Twelve Years After 9/11: Let's End the Politics of Fear

Robin Koerner | September 11, 2013

Since 9/11, it seems that the American Left and the American Right have agreed on something of profound importance: We're scared.

The politics of the last 12 years have been the politics of fear.

Because of fear that one of us is a terrorist, we've allowed our intelligence services to listen into our private conversations; because of fear of terrorists from abroad, we have killed innocent people in foreign nations (supposedly to protect ourselves here); because of fear that our planes will get blown up, we let government agents put their hands on our children's crotches and look at our naked bodies, and because of fear that the economy will implode, we've given trillions of dollars to organizations that have brought us to that point.

None of it feels very brave or free. None of it feels very American.

Nations confident of their strength don't seek fights. The most powerful nations win without firing a shot. Nations confident of their security and the ability of their agents to maintain it don't compromise the dignity or legal rights of its citizens. Nations confident that the innovativeness and entrepreneurism of its people can provide prosperity don't reward bad custodians of financial resources to "save the system."

America has surely been a great nation. But with true greatness -- true power -- comes self-confidence. What has happened to the America that the world used to love, even if in some quarters, grudgingly? It was always American self-confidence, justified largely by the examples we set regarding the treatment of our people and, during our grander historical moments, other people, on which our leadership depended. We were respected and powerful to the extent that other nations wanted to be like us -- to have our prosperity, our freedom and our openness.

Twelve years after 9/11, who have we become and who do we appear to be?

Question #1

Have we given up too many of our freedoms so that we can be free? Do government and police forces misuse their power in the name of “keeping us safe”? Provide evidence to support your answer.

The use of force -- whether legal or military -- always reveals a failure of some other, preferable means. If our sons and daughters in uniform are truly fighting for American freedoms, then those freedoms must all still exist at home uncompromised: inasmuch as we give them up at home, those men and women cannot be fighting to protect them, just as a matter of simple logic.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to stay at home while our soldiers fight abroad, demean their service if we are too lazy not to speak out in opposition when our leaders compromise our Constitutional rights (always for our own good). And if, worse, we support those compromises out of our own fear, then we meet our soldiers' bravery with our own cowardice.

Question #2

Do you agree with the author, Robin Koerner, that we are lazy if we don’t speak out against government and police misuses of power? When are instances when we must speak up? When are instances when the dangers of speaking up may be too great?

In the last century, America led the free world by being the indispensable nation that others sought to emulate. But obsessive, scared nations, like obsessive scared people, are not models for anyone. America had led the free world by persuasion, based on a moral authority that came with the rights and prosperity that its legal and economic systems provided for its people. As our nation has ceased to trust in those rights and the system that has provided its prosperity, we have given up moral authority and persuasive power. That is why so many of our attempts to make ourselves safer will fail in their stated purpose.

Twelve years on from 9/11, we can afford to take a deep breath. If anyone attacks us, we'll still be able to respond with the greatest military force in the history of the world. If anyone should infiltrate us, we have some of the most honorable men and women and the best technological means to find them, and a justice system, older than the country itself, to deal with them.

We call our country the land of the free and the home of the brave. But who, honestly, is feeling brave and free today?

Question #3

Do you agree with Koerner’s assessment that America has lost its moral compass? How would you respond to the author if you were to meet her in person?

Directions: As you read a recent article about President Trump’s use of fear as a political tool, annotate the article. Remember, effective annotation for a nonfiction piece of writing includes:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Trump’s rallying cry: Fear itself

President Trump often stokes the nation’s anxieties in arguing for his agenda.

Washington Post | Karen Tumulty and David Nakamura | February 3 2017

The machete-wielding man was quickly shot and arrested Friday morning by French police and soldiers, but from the vantage point of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was a crisis dire enough to put a nation 4,000 miles away on high alert.

“A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.,” President Trump tweeted.

French authorities are indeed investigating the incident as possible terrorism. But other than the critical wounding of the assailant, there were no injuries, except a slight cut to the scalp of a soldier.

Trump’s reaction to the Egyptian attacker who had shouted “God is great” in Arabic also stood in stark contrast to his public silence on the killing of six Muslim worshipers five days earlier at a mosque in Quebec City.

The episode spoke loudly to the fact that stoking fear — a strategy that helped get Trump elected — is emerging as a central part of how he plans to carry out his governing agenda.

“He wants people to understand that he is aggressively going to combat anybody who seeks to do us harm and he’s going to put the safety and security of this country first,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. “He’s not going to sugarcoat it.”

That is a theme to which Trump has returned again and again at critical moments — from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that conjured “crime and terrorism and lawlessness,“ to his dark inaugural address, with its vivid image of “American carnage.”

Channeling and amplifying fear can be an effective campaign tool, but Trump’s critics say it is a dangerous way to lead a country.

“It is used to increase the public threshold for risk,” said Michael Gerson, a chief speechwriter for former president George W. Bush who writes an opinion column for The Washington Post. “Because poor neighborhoods can’t get any worse, why not try something new? Because America is already a jihadist battleground, why not take a

radical and discriminatory new direction on immigration? Because the planet is in chaos, why not entirely reorient American foreign policy toward alliances and great power rivals?

“Things, after all, can’t get any worse,” Gerson continued. “The problem is: Things can get a lot worse, and quickly.”

Playing upon the nation’s anxieties about what might happen also stands as a stark contrast to how presidents have lifted the country out of actual crisis in the past.

Perhaps most famous was the line that most Americans can still recite from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, when he told a country in the depth of the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

There were also other presidents — Bill Clinton in the wake of the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Bush standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center in 2001 — who seemed to grow into the job as they summoned the nation to defy what it feared rather than succumb to it.

Scholars of the subject say they can think of no previous U.S. president so enamored as Trump with scare tactics.

“If he frightens people, it puts him in the driver’s seat. He’s in control,” said historian Robert Dallek. “These are what I think can be described as demagogic tendencies.”

Timothy Naftali, a New York University professor who specializes in presidential and national security history, said, “We have a special word for seeing a threat everywhere. It’s called ‘paranoia.’ It’s good for mobilizing a base. It’s very bad for turning a base into a governing majority.”

One danger, Naftali said, is that “a fatigue” will settle in, making people numb and skeptical when actual threats emerge.

Trump’s penchant for amplifying potential threats on the campaign trail drew sharp rebukes from then-President Barack Obama, who warned repeatedly that he was misleading the public by exaggerating the danger posed by terror groups such as the Islamic State.

“Groups like ISIL can’t destroy us, they can’t defeat us,” Obama said, using an acronym for the group last March during a trip to Argentina. “They don’t produce anything. They’re not an existential threat to us. They are vicious killers and murderers who perverted one of the world’s great religions. And their primary power, in addition to killing innocent lives, is to strike fear in our societies, to disrupt our societies, so that the effect cascades from an explosion or an attack by a semiautomatic rifle.”

Obama — like Bush before him — had been careful not to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” saying the phrase would aid terror groups intent on casting the United States in a war against Islam. Trump has made a point of embracing the term.

[More companies back away from Trump under pressure from customers]

Julie Smith, a former national security aide in the Obama administration, said that every administration must balance the need to level with the public about actual risks and to also reassure them to avoid causing an overreaction or panic.

“Trump is determined to instill fear at every turn in order to put faith in whatever idea he comes up with about making Americans safer,” she said. “These guys don’t talk in nuance. They talk in stark terms, in black and white, about fighting the bad guys.”

For years, the public was weary of war in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan and leery of U.S. military overreach in those regions, Smith said. But after the Obama administration’s struggles to respond to the civil war in Syria, and the gruesome images of the Islamic State beheading American hostages, the public grew more fearful.

“Many Americans, polling data shows, are of the mind that ISIL is, in fact, an existential threat,” Smith said, “when in reality, they are a very serious threat that we must do everything we can to combat. But they are not in position to fundamentally bring down the United States.”

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk analysis firm, faulted Obama for his “unwillingness to portray radical Islam as a problem, when globally it was an issue.”

But Trump, Bremmer said, has “gone way too far in the other direction.”

On Sunday, Trump wrote in a Twitter message: “Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world — a horrible mess!”

Bremmer said Trump failed to differentiate that the United States has been far more effective in integrating immigrants and refugees than Europe has been. Trump’s rhetoric risks alienating Muslims in the United States who might be less trustful of cooperating with U.S. authorities to help root out terror plots or other risks.

On the flip side, Bremmer said, Trump’s approach is “a great strategy for the base.”

“There are a lot of white, undereducated men in America who see the world become less white and less undereducated and less male who have a problem with that,” Bremmer said. “Trump speaks very clearly to them. He’s willing to brand ‘the other.’ He’s doing it with China and Mexico and he’s doing it with terrorism, and he’s doing it very effectively.”

Chris Newman, an immigrant rights advocate with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said Trump has purposely blurred the lines of various potential threats to the country, including undocumented immigrants living here, refugees from abroad and even the unfounded claims that up to 5 million immigrants voted illegally in the presidential election.

“He lumps them altogether to stoke fear,” Newman said. “Our view is that President Trump is engaged in a salesman, carnival trick — he’s selling fear first and then selling the fact that he can respond to the fear — only he can fix it.”

Final Paper Prompt:

Directions: As you read, annotate for inferences and ideas that may help you answer the final paper prompt.

The Ones Who Walk Away from OmelasUrsula Le Guin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own.

Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few.

As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The

trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact, happy.

They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea.

But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were not drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really don't think many of them need to take drooz.

Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old women, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers

from a basket, and tall young men wears her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune.

He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.

As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope...." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come.

The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger,

outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.

Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Find evidence from “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” to support or refute each claim below.

Claim Evidence Analysis

Omelas is a type of utopia – a perfect society.

TRUE

FALSE

The people of Omelas value pleasure and happiness more than they do suffering and pain.

TRUE

FALSE

A single child’s pain is a small price to pay for the greater good his or her suffering provides.

TRUE

FALSE

Quick Debate: “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

Directions: You and your partner will decide who is A and who is B. Once we begin, you each take turns standing up and arguing your side of each debate for 60 seconds. After listening to your partner’s argument, you will be able to respond with a 30 second rebuttal.

Person A: ___________________________ Person B: _____________________________

Claim A Claim B

Debate 1

The people of Omelas should feel guilty for living in this city knowing about the child.

The people of Omelas should not feel guilty for living in this city knowing about the child.

Debate 2

I, [your name], would leave Omelas after seeing the child in the basement.

I, [your name], would continue living in Omelas after seeing the child in the basement.

Debate 3

The suffering of a few is acceptable if the majority are able to live happy, productive lives.

The suffering of a few is never acceptable if the majority are able to live happy, productive lives.

Small Group Discussion Questions:1. What are instances in our country where certain people suffer so that others can live a happy life?

2. Do the people who suffer in our country choose to suffer? Or, are they forced to live a life of suffering?

3. Do the people who benefit from the suffering of others know they are hurting someone? How much does this matter?

Class-Lead Discussion QuestionWhat is Ursula Le Guin’s larger message in her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”? What is she critiquing? What might she want to see change in the U.S. today? Support your thinking with evidence.

Prep WorkTo prepare for this discussion, write down a comment you have in response on one side and a question you have on the other side.

Directions: Compose a three- to five-paragraph essay. Your essay should respond to one or more of the following questions: What is Ursula Le Guin’s larger message in her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”? What is she critiquing? What might she want to see change in the U.S. today? Support your thinking with evidence.

Due:

Points Possible

Total Points

Effort

Two stapled drafts are submitted (Wednesday/Thurs and Monday) 5

Revisions show development and growth of ideas 5

Introduction

Introduction hooks the reader by establishing significance of the topic 5

Intro includes a clear thesis statement that is specific and debatable 5

Evidence and Argument (Body Paragraphs)

Evidence is clearly connected to the argument (How do your quotes support your argument?)

5

At least three pieces of evidence are used in the response paper 5

After providing evidence, some level of analysis occurs (connection to contemporary events, drawing inferences, clarifying, predicting, speculating the author’s intention, etc.)

10

Organization

Paragraph breaks occur in logical places with transitions between paragraphs 2

Topic sentences are clear and specific 3

Citation

In-text citations are included and properly formattedThis means: “all quotes are in quotation marks and include a” (Page 2).

5

TOTAL 50

Sentence StartersIf you’re having trouble getting your essay off the ground, consider using this page as a template.

INTRODUCTION

Introduces the reader to the subject, gets the reader’s attention, and states thesis

Sentence Starters

In the U.S., _________________ people suffer so that _________________ people can be happy…

In her short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula Le Guin creates a fictional city where… [provide a summary of the story]

The story is primarily about… [what theme or idea do you think is most important to this story?]

Le Guin’s story critiques our world/the U.S./Boston [choose one] by showing… [what is your argument about the story? what does Le Guin want to see change in the world? how will you prove this with this story?]

Make a provocative statement Ask a rhetorical question State your thesis Use a quotation Use a story (an anecdote) Identify main points you’ll cover

EVIDENCE / ANALYSIS

(Body Paragraphs)

Summary of section you are analyzing, short section of text (with line numbers), and a thoughtful analysis

Sentence Starters

The author states that… The event ____________ helps us

understand… For instance,…

In the story, the author describes the…by stating…

The event took place on…and involved…

For example, the narrator says… The story states that…

The author then has the characters… The story takes place on…

The first step in understanding… To understand this concept you must

understand

Include a topic sentence Introduce quotes with summary Claim-Evidence-Analysis Analyze! (make connections to contemporary

events, explain, compare, infer [what do we know that is not stated], predict, explain allegories, metaphors, etc).

In conclusion…