Six different images of managing change

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.

I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them — words that were to make the

world blossom for me, “like Aaron’s rod,11 with flowers.” It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.

Thinking Critically about This Reading

Keller writes that “‘Light! Give me light!’ was the wordless cry of [her] soul” (paragraph 3). What was the “light” Keller longed for, and how did receiving it change her life?

Questions for Study and Discussion

1. What is Keller’s thesis? (Glossary: Thesis) What question do you think Keller is trying to answer? Does her thesis answer her question?

2. Do Keller’s paragraphs support her thesis, or is there any part of this passage that breaks the unity of Keller’s work?

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3. What was Keller’s state of mind before Anne Sullivan arrived to help her? To what does she compare herself? (Glossary: Analogy) How effective is this comparison? Explain.

4. Why was the realization that everything has a name important to Keller?

5. How was the “mystery of language” (7) revealed to Keller? What were the consequences for her of this new understanding of the nature of language?

6. Keller narrates the events of the day Sullivan arrived (2–4), the morning after she arrived (5), and one day several weeks after her arrival (6–9). (Glossary: Narration) Describe what happens on each day, and explain how these separate incidents support Keller’s thesis.

Classroom Activity Using Unity

Write a unified paragraph that makes a clear statement about the following list of items. Then compare your paragraph with another student’s work. How did each of you establish relationships among the items on the list? How does your writing help your reader make these connections?

A coffee maker A toaster oven A stove A cookbook A frying pan

Suggested Writing Assignments

1. Think about an important day in your own life. Using the thesis statement “The most important day of my life was __________,” write an essay in which you show the significance of that day by recounting and explaining the events that took place, as Keller does in her essay. Before you write, you might find it helpful to reflect on your response to the Reflecting on What You Know prompt for this reading. Review your list to be sure that there are no items that break the unity. In other words, are there any events that you have listed that do not belong because they are not part of that same day or fail to shed light on the events of that day?

2. For many people around the world, the life of Helen Keller symbolizes what a person can achieve despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Her achievements have inspired

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people with and without disabilities, leading them to believe they can accomplish more than they ever thought possible. Consider the role of people with disabilities in our society, develop an appropriate thesis, and write an essay on the topic. Be sure that the specific details that you incorporate in the essay are unified; that is, details should relate directly to the thesis and topics that support the thesis.

3. Keller was visually and hearing impaired from the age of eighteen months, which meant she could neither read nor hear people speak. She was eventually able to read and write using braille, a system of “touchable symbols” invented by Louis Braille. Write an essay in which you put forth the thesis that the invention of braille has liberated countless numbers of people who have shared Keller’s visual impairment. Use examples that relate directly to your thesis about braille.

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Against Meat

Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977 in Washington, D.C., and educated at Princeton University, where he took an

introductory writing course from Joyce Carol Oates. He is the author of the award-winning and best-selling novels

Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), both of which have been made into

motion pictures, as well as the book art piece Tree of Codes (2012). His most recent novel is Here I Am (2016). He is

currently a writer-in-residence at New York University. This selection is adapted from his third book, the nonfiction

Eating Animals (2010), in which becoming a new father urges him to confront the cultural importance and ethics of our

eating habits.

As you read, pay attention to Foer’s sympathetic portrayal of food as a center of family life, despite his vegetarian

convictions. Note how each of his arguments against eating meat is unified by his desire to lead what he sees as a moral

life.

Reflecting on What You Know

Reflect on the meals that are part of your family history and tradition. What sorts of food were served, and who cooked it?

What impact has food had on your experience of family?

Seconds after being born, my son was breast-feeding. I watched him with an awe that had no precedent12 in my life. Without explanation or experience, he knew what to do. Millions of years of evolution had wound the knowledge into him, as it had encoded beating into his tiny heart and expansion and contraction into his newly dry lungs.

Almost four years later, he is a big brother and a remarkably sophisticated little conversationalist. Increasingly the food he eats is digested together with stories we tell. Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more. It matters because food matters (their physical health matters, the pleasure they take in eating matters), and because the stories that are served with food matter.

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sushi “lunch dates” with my mom, and

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eating my dad’s turkey burgers with mustard and grilled onions at backyard celebrations, and of course my grandmother’s chicken with carrots. Those occasions simply wouldn’t have been the same without those foods — and that is important. To give up the taste of sushi, turkey or chicken is a loss that extends beyond giving up a pleasurable eating experience. Changing what we eat and letting tastes fade from memory create a kind of cultural loss, a forgetting. But perhaps this kind of forgetfulness is worth accepting — even worth cultivating (forgetting, too, can be cultivated). To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.