Prof. Bondhus
English I
Main Idea Review Questions
Instructors—On days we discuss readings, I find it useful sometimes to start class by
breaking the students up into groups and having each group answer 2 or 3 review
questions about the reading. My goal is to get them engaged with the text right off the bat
and to warm things up for a broader class discussion. Therefore, I typically provide them
with the page numbers on which they can find the answers so that this exercise doesn’t
take up an inordinate amount of time.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
What does Martin Luther King say about injustice and its influence? (289)
What is “nonviolent tension”? Why is it necessary? (291)
What’s the difference between a “just law” and an “unjust law”? (293-294)
What does MLK mean when he mentions “white moderates” and the “shallow
understanding of people of good will”? Why does he think this “shallow understanding”
is worse than outright racism? (295)
What does MLK say about “repressed emotions”? What will happen if they are not
released in a nonviolent way? (297)
What does MLK mean when he says that “Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world
are in dire need of creative extremists” (297)? What kind of “extremism” is MLK calling
for?
“A More Perfect Union”
Where, according to Obama, can we find the roots of racism in the USA? (307-308)
In what contexts do some African-American people—like Jeremiah Wright—express
their anger over historical injustice? (308)
When some white people face job loss and economic difficulties, how do they react?
(309)
According to Obama, who or what should we really be blaming for economic problems?
(309)
What does Obama call upon African-Americans to do to help make a more perfect union?
What does he ask white Americans to do? (310)
“Regarding the Pain of Others”
In wartime, pictures of who and what are most likely to get published? (258)
How are images of “our side” typically handled in wartime? (258)
How, according to Sontag, do the government and the media use photos and videos to
shape our perceptions of war? (258, 260)
What are some of the positive effects of viewing photos of suffering? What are some of
the negative effects? (263)
“Hiroshima”
According to John Berger, how do we remember Hiroshima? (317-318)
What does Berger mean when he says that in the West “political and military realities
have eliminated another reality” about Hiroshima? (318)
How does John Berger characterize the USA’s bombing of Hiroshima? (320)
What are the two reactions (the “two natural faces”) to viewing “the first-hand evidence
of the [Hiroshima] victims”? How do these reactions help and hinder our ability to accept
the reality of what happened? (320)
According to Berger, how do we think of the concept of “evil” now? (320)
What is one of evil’s “principal modes of being”? What is Berger talking about here?
(321)
“Soldiers’ Stories”
How does Captain Ryan Kelly’s email to his mother (323-325) portray the war in Iraq?
What concerns does Commander Jewell express about the Iraqi patients on the hospital
ship USNS Comfort? (326-327)
What does Captain Lisa Blackman, a psychologist, say about the guilt that soldiers feel?
What have they lost, in her opinion? (330-331)
What does Second Lieutenant Brian Humphreys say about “the images of flag-draped
coffins” and what they represent (332)? How does he feel about this?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
According to Carr, how might the internet be “shap[ing] the process of [our] thought”?
(534)
What does it mean to say that internet reading encourages us to be “mere decoders of
information”? What abilities are we losing? (535)
What happened to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche after he started writing on
a typewriter? (536) How is this anecdote relevant to Carr’s larger point?
What does the sociologist Daniel Bell mean by our “intellectual technologies”? How does
technology affect the way we think? (536)
How has the format of the internet affected other forms of mass media like TV,
newspapers, and magazines? (537)
Who was Frederick Winslow Taylor? How is his “ethic…beginning to govern the realm
of the mind as well”? (538)
How is “Google’s view” of intelligence? What is potentially dangerous about seeing
intelligence as “the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be
isolated, measured, and optimized”? (539)
Why is “deep reading” valuable? (540)
I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close to You
What is “ambient awareness” (545)?
Why might some people—“particularly anyone over the age of thirty”—object to the
promotion of “ambient intimacy”? (545)
What is “the paradox of ambient awareness”? (546)
How might one account for “the growing popularity of online awareness”? (547)
What is the “Dunbar number”? (549)
What kinds of relationships are developed and improved on Facebook? (549)
Why is “the rapid growth of weak ties” a potentially good thing? (549)
What’s potentially dangerous about having a lot of “weak ties”? (550)
What are “parasocial relationships”? (550)
What is the danger of not participating in Facebook? What is “the ultimate effect of the
new [online] awareness”? (551)
How does social networking culture affect the way we view ourselves? (552)