English Language and Composition Study Guide

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION Question 1 Suggested reading and writing time —55 minutes. It is suggested that you spend 15 minutes reading the question, analyzing and evaluating the sources, and 40 minutes writing your response. Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over. For centuries, writers, scholars, artists, politicians, and residents of the United States have attempted to capture its complexity in a single image or idea. Among many other metaphors, America=1has been compared to a dream, a promise, a contract, a city on a hill, a melting pot, a salad bowl, a quilt, and an experiment. Carefully read the following seven sources, including the introductory information for each source. Then synthesize material from at least three of the sources and evidence from your own observation, experience, or reading, and incorporate it into a coherent, well-written essay in which you develop your position on the metaphor or idea that best represents America.You may choose to defend and support a metaphor or idea suggested in one of the sources, or you may create your own, using the sources to support your position. Source A (Paine) Source B (Jefferson) Source C (Douglass) Source D (Lange) Source E (King) Source F (Reagan) Source G (Gorman) In your response, you should do the following: ● Respond to the prompt with a thesis that may establish a line of reasoning. ● Provide evidence from at least 3 of the provided sources and evidence from your own observation, experience, or reading to support your thesis. Indicate clearly the sources used through direct 1 Click here to access the Padlet discussion. ● Think about the list of sources as a list of voices you can choose to hear from. Which of these voices do you want in the conversation (sitting at the table) about this prompt? Think of reading the sources as listening= to their conversation. ● Consider which voices are NOT included America= refers to all the lands in the Western Hemisphere, comprising the continents of North America and South America, but is colloquially used to refer specifically to the United States. For the purposes of this prompt America=the U.S. ● ● quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Sources may be cited as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the description in parentheses. Explain the relationship between the evidence and your thesis. Demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical situation. here--which American voices are missing? ● Think about evidence you can use outside of this list (your reading/viewing/listening, observation of events, knowledge of history, personal experiences) so that you can provide your own perspective to enter the conversation. Think of writing your essay as entering= their conversation with your own position formed by your own perspective. Source A Paine, Thomas, et al. Rights of Man. Part the Second: Combining Principle and Practice. Printed by Thomas and John Fleet, at the Bible and Heart in Boston, 1792. The following passage is from Rights of Man, a book written by the pamphleteer Thomas Paine in 1791. Born in England, Paine was an intellectual, a revolutionary, and a supporter of American independence from England. If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few, because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults. Source B Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence.= Second Continental Congress, Philadelphia, PA, 4 July 1776. The following is an excerpt from The Declaration of Independence, a formal explanation of why Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain, over a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. It is considered one of the most important documents in American history. IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. . . Source C Douglass, Frederick. What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?= Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society . Independence Day Celebration, 5 July 1852, Rochester, NY, Corinthian Hall. The following is an excerpt from a speech Frederick Douglass delivered at an Independence Day Celebration. It is one of the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting2 in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.... ...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to 2 lacking in a certain required or necessary quality join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. . . . Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. . . I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. . . a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Source D Lange, Dorothea. Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Library of Congress, Mar. 1942, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004665381/. The following is a photograph taken by American documentary photographer and journalist Dorothea Lange in Oakland, California in March of 1942. A large sign reading "I am an American" placed in the window of a store on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was closed following orders to persons of Japanese descent to evacuate from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a University of California graduate named Tatsuro Masuda and his wife, Hatsue Kuge, were incarcerated at the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona, an internment camp for Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Source E King, Martin Luther. I Have a Dream.= March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 Aug. 1963, Washington, D.C., The Lincoln Memorial. The following is an excerpt from a speech delivered by civil rights activist and leader Martin Luther King, Jr. from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to an audience of 250,000 gathered below on the National Mall. It is considered by scholars to be the most important speech of the 20th century. . . . In a sense we’ve come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as White men, would be guaranteed to the Unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.= It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. . . . . . I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight. . .= This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. . . Source F Reagan, Ronald. Farewell Address.= 11 Jan. 1989, Washington, D.C., The White House. The following is an excerpt from a speech delivered by US President Ronald Reagan from the Oval Office, approximately two weeks before the conclusion of his second term in office. . . . I've been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant and mean. And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one -- a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a sailor. It was back in the early eighties, at the height of the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up, and called out to him. He yelled, ``Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man''. . . . . . It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination. . . . . . The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the ``shining city upon a hill.'' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home. . . Source G Gorman, Amanda. The Hill We Climb.= 20 Jan. 2021, Washington, D.C., The United States Capitol. The following is an excerpt from a poem written by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, and delivered at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration on the steps of the US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Just two weeks earlier, in the exact spot from which Gorman spoke, armed rioters violently breached the US Capitol Building to try to impede Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election. Americans and the world: When day comes we ask ourselves "where can we find light in this neverending shade?" The loss we carry, a sea we must wade A nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished. We the successors of a country in a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president We braved the belly of the beast Only to find herself reciting for one. We've learned that quiet isn't always peace And yes we are far from polished, far from pristine And the norms and notions of "what just is" isn't always justice And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it But that doesn't mean we aren't striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge a union with purpose Somehow we do it Somehow we weathered and witnessed To compose a country committed To all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man. The hill we climb. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us If only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit But what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first We must first put our differences aside We lay down our arms So we can reach our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all Let the glow if nothing else say, "this is true." That even as we grieved we grew It's the past we step into and how we repair it. . . . . . We will not march back to what was But move to what shall be a country that is bruised but whole, Benevolent but bold, Fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation Because know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. That even as we hurt we hoped, That even as we tired we tried That we'll be forever tied together victorious Not because we will never again know defeat, But because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, And no one should make them afraid. If we're to live up to our own time, Then victory won't lie the blade but in all the bridges we've made, That is the promise to glade, Our blunders become their burdens But one thing is certain. If we merge mercy with might, And might with right, Then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left With every breath from our bronze-pounded chest We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the West We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast Where our forefathers first realized revolution We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states We will rise from the sun-baked South We will rebuild, reconcile and recover And every known nook of our nation And every corner called our country Our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful When day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it. Ever since colonial times, America has been a place where people from all types of different cultures and backgrounds can come together to fight for common values such as freedom and liberty as seen all the way from the American Revolution. Americans have faced things such as economic hardships all the way to fighting for civil rights and equality across time and space. Regardless of the issues that Americans had to endure across time, they always came together to stand up for what they believed was right and developed an identity consisting of perseverance, righteousness, determination, and so much more. Even as America has dramatically changed culturally, politically, and economically, as more generations and generations have passed, it has only continued to become more and more diverse both racially and culturally. Because America is a diverse and inclusive nation, it is best characterized as a city on a hill; even though America has detracted from this characterization in many occasions, its greatest moments outshine its downfalls and reflect the beauty and triumph of its diversity and inclusivity. Even during the American Revolution, Enlightenment thinkers believed that America was a beacon of hope to the world because of its ability to include people of all different backgrounds into its democratic society. Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Paine believed that a government made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship= was able to function properly and effectively regardless of any difficulties as all were entitled to freedoms and liberties and all were brought into cordial unison= (Paine). Thomas Jefferson agreed by saying that America’s democratic principles and government functions as a whole revolved around the fact that all men are created equal= regardless of background and that the government relies upon the consent of the governed= to ensure that all Americans have a say in how the government functions, which allows for diversity to be incorporated into American democracy, making it a beacon of hope to the rest of the world that diversity and equality makes us stronger. (Jefferson) This notion that people of all different backgrounds regardless of race, religion, culture, etc. can coexist together in a democratic institution peacefully and have a say in how the government functions reflects upon the beauty of American democracy and represents why it is a city upon a hill where the rest of world can take example from. America has been considered a beacon of hope up to modern times as even presidents of the United States describe it as a beacon of hope to the world because of its ability to include people of all different backgrounds into its democratic society. Presidents such as President Reagan believed that America was open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here= and is still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom=, reflecting America’s acceptance of diversity and symbolization of freedom (Reagan). Poet Amanda Gorman would agree as she believes that America’s true identity is a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man=. In addition, Gorman believed America is welcoming and accepting of diversity as America seeks harm to none and harmony for all= (Gorman). The idea that America is a place where it welcomes anyone regardless of race, religion, culture, etc as long as they have the determination to get here and is a symbol of hope and freedom fully represents why America is best called a city upon a hill where people all over the world want to come to and thrive in. Despite America being considered a place where people of all different backgrounds regardless of race, religion, culture, etc. can coexist together in a democratic institution peacefully and have a say in how the government functions and a place of freedom and acceptance of diversity, it has failed in many instances to live up to its characterization of a city upon a hill= such as during the Civil Rights Era. Social activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that America has defaulted on this promissory note= where all Americans regardless of race would be able to thrive and be entitled to inalienable freedoms and rights. In addition, he believed that America had to transform itself from being a dark and desolate valley of segregation= (King). Supporters of the BLM Movement would agree with King as Black Americans in 2020 were increasingly becoming victimized and racially assaulted by police officers and fellow Americans, highlighting the racial injustice and inequality there is in America between Black Americans and White Americans. In addition, as of recently, there has been a large increase in attacks against Asian Americans due to racial fears stoked by the COVID-19 pandemic showing there is racial inequality and injustice against minorities all across America. This notion that Americans are getting attacked and assaulted solely because of the color of their skin and race shows that even though America is a city upon a hill for the rest of the world to take example from in many instances, it sometimes detracts from that characterization.