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HS Narrative Power Lesson – Examining What Creates an Emotional Response Paired Passages: Norman Morrison

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HS Narrative Power Lesson – Examining What Creates an Emotional Response Paired Passages: Norman Morrison HS Narrative Power Lesson – Examining What Creates an Emotional Response Paired Passages: Norman Morrison The Vietnam War was the longest war in American history. America joined the war to fight the communist forces of South Vietnamese guerrillas generally known as Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. It was a brutal, tumultuous, no-rules war in which many atrocities such as the burning of civilian villages were committed on both sides. By the end of the war, nearly 60,000 Americans had died as well as a million Vietnamese, half of those civilians. Even today, more than 40 years later, Americans continue to ask whether our effort was a blunder, a necessary evil, a noble cause, or an idealistic effort to protect South Vietnam from the murderous and dictatorial regime in the North. The American government was so set in its mission to guard against the rise of Communism that it became deaf to the pleas of its citizens to stop U.S. involvement. Many pacifists, people who believe that war and violence are unjustifiable, fled to Canada to escape the draft. In rare instances, others made tremendous sacrifices to thwart the war effort. Below are two texts involving one of these rare instances. The first is an article from a 1965 edition of Time Magazine describing a self-immolation (killing oneself as a sacrifice, here, setting oneself aflame) to protest the war. The second text is a poem inspired by the self-immolation. READ THE TEXTS 1. “Churches: The Pacifists” from the “Religion” section of Time Magazine, November 12, 1965, page 68 2. “Norman Morrison,” by Adrian Mitchell Short Constructed Response After you have read both the article and the poem, think about how you react to the event on an emotional level. In a short paragraph, explain your reaction and what specific elements of each text cause you to react in this manner. Extended Writing Prompt Compare and contrast the emotional impact of the Time Magazine article on Norman Morrison to the emotional impact of Mitchell’s poem. Which is more objective and clinical? Which is more edgy and emotional? What creates the difference? How does the free verse format of the poem help concentrate the emotional feelings? You may wish to include a discussion of such topics as purpose, tone, diction, format, point of view in your essay. Determine what choices each author makes to tell the story and how these choices create the emotional impact of the two texts. Be sure to use specific evidence from the texts to support your response. In your extended writing response, be sure to: • Introduce your thesis • Include discussion of both passages • Mention the authors and titles • Support your thesis with relevant evidence from the texts • Organize the evidence • Give commentary on the evidence showing how it supports your thesis • Establish and maintain a formal style • Provide a concluding statement or section that wraps up your ideas • Check your work for correct grammar, usage, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation 1. Churches: The Pacifists At 5:15 one afternoon last week, Norman Morrison, 31, his clothing doused in kerosene and his youngest child, 18-month-old Emily, cradled in his arms, stood outside the river entrance to the Pentagon and burned himself to death. As hundreds of departing officers and civilian workers watched – no photographers were on the scene – Army Major Richard Lundquist grabbed the child away from the flames. Army Lieutenant Colonel Charles Johnson, who had seen two Buddhist monks incinerate themselves on the streets of Saigon, and two Air Force sergeants tried to smother the flames with coats and jackets. By the time an ambulance had arrived, 70% of Morrison’s body was burned. He was declared dead on arrival at fort Myers Army Dispensary. Morrison’s self-immolation, his wife Anne soon explained, expressed “his concern over the great loss of life and human suffering caused by the war in Viet Nam. He was protesting our government’s deep military involvement in this war.” The suicide ended a life centered on religion since boyhood. Morrison was born in Erie, PA. When he was 13, his widowed mother moved the family to Chautauqua, N.Y. where he became the first youth in the county to win the Boy Scout God and Country Award. He was raised a Presbyterian, but gradually became interested in Quaker beliefs, particularly pacifism, while a student at Wooster College. He later studied at a Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh and at the University of Edinburgh, and joined the Society of Friends in 1959. Since 1962, he had been executive secretary of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore. In recent months, Morrison had been deeply disturbed about U.S. bombing in Viet Nam, although colleagues detected not outside sign of a psychosis that might explain his death. 2. Norman Morrison On November 2nd 1965 nobody could see. in the multi-colored multi-minded Their names, ages, beliefs and loves United beautiful States of America are not recorded. Norman Morrison set himself on fire This is what Norman Morrison did. outside the Pentagon. He poured petrol over himself. He was thirty-one, he was a Quaker, He burned. He suffered. and his wife (seen weeping in the He died. newsreels) This is what he did and his three children in the heart of Washington survive him as best they can. Where everyone could see. He did it in Washington where everyone He simply burned away his clothes, could see his passport, his pink-tinted skin, because and put on a new skin people were being set on fire of flame and became in the dark corners of Vietnam where Vietnamese. .
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