Third Quarter Journal Prompts

• Journal 1: In his book The World of Yesterday about the events leading up to the rise of Nazism in post WWI Germany, the writer Stefan Zweig said, "It remains an irrefragable law of history that contemporaries are denied a recognition of the early beginnings of the great movements which determine their times." Note that irrefragable means, "not able to be refuted or disproved; indisputable," and contemporaries refers to people living at the same time that the beginnings of great movements are happening. Take stock of the chaotic world in which we are now living and identify a key trend or movement that is beginning right now that you believe history will later identify as a defining theme of the era. It could be environmental, political, social, technological, etc. Make an argument for why you think it will later be remembered as something important.
• Journal 2: Please write an essay on the theme of the next two quarters, "The Individual and Society." In an opening paragraph, define "society" (without resorting to a quote from the dictionary). Discuss the relationship between the individual and society, giving one example of a situation where the individual has an inalienable right to disobey the wishes of society, and another example of a situation in which society has an inalienable right to overrule the wishes of an individual member.
• Journal 3: Make a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," quoting and explaining examples of ethos, pathos, and logos he uses to achieve his aim of refuting the assertions of the letter from the eight Alabama clergymen. How and why does he employ this different strategies? How do they help to make his argument more persuasive?
• Journal 4: (This was Question Two from the 2003 AP Language and Composition Test, Form B)

  The following passage comes from "The Common Life," a 1994 essay by the American writer Scott Russell Sanders. Read the passage carefully and then write an essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies Sanders' ideas about the relationship between the individual and society in the United States. Use specific evidence to support your position.

  A woman who recently moved from Los Angeles to Bloomington, Indiana, told me that she would not be able to stay here long, because she was already beginning to recognize people in the grocery stores, on the sidewalks, in the library. Being surrounded by familiar faces made her nervous, after years in a city where she could range about anonymously. Every traveler knows the sense of liberation that comes from journeying to a place where nobody expects anything of you. Everyone who has gone to college knows the exhilaration of slipping away from the watchful eyes of Mom and Dad. We all need seasons of withdrawal from responsibility. But if we make a career of being unaccountable, we have lost something essential to our humanity, and we may well become a burden or a threat to those around us. A community can support a number of people who are just passing through, or who care about no one's needs but their own; the greater the proportion of such people, however, the more vulnerable the community, until eventually it breaks down.... Taking part in the common life means dwelling in a web of relationships, the many threads tugging at you while also holding you upright.

• Journal 5: (This was Question Three from the 1999 AP Language and Composition Test)

  In the following excerpt from Antigone, by the classical Greek playwright Sophocles, the wise Teiresias observes

  Think: all men make mistakes,
  But a good man yields when he
  Knows his course is wrong,
  And repairs the evil: The Only
  Crime is pride.

  Take some time to think about the implications of the quotation. Then write a carefully reasoned essay that explores the validity of the assertion, using examples from your reading, observation, or experience to develop your position.

• Journal 6: Write an essay agreeing or disagree with the following assertion by Orwell (paragraph 13): "In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not the 'party line.' Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style." Support your position with examples from political speeches, newspaper columns and articles, advertisements, and web sites.
• Journal 7: Read the following excerpt from "The Social Contract" by Jean Jacques Rousseau and write a response that supports or refutes Rousseau"s disavowal of the right to private property. Use the standard form argument (an introduction ending with a thesis statement, summary and refutation of oppossing views, argument in support of thesis statement, closes with a conclusion) to argue for or against Rousseau's position.

  The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."