arrest somebody for that?”
“I’m reporting it,” the white doctor said, “because it’s the way things should be.”
“Better check with his parents first,” Dr. Calloway said. “See if they want you to report it. They might not want the attention, and that’s the difference between the way things should be and the way things are.”
“You going to speak to them?”
“I owe it to them,” Dr. Calloway said. “He was marching for us.”
The white doctor reached out and shook hands with Dr. Calloway.
Tommy watched as he packed his bag, took one more look at Skeeter’s form on the bed, and left.
Tommy went to Skeeter’s bedside and knelt on one knee. The right side of Skeeter’s face was swollen, the right eye was bulging and shut. The flesh around the eye was dark purple. His lower jaw seemed to jut out at a sharp angle, and there was dried blood in the corner of his mouth.
“His jaw is dislocated,” Dr. Calloway said, “but that will heal. I’m just worried about the eye, which is why I called Dr. Grier.”
Tommy put his hand on Skeeter’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.
Skeeter opened his other eye, saw that it was Tommy, and took his hand.
“I’m glad I marched,” he said, the words coming out slurred through his bruised lips.
There was a shuffling on the stairs, and Mrs. Calloway came into the room, and announced that Skeeter’s parents were there.
Skeeter Jackson’s father, Grady Lee Jackson, had been an oysterman all of his life. Mr. Jackson was small, thin-lipped, and quiet. Tommy had never heard him say more than three or four words at a time. His face was expressionless; his hands, scarred from years of oyster shells, years of grit, and cold sea, ran quickly through the dirty-blond hair.
“He going to be all right?”
“He should go to Dr. Grier over in Shelby tomorrow to see about his eye,” Dr. Calloway said. “I’ll drive him over there if you want.”
“You okay, son?”
“Doing pretty good, Dad,” Skeeter said. His open eye glistened over with tears.
“I think you’re doing pretty good, too,” Grady Lee Jackson said.
Skeeter’s mother went silently to the side of the bed, stepped past Tommy, and touched her son gently, allowing her fingertips to caress the smooth face. Skeeter turned to her and forced a smile.
Tommy and Mr. Jackson helped Skeeter down the stairs, past the anxious black women who had gathered to eat and to be together. No one spoke as Skeeter eased himself into his family’s car.
“If you want me to, I’ll drop by later and see how he’s doing, Mr. Jackson,” Dr. Calloway said.
Skeeter’s father nodded and slipped behind the wheel of the old Chevy he drove. Skeeter was sitting in the back with his head on his mother’s shoulder. Jennie threw him a kiss.
“I’d appreciate it,” the elder Jackson said.
* * * * * * * *
Source B: Harry S. Truman, Radio Address (excerpt) August, 1945 (nonfiction)
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Its production and use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we know the disaster which would have come to this nation, and to all peaceful nations, to all civilizations, if they had found it first.
That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.
We won the race of discovery against the Germans.
Having found the bomb, we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned the pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.
* * * * * * * *
Source C: “Tiffany Stephenson - An Apology” by Bjorn Skogquist (nonfiction)
When I was in the fourth grade, I moved from a small Lutheran school of 100 to a larger publicly funded elementary school, Lincoln Elementary. Wow. Lincoln was a big school, full of a thousand different attitudes about everything from eating lunch to how to treat a new kid. It was a tough time for me, my first year, and more than anything, I wanted to belong.
Many things were difficult; the move my family had just made, trying to make new friends, settling into a new home, accepting a new stepfather. I remember crying a lot. I remember my parents fighting. They were having a difficult time with their marriage, and whether it was my stepfather’s drinking, or my mother’s stubbornness, it took an emotional toll on both me and my siblings. Despite all this, the thing that I remember most about the fourth grade is Tiffany Stephenson.
The first day of fourth grade at Lincoln Elementary School was emptiness, and it felt enormous. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, but I was too absorbed in my own problems to notice anyone else’s. I was upset that my father, my blood father, was in the hospital for abusing alcohol. Among other things, he was a schizophrenic. I was too young to understand these diseases, but I understood all too well that my daddy was very sick, and that I couldn’t see him any more.
My first day at Lincoln was a very real moment in my life. The weather was both cloudy and intolerably sunny at the same time. Maybe it wasn’t that the sun was so bright, maybe it was just that our eyes were still adjusted to morning shadows. It was one of the sequences that somehow stand out in my memory as unforgettable. I remember feeling gray inside. I think that all of us felt a little gray, and I would guess that most of us remember that first day as you might remember your grandmother’s funeral, whether you liked it or not.
I walked in and sat near the back of the class, along with a few others. If you were different or weird or new, from another planet, you sat in the back because those were the only desks left. I sat at the far left of the room, in the back near the windows. For a while I just stared out into the playground, waiting for recess to come. Our teacher, Mrs. Bebow, came into the room and started talking to us. I don’t remember exactly what she said that day, because I wasn’t listening. I was numb to the world, concentrating solely on that playground. She seemed distant, far away, and I think that my whole day might have stayed numb if it weren’t for a boy named Aaron Anderson.
Aaron, who sat to my right, leaned over and whispered, “My name’s Aaron. And that’s Tiffany Stephenson. Stay away from her. She’s fat and ugly and she stinks.” At that, a few others laughed, and I felt the numbness leaving me. Mrs. Bebow remarked that if we had something so terribly amusing to say, everyone had a right to know just what it was. Of course, we all quieted down. Then I asked which one was Tiffany, and Aaron pointed. There she was, coloring contentedly, sitting alone in the corner, in the very back, just like me. She was not fat or ugly, and as far as I knew, she didn’t stink either. I even remember thinking that she was cute, but I quickly dismissed the thought because I already had a new friendship, even though it was in the common disgust of Tiffany Stephenson.
While all this was happening, our teacher Mrs. Bebow managed to take roll, after which she proceeded to lecture the boys on good behavior and then the girls on being young ladies. Every time she turned her back, airplanes and garbage flew across the room at Tiffany, along with a giggle. I don’t think Tiffany Stephenson thought too much of us, that day or ever.
A few days later, one of the girls passed Tiffany a note. It ended up making her cry, and it got the girl a half an hour of detention. I was too busy trying to fit in to notice though, or didn’t notice, or was afraid to notice, or simply didn’t care.
That fall, both the boys and girls would go up to Tiffany on the playground and taunt her. They made absurd accusations, accusations about eating boogers at lunch, or about neglecting to wear underwear that day. Interestingly, this was the only activity that we participated in where a teacher didn’t command, “OK, boys and girls need to partner up!” What we did to Tiffany Stephenson was mean, but in using her we all became common allies. I wonder if the teachers knew what we were up to when we made our next move, or if they thought that we were actually getting along. I think they knew at first, but we got craftier as time passed. And Tiffany had quit telling the teacher what happened. She knew that when we were ratted on, her taunts got worse. And they did get worse. We were mean, but we kept on because there was no one to stand out and say, "Enough.”
When I think about that year, and about Tiffany, I remember that she was almost always alone. Toward the second half of the year, a girl named Sharon Olsen befriended her. Sharon and Tiffany were a lot alike. They spent most of their time together coloring and drawing pictures and those pictures always found their way to the prize board at the end of the week. The teacher knew that they needed a little encouragement, but mostly that “encouragement” ended up making us hate them more. We picked on Sharon a lot too, but not as much as we targeted Tiffany.