The Core reading about The Religious in Conflict is WAR OVER GROUND ZERO （it is attached）
wp1——Summary and Response paper—-at least 750 words
The Core reading about The Religious in Conflict is WAR OVER GROUND ZERO （it is attached）
Part one:
Cover Letter Specifics
· Minimum 150 words (successful cover letters are often longer)
· Address letter to your instructor
· Answer at least 3 of the 6 questions below (where applicable) provide brief, specific examples of the following in your cover letter:
o What is your primary motivation or purpose for writing your draft? Who is your intended audience? What revisions did you make in order to improve how you
accomplish this purpose and/or appeal to this audience?
o What feedback did you receive from your peers? How did you use this feedback to revise your draft? How do these revisions improve your draft?
o What feedback did you receive from other sources, such as your instructor or tutors? How did you use this feedback to revise your draft? How do these revisions
improve your draft?
o What have you decided to revise in your draft, apart from feedback you received? Why? How do these revisions improve your draft?
o What problems or challenges did you encounter while writing or revising your draft? How did you solve them?
o What valuable lessons about writing effectively have you learned as a result of composing this project?
· Place the cover letter at the beginning of your final draft, before the first page of your actual composition; delete your purpose statement
Part Two:
Final Draft Specifics
· Summary and Response of ONE of the core readings selected by your instructor
· Clearly developed main point (thesis) stating overall, focused response to the selected core reading
· Accurate summarizing and meaningful response, supported with evidence
· Effective organization using topic sentences and transitions
· APA or MLA manuscript style, as specified by your instructor, with in-text citations and a Works Cited or References list. (Works Cited or References list does not
count in the minimum word-count requirement)
· Use of at least 5 quotes (words, phrases, or key sentences) and/or paraphrases (key details or ideas rephrased in your own words),cited using correct in-text
citations
· Observation of the conventions of Standard English
· 750 words minimum for final draft (the minimum 150 words for the cover letter is not included in this count)
Final Draft Rubric
Criteria
Description
Points
Cover Letter
Effective cover letter, describing peer feedback, explaining how peer feedback was implemented, and explaining how these changes improved the draft
10
Thesis
Clear thesis that provides a focused, overall response to the core reading
5
Organization
Logical organization including clear introduction, body, and conclusion
10
Summary
Accurate summarizing of core reading that captures both overall meaning and significant details/subpoints
15
Response
Well-developed response to core reading that supports the thesis/main claim
15
Conventions
Clear control of language conventions with few distracting typos or errors
10
Evidence and citations
Appropriate use of at least 5 quotes (words, phrases, or key sentences) and/or paraphrases (key details or ideas rephrased in your own words), cited using correct in-
text citations
10
Document style
Correct document format in APA or MLA style, as specified by your instructor, including correct References page (APA) or Works Cited page (MLA)
10
TOTAL
NOTE: Proportional points may be deducted for final drafts that do not meet minimum word counts.
85 points
1
LISA MILLER
WAR OVER GROUND ZERO
They have almost everything in common, including the tragedy that defines their lives. Both women
were born in the Bronx and educated in Catholic schools. They married and raised kids of their own in
the boroughs that circle Manhattan; as parents, they—like most of us—fought too much and counted
blessings too little. On September 11, 2001, Sally Regenhard and Adele Welty each lost one brave and
handsome son—firefighters both—in the conflagration at the World Trade Center. Welty’s son Timmy,
34, was recovered only partially and in pieces—a fact that she, a 74-year-old grandmother, still cannot
bring herself to recall without her chin trembling like a child’s. Christian Regenhard, 28, simply evaporated;
not a cell of him was ever found. “ ‘He is unaccounted for,’?” Regenhard remembers a gruff old
firefighter saying when she finally reached the firehouse by phone that Tuesday night. She mimics his
tough Brooklyn accent—“fawr”—and as she does, her face crumples in grief. “Unaccounted for?” she
remembers asking. “That’s something they say in war.”
I met with Welty and Regenhard recently on neutral turf—a hotel conference room near Central
Park—for despite their shared experience, they firmly disagree about one thing. A large Islamic cultural
center and mosque is proposed two blocks from the place where their children died, and since former
Alaska governor Sarah Palin voiced her opposition—“UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts”—
in a tweet heard round the world last month, the so-called Ground Zero mosque has become the focus
of a vicious public battle. Welty supports it. She believes the mosque and community center will give a
face and voice to moderate, peaceful, ordinary Muslims and so stand against the forces of terrorism and
fundamentalism. “If we manage to get it built and can avoid violence in the process, the world can see
that we are a towering nation, that we believe in and practice freedom of religion.” Regenhard opposes
it. It’s too soon, she says. It’s too close to Ground Zero, and it doesn’t take into account the sensitivities
of people like her, whose loved ones, she believes, may still be scattered even beyond the 16-acre area
where the towers once stood. If the people behind the mosque really desired peace, as they say they do,
they would move it somewhere else out of respect for the sanctity of that place. “You never change hearts
and minds by shoving your religion on someone else.”
2 Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero
They had met before, but long ago and in a crowd. Now they embraced, pulled apart, and
regarded each other warily. Regenhard, the voluble one, had bought along an extra coffee: milk, no
sugar. She was guessing, based on her own mood, that Welty would need sustenance. (I interviewed
them together, and separately, in person and by telephone, at length.)
Welty and Regenhard had every reason to be edgy. Locally, the fight over the mosque has been
more than ugly. Its founders—a well-known interfaith activist and spiritual leader named Imam Feisal
Abdul Rauf; his wife, Daisy Khan; and a downtown Manhattan real-estate developer named Sharif
El-Gamal—originally called their project Cordoba House, after the medieval town in Spain where
a Muslim caliphate fostered one of the most vibrant periods of interfaith flourishing in history. But
critics seized on the name as a signal that Rauf and the others had Islamic hegemony in mind, and
the founders changed the name to the generic Park51 (based on the site’s street address). Mosque
opponents hurled racist epithets at supporters; the worst came from former Tea Party Express leader
Mark Williams, who called Allah the Muslim “monkey god.” (He later apologized.) Enraged, local
politicians who supported the mosque steamrollered opponents’ objections, calling them bigots and
haters. When Community Board 1 gathered to vote on the mosque May 25, the tension in the room
was so thick, the hecklers so brazen, that mob violence seemed but a gesture away. “It was like, if
you’re for this you’re a religious fundamentalist, and if you’re against it you’re a bigot,” says the Rev.
Chloe Breyer, a longtime colleague of Rauf’s who was there.
Nationally, the fight over the mosque has escalated far beyond name-calling into an emotional,
politically driven war over American values. Does being American mean holding the personal
pain of some above the constitutional rights of others, as the Anti-Defamation League suggested in
its statement proposing the mosque move somewhere else? Or does it mean seeing this country as a
mighty power with a God-given mission to right global wrongs—rhetoric not heard since George
W. Bush and the “Axis of Evil” days? Republicans running for election have seized on the mosque
and Imam Rauf as symbols of what they see as President Obama’s inadequate and politically correct
response to the terrorist threat. Not least among these is former House speaker Newt Gingrich, on
the shortlist as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012. “Building this structure on the
edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists…is a political statement of shocking arrogance and
hypocrisy,” he wrote recently. In the same piece, he connected Rauf to terrorist and fundamentalist
Islamic groups. (When I asked how he knew this, he referred me to a National Review Web column
by the former terrorist prosecutor and partisan activist Andrew McCarthy.) Rauf has asserted publicly
that he believes American policies abroad in part inspired the calamity of 9/11, and in a recent radio
interview he refused to say whether he saw Hamas as a terrorist group. He denies any link to any ter-
Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero 3
rorist organization and “forcefully and consistently” has condemned all forms of terrorism, according
to a statement from Khan.
Gingrich rejects the notion that he is fanning a local controversy to serve his political ambitions.
“How can you ask someone who’s concerned about national security to fail to acknowledge
that we’re in the middle of a serious conflict? This isn’t about one family’s tragic loss. This is about
the United States of America, which is under siege by a stealth jihad and a militaristic jihad which is
violent.”
Last week New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered another view of American values in
a speech he made against a backdrop of blue sky and the Statue of Liberty. Being American, he said,
means holding tight to constitutional freedoms and the rule of law, especially under pressure to capitulate.
Here the centrist mayor was staking out an unpopular position, for New Yorkers oppose the
mosque by 52 to 31 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Nevertheless, he endeavored
to appeal to Americans’ higher principles. “We would betray our values and play into our enemies’
hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment
would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.” His voice broke as he
talked about the firefighters who rushed into the buildings to save lives, without regard to race, creed,
or religion.
At the eye of this storm stand two grieving mothers who don’t ever want to hear the word
“closure.” Each remains convinced of the rightness of her position, and it is in their congenial conversation
that one sees the issue laid bare. The core conflict over the Ground Zero mosque is not about
racism, tolerance, paranoia, or even politics—though each of these has come to play an important
part. It’s about the appropriate place of private pain in the public sphere and how to hold memory
sacred when the world, in all its craven momentum, moves on.
Park51 was born several years ago, the vision of Rauf, Khan, and El-Gamal. In 1997 Rauf and
Khan founded the American Society for Muslim Advancement, an organization devoted to interfaith
work and promoting the cause of moderate Islam. In addition, Rauf had been the imam, or pastor, of
a mosque in Tribeca, just 10 blocks north of the new, controversial site, for nearly 30 years. El-Gamal
had his office nearby and prayed there frequently. The mosque, which still exists today, is a tiny storefront
wedged between a bar and a French bistro. On Friday afternoons—which for Muslims is like
Sunday morning—congregants overflow onto the sidewalk.
Frustrated by the cramped quarters, El-Gamal, an American born to a Polish mother and an
Egyptian father, was inspired to improve facilities for Muslims downtown—and, after 9/11, to show
his friends and neighbors “a new face of Islam, the voice that is not heard.” He bought the building
4 Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero
at 45–51 Park Place two years ago for $5 million, and together with Khan and Feisal sketched out a
plan. They would demolish the existing building and put in its place a deluxe, multipurpose center
big enough to house a swimming pool, a gym, exhibition space, conference rooms, day care, a senior
center, and a 500-seat auditorium. It would accommodate all the downtown workers—lawyers and
laborers—who wanted to pray on Fridays; it would have an interfaith board and interfaith programming;
and it would present to the world a moderate, peace-loving, diverse, ordinary Islam. As of
last week, El-Gamal says, they had gotten all the necessary city approvals to begin construction on
Park51, though lawsuits are still pending. The budget for the proposed construction is $100 million,
which Khan says they hope to raise mostly through a bond offering.
The site is huge, nearly 100,000 square feet. Standing in front of the building, you cannot see
Ground Zero; tall buildings entirely block the view. Khan says they chose it because it was big enough
and it had the right zoning. Moreover, it was symbolically advantageous. “We want to provide a
counter momentum against extremism,” says Khan, who spoke to me in her office. (Her husband was
out of town.) “We want peace, and we want it where it matters most. This is where it matters most.”
Though she knew some 9/11 families through her interfaith work, Khan says neither she nor her
husband reached out to them in advance. “I guess in hindsight, if we had known this would be such
an issue, we would have started with them.” Instead, they started with the community board, the city
officials who would eventually vote their approval. (Khan plans to meet with 9/11 family members
this week.)
Why, I asked her, did they not anticipate the outcry that would ensue? For one thing, she explains,
they were fixtures in the neighborhood and had been for decades. But she also talked about
“ownership,” the idea that 9/11 happened to them, too. Members of their congregation were killed in
the disaster. “We have not been allowed to mourn, as if it was somebody else’s tragedy. We are accused
and painted with a broad brush, as if we had anything to do with the people who perpetrated this. So
for us, rebuilding this neighborhood is a responsibility, because 9/11 is not just an event, it is a historical
event that has reshaped the world.”
Ownership is at the heart of Sally Regenhard’s objections. Ground Zero may be valuable real
estate in a crowded city; it may belong, theoretically, to all New Yorkers, or even all Americans, or
even every citizen of the world who values freedom above all. But in some important and incontrovertible
way, Regenhard feels the sprawling site belongs to her and the people she calls “the families.”
Ever since the tragedy, the process of deciding what to build there and how to commemorate the dead,
she says, has been characterized by fighting, competing interests, politics, and paralysis; Regenhard
feels she has “wasted the past nine years of my life in meetings” in an effort to recover some part of
Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero 5
Christian and the others who died there and to honor their memories. When she learned about the
Islamic center, she felt blindsided. “We were so shocked, it was crazy…I thought about it and thought
about it, and I realized I didn’t feel right. I felt that it was a total disregard of the sensitivity we had.
I’m still searching for my son.”
Regenhard reminded me of the controversy over a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in the late
1980s—a controversy that has recently been revived in many editorials in light of the mosque. Jewish
groups angrily protested the occupation of a building near the death camp by nuns who wanted to
pray for the souls of the dead, saying it “Christianized the Holocaust.” No matter how goodhearted the
sisters, they argued, they were appropriating the victims’ sacred memory. The fight went on for years,
until, in 1993, Pope John Paul II finally ordered the nuns to relocate. “Pope John Paul has gone down
in history as being one of the greatest people to improve Judeo-Christian relations,” says Regenhard.
She understands very well that the Muslims who want to build Park51 are not the same ones who
committed the atrocities on that day, but the analogy is there. “It’s a perception thing.”
Regenhard, who won’t reveal her age except to say she’s a baby boomer, is a fighter. In December
2001 she founded the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, and since then she has testified before
Congress and fought for, among other things, better entrance to and egress from tall buildings, more
stringent adherence to building codes, and improved radio technology for firefighters. She sued for
the release of the city’s emergency-call tapes and transmissions from that day. She is, in other words,
one of the most quoted, visible, and active 9/11 family members—an annoyance to some, a heroine to
others. Recently she has turned her attention to the question of human remains. The explosions and
the collapse of the Twin Towers simply erased people. As of January 2010 more than 1,000 families
had never found anything human to bury.
In Regenhard’s view, Ground Zero is a graveyard, as sacred as any American battlefield. Early
on, she and others asked the developers to consider building a nondenominational chapel on the
site—a place to pray, reflect. “I would like to see a building with the history of September 11 and its aftermath,”
Alice Henry, another mother who lost a firefighter son, wrote to then-governor George Pataki
in 2002. “Benches, flowers for every season, beautiful trees, a small lake, a non-sectarian chapel.”
That last request was never honored. Today, mourners can visit any number of houses of worship
nearby. St. Paul’s Church, where George Washington prayed after he took the oath of office in
1789, faces the site. But no prayer space on the World Trade Center footprint is specifically dedicated
to the dead. According to the developers of the 9/11 museum (scheduled to open in two years), the
rest of the unidentified human remains will be installed in a small room behind a large concrete wall
there that bears a legend from Virgil: NO DAY SHALL ERASE YOU FROM THE MEMORY OF
6 Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero
TIME. Visitors to the museum will be able to see the wall, though not the room behind it. The wall is
“an important recognition,” explains Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11 Memorial
and Museum. Four hundred trees will be planted on the memorial plaza, he adds: the entire site will
have a sacred feel. Regenhard believes otherwise. “This museum is going to be an homage to death,
destruction, big pictures of exploding buildings, and crushed trucks. To me this is going to be a glorified
Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
For all these reasons—exhaustion, relentless grief, disappointment, and a determination to
cherish Christian’s memory—the Islamic center was the last straw. And then a reporter asked Regenhard
whether she worried that her opposition would brand her as intolerant. Regenhard was astonished.
She is not one of those she calls the “tea baggers and monkey-god people”; she was simply
using her freedom of speech. And so she issues a warning to the Democratic Party, to which she has
been loyal, more or less, for the past 40 years. “I don’t hear anyone having any sensitivity to the 9/11
families except for these Republican and conservative politicians. I feel abandoned by the people in
my own party. I feel really insulted, and I’m mad about it.”
Adele Welty entered the fray on May 13 with an op-ed in the New York Daily News. Co-written
with Talat Hamdani—a Muslim mother and retired schoolteacher whose son Mohammad, a certified
medical technician, died in the towers on September 11—the piece voiced their support for the
center. “We need to continue as Americans to focus on our commonalities as human beings rather
than our differences,” they wrote. “We must abandon language meant to instill fear, fear that can allow
us to curtail the freedoms of others.” They called on New Yorkers, who proudly inhabit a “melting
pot,” to revive their commitment to pluralism.
Welty has thought a lot about anger and the violence it brings to families as well as nations.
As a young mother of four children, she was known for her temper, and even today colleagues call her
“crankypuss,” she says. She won’t concede she’s moved on, only that she’s learned her lesson. “Anger
expressed violently is something we live to regret,” she says. “Especially those of us who have lost a
child remember every single time we got mad and yelled and felt our anger uncontrolled. We reach
a point in our lives when we can look back and say, ‘There are many better ways I could’ve handled
that, had I had the knowledge and skills to do so.’ We need to learn them. We have Democrats and
Republicans at the dinner table. We need to be able to express our own views in a way that’s thoughtful
without making people too disgusted with us to listen.”
Armed with these convictions, Welty began searching for a way to honor her son, and in 2003
she joined the group September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization committed
to establishing nonviolent resolutions to conflict. In 2004 she traveled to Afghanistan in an effort,
Lisa Miller: War Over Ground Zero 7
she thought, to help change people’s perceptions about Americans and America. Instead, she says, it
was she who went home changed. “The compassion and caring that was extended to me as a grieving
mother was one of the most healing experiences of my life,” she wrote to me in an e-mail. “These Muslims,
who themselves lost family members in a U.S. bombing, welcomed me into their homes, were
willing to speak with me, and agreed that we must work together for peace. I found not one instance
of anger at me for the devastation my country had wrought on their homes and families.” She speaks
of the Muslims she has met as “absolutely ordinary” people, who worry about safe neighborhoods and
good schools, and it is this ordinariness she hopes the new Islamic center will reflect.
Welty agrees with Regenhard that Ground Zero should be sacred ground, but it isn’t, and she
has no interest in that fight. She would love for the piece of earth where Timmy last walked to be an
oasis for busy New Yorkers to clear their heads. Instead, she says, “it’s prime real estate. If it was sacred,
we wouldn’t have bulldozers and all kinds of equipment there.” She does not believe that moving the
mosque is any kind of answer. “How many blocks are we talking about? Five blocks? Another borough?
Another city? We criticize moderate Muslims for not reaching out and speaking out, and then when
they do, they get criticized.”
In the hotel conference room, the conversation turned warm, then sunny. Neither woman expected
to change the other’s mind—and they didn’t—yet neither came across as a fundamentalist or
a bigot. There they sat, sharing coffee and sandwiches, mourning their boys and loving their country.
They listened respectfully and smiled at their commonalities; they experienced fresh pain at the other’s
loss. And when I asked them what they had to say to the politicians on both sides who continue
to use Ground Zero as a wedge or an excuse to inflame tempers, they found true common ground.
Welty jumped in. “Don’t,” she said, her latent anger roaring to the surface. “Don’t go down to Ground
Zero and make speeches. Don’t use family members as a backdrop for photographs. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself, using people who are grieving for your own political advantage.”
“Amen, sister,” said Regenhard, clapping her hands above her head.
Author: Lisa Miller; Article Title: War Over Ground Zero; Source Title: Newsweek; Publication
Date: August 8, 2010; URL: http://www.cengage.com/custom/static_content/OLC/
s76656_76218lf/miller.pdf.
Cover Letter
Prof. Sands,
This letter in regards to my first writing project for your class should hopefully provide you with a summary and review of the article “Lost in the
Meritocracy” by Walter Kirn. The feedback given by my peers in class was not helpful at all. Only one person reviewed my submission, and she pretty much stated that
the article was fine and didn’t need any revision. Luckily, I emailed you with this problem, and you sent a review that was significantly more helpful. I made a
greater effort for the final draft to sight all paraphrasing done in the paper, I broke both the summary and the review into more concise paragraphs to highlight each
individual point that I was trying to make, I wrote introductory and conclusion paragraphs, and I tried to reword several sentences that were written poorly. I also
tried to elaborate more thoroughly on several points that I alluded to in the rough draft. In my introductory paragraph I tried to pull the reader in, and make them
want to read this paper. The biggest issue I had in writing the final draft was the rewording of several sentences. In an attempt to overcome this I read the sentences
out loud and tried to hear the wording for what it was. Then I rewrote the sentences and repeated the process till the sentences met my satisfaction. I hope the
following submission meets all the requirements of the assignment.
Sincerely,
Jerry Brandon
Jerry Brandon
Professor Paschke-Johannes
Eng111
3 September 2014
Summary and Review of “Lost in the Meritocracy”
In modern society, it is not uncommon for students to want to do well. The unfortunate down side to this is that it can often lead students to believe that
doing well and receiving good grades is the most important part of the educational process. Learning and growing as a person should be the true purpose of the
education system. Books were rarely written so the readers can sound smart at parties. Rather they were written to teach or to entertain the reader. The purpose of
this article was to show the folly in trying to use education strictly to succeed, that sounding well-read and intelligent is different from being well-read and
intelligent.
“Lost in the Meritocracy” is an article that details various time periods throughout the undergraduate college years of its writer, Walter Kirn. It starts with the
author detailing a bus trip from his high school town to take the SAT, and within a few paragraphs the reader starts to get a sense of who the writer is (Kirn 1).He is
a young and intelligent person from a modest background whose only real desire is to continuously win and do well. He even states, “I lived for prizes, praise,
distinctions, and I gave no thought to any goal higher or broader than my next report card,” (Kirn 3)very early on in the article. After doing well on his SAT scores
the nameless protagonist gets accepted to Princeton, and proceeds to do well academically, but never really learns anything except how to succeed academically.
The author finds himself with a group of roommates that come from wealthy elitist backgrounds and realizes early on that he is going to be a social outcast throughout
his college years as a result of his poverty and the need for money to impress this group (Kirn 4).At one point this even becomes a point of hostility for the main
character. He snuck into a party t and decides that the only way to truly insult the people there would be have sex with one of the women at the party who was beyond
his social league. He states, “Like a frustrated stable boy in an old novel, I wanted to seduce and ruin her” (Kirn 7). To the writer’s credit, when the situation
actually presented itself he found himself incapable of going through with it(Kirn 8).As the article goes on, the author found a drug problem that could be summed up
in less than one page and overcame it by his pure desire for merit. The author found that his desire for knowledge never actually existed, just a desire to succeed, to
sound smart, and to use these tools as a method for fooling people into believing that he is smarter and more accomplished than he actually is (Kirn). It isn’t until
the author finished school and achieved the goals that he wanted that he actually picked up a book for the pure enjoyment of the book.
Personally, I did not care for this article, and the point the author was trying to make was done with minimal success. The author’s style of writing reminded
me of a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing
absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college” (Vonnegut). When I started reading this story that quote immediately came to mind. Kirn’s style is
pretentious and I got a strong impression that it is blatantly obvious that this person wants me to think he is smart. This wasmade obvious with statements like, “With
no stored literary material about which to harbor critical assumptions, I relied on my gift for mimicking authority figures and playing back to them their own ideas
disguised as conclusions that I’d reached myself” (Kirn 5-6).
The author has nothing nice to say about virtually every other character in this story. Toward the end of the article, when a woman comforts him for performing poorly
on an interview he immediately insults the lady in the article for getting the scholarship, saying, “Later I found out that one of [the winners] was the girl who’d
tried to boost my spirits, which made her gesture seem patronizing in retrospect. She knew she was bound for the sharp end of the pyramid, and was merely practicing
her royal manners” (Kirn 14).Statements like this make it difficult to sympathize with the protagonist.
I also didn’t find the story to be incredibly original. The story of a person who is trying to find himself through his college years, experiments briefly with drugs,
but ends up pulling it together by the end is one that has been told many times before. This article read like the author wanted the reader to think of the main
character like many people identify with Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. But aside from being self-obsessed, pretentious and annoying the two really don’t
have much in common.
The final point I would make is that if the author was trying to prove that he learned a lesson, then he shouldn’t spend fifteen and a half pages of a sixteen page
long article going on and on about how intelligent he is, and then put that he learned his lesson in the last two paragraphs of the last page. He states, “Assuming
that the books were chiefly decorative, I’d never even bothered to read their titles, but that night, bored and sick, I picked one up: The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. Then I did something unprecedented for me: I carried it back to my bedroom and actually read it- every chapter, every page” (Kirn 16).Statements like this makes
it sound like he’s aware of the issue, but there is no great in-depth attempt to fix it. By the time the reader is this far into the article I had already made up my
mind about the main character, and four sentences isn’t going to change that.
In conclusion, the article “Lost in the Meritocracy” has a very valid point that it is trying to make. I personally wouldn’t recommend this story to other
readers. The story is easy to follow, but isn’t incredibly original. You get a good feel for whom the protagonist is, but I found it difficult to sympathize with his
plight. It is in my opinion that morals that this story is trying to teach were done with minimal success.
Work Cited
Vonnegut, Kurt, and Daniel Simon. A Man without a Country. New York: Seven Stories, 2005. Print.
Kirn, Walter. “Lost in the Meritocracy”. The Atlantic. The Atlantic magazine. 1 Jan. 2005. Web. 3 Sept. 2014.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/01/lost-in-the-meritocracy/303672/
