WPB #2
Survey Comp Lit
Unit 8: Of Mice and Men
Objective: Explore the theme we’ll be analyzing in our novel by reflecting on a personal experience
related to that theme.
Scoring Guide Focus: 250 words? Indented paragraphs? Details? Narrative/Storytelling Style?
Prompts (Choose One)
250 words, paragraphs, details, storytelling
•
Describe (as a short story or anecdote) a time when you had a conflict of beliefs with a person or
group. What happened?
•
Explain a moral issue that you’ve read about in a book (fiction or nonfiction)
Outline or Graphic Organizer:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Setting and Hook (introduce conflict)
Rising action (conflict intensifies)
Dialogue, action, description
Falling action/Resolution
Conclusion: Reflect on experience and
strive for a thesis (observation about
what you learned from the
experience)
4 How it
concluded
1 Where
When
Who
Issue of
moral
conflict
3 What I
learned
2 What
how
Example
Life or death, sickness or health, loyalty or betrayal, honesty or falsehood: all of these pairs of
opposites might make readers think of marriage vows. To make a vow is to make a promise. To break
that promise is to demonstrate to the world a message about one’s ethics. I got stuck on the notion of
sickness and health. I began to think about books I’ve read and reconsidered one of my favorites. It is a
book about sickness and about health. It is not about marriage, but it is about a vow that Dr. Paul
Farmer believes every member of the human race makes to his or her fellows. In the book Mountains
Beyond Mountains, author Tracy Kidder introduces readers to Paul Farmer, an unusual and brilliant man,
who made significant changes in the health care available to the poor in Haiti. He also became a leader
in the World Health Organization, pioneering treatments for drug-resistant tuberculosis. The moral
issues raised by the story are two-fold. First, does every human being deserve health care? Second,
does having a resource – like knowledge or wealth – bequeath one with the moral responsibility to use
that resource to benefit the world.
But first, let me share with you that Paul Farmer’s parents were weird. Very weird. They raised
him and his sisters at times on a broken down school bus and at other times on a sail boat. For long
stretches, he did not attend regular school and when he did, he was so focused on learning and set
apart from his peers by his advanced knowledge that he was a straight up outcast. He went to Harvard
on a full scholarship, became a doctor, and became a teaching doctor at Johns Hopkins medical center.
He also went to Haiti where he opened one and then several clinics. He would travel 8-20 miles to the
homes of his patients who lived in remote Haitian villages to make sure they took their medication.
Through this direct patient contact, he discovered that failure to take tuberculin medication had created
new and dangerous strains of TB which were resistant to all known drug combinations. He donated all
of his salary to run his clinics and lived a monastic lifestyle in simple accommodations while in Haiti.
When not in Haiti, he spent months teaching medical students in the States and months
traveling and speaking at the World Health Organization (WHO) conferences about the problem of
inflated prices for TB medication. He was influential in getting the WHO to establish fair and reduced
prices – as well as donations – of medication that helped reduce and eradicate TB in lesser developed
countries around the world. He was fueled and motivated to work tirelessly by what he saw as the
immoral pricing of life-saving medications by pharmaceutical companies.
In donating his salary, his time, and in dedicating every waking moment to his patients in Haiti,
his students at Johns Hopkins, and to the WHO member nations, Paul Farmer’s life is a resounding YES
to the question: Does having wealth or knowledge create a moral imperative for one to share it with
others? And on the question of deserving health, his work with leaders in health care around the world
to provide free medication to the poorest and sickest of the world demonstrates that one of his values is
health as a birthright. I agree with him wholeheartedly.
Recently, I read a story about a kid who was adopted from Guatemala and raised in Georgia.
He’s now seventeen. He was featured in a photo exhibition of adolescents around the United States. IN
his statement, he shared that he would have been dead if he stayed in Guatemala because at the age of
four months, he suffered a blood clot in his brain. American hospitals recognized and treated it right
away. Whether it’s an easily cured illness like tuberculosis or an emergency health situation like this
teen’s blood clot, I do believe that I and others need to help make access to life-saving medical
technology available to all human beings, regardless of where they are or what they earn.