Something borrowed malcolm gladwell

ENGL 102 March 26 assignment Mott-Smith

Reading: Gladwell, M. (2004, Nov. 22). Something borrowed: Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? The New Yorker. Retrieved 11/24/14 from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/22/something-borrowed (excerpts)

Quick summary: Bryony Lavery wrote the play Frozen. She reused information from several other texts to do it. These texts included a memoir by Dorothy Lewis entitled Guilty by Reason of Insanity and a New Yorker profile of Lewis by Malcolm Gladwell entitled “Damaged.” Malcolm Gladwell also wrote this article, “Something borrowed.”

Instructions: For each person involved, answer the questions in the chart. You will need to use a separate sheet of paper, as an adequate response will not fit here. Then, answer the four questions below.

Authors

Texts

What did this person say specifically about what was taken and from where?

How did this person feel about Lavery’s reuse of material?

Give a quote that supports your claim about how the person felt.

Dorothy Lewis

Guilty by Reason of Insanity (memoir)

Malcolm Gladwell

“Damaged”

(New Yorker profile of Lewis)

Bryony Lavery

Frozen

(Broadway play)

1. Gladwell’s assessment of the situation changes. What did he think at first? What did he come to think later? In your explanation, include a discussion of how his feelings affected his change in thinking. (Reread the paragraph containing the phrase “second thoughts.”)

2. Gladwell reasons that it is different to borrow a sentence describing a physiological function than a sentence with a sensitive personal story: Why? What’s the difference? (Search for the paragraph containing the phrase “physiological functions.”)

3. Gladwell reasons that Lavery’s reuse was okay because Frozen was not “a derivative work.” What does he mean by that? (Find the paragraph containing this phrase and paraphrase it.)

4. Why did Lavery think it was okay to use Gladwell’s article?