Literature+Final+Exam

Throughout the course of study this year we discussed Night, Julius Caesar, and The Kite Runner. Each text dealt with various themes, but one of the primary themes has been survival. Survival has also been a major theme in the world news cycle. In January, there was a massive earthquake in Haiti that cause widespread destruction and devastation. Someday, there will be books written about this tragic event and the focus will surely be the perseverance and struggle of the Haitian people.

Below is an article from MSNBC that covers stories of survival. Read the Article thoroughly and answer the questions in the Google form below. It would be a good idea to take notes on the article as you read. This will help with remembering main ideas.

The second part of your exam be a comparative literary analysis of the article below and one of the texts we read this year - Night, Julius Caesar, and The Kite Runner. Your objective is to compose a five paragraph essay that focuses on the theme of survival in our literature selections and the article below. The essay must follow the following steps listed below:

1. Pre-writing > 2. Writing and Revising
 * Choose a subject: Your subject is exploring the theme of SURVIVAL in the article below and in the literature selections we read this year.
 * Develop your angle: What is your opinion on the topic and how do you intend on supporting it with evidence from the book and article.
 * Focus your efforts: This is where you focus your idea and develop a thesis. This will govern your paper from beginning to end.
 * Connecting your ideas: Develop an outline and a rough draft. Work in ideas and details according to your planning and pre-writing.
 * Draw your reader into your analysis
 * Highlight your subjects
 * Identify and establish your thesis
 * Revision: Review your first draft

updated 11:01 a.m. ET, Thurs., Jan. 14, 2010
Death, devastation and despair dominate the news coming out of Port-au-Prince, but out of the chaos have also come miraculous stories of survival and hope. Orphanages filled with scores of Haiti’s most vulnerable citizens — its parentless children —survived without losing a single child. A missionary lying trapped for 10 hours in the collapsed rubble that was once her mission was reunited with her husband, who drove hours to dig her out and take her to safety. A college student managed to send her worried parents a two-word text message that meant everything: “I’m OK.” The recipients of that text message were Joan and Steve Prudhomme of East Greenwich, R.I. Their daughter Julie had gone to Haiti with 11 other students and two faculty advisers from Lynn University of Boca Raton, Fla., to work on an irrigation project for the mission group Food for the Poor. “We read an e-mail last night stating one sentence: ‘I’m OK,’ ” Joan Prudhomme told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday morning from the family’s home in Rhode Island. “And we were overjoyed.” The Prudhommes were lucky. Just a couple of hours after the 7.0 temblor shattered Port-au-Prince Tuesday afternoon, they received that message. “Apparently, one girl was able to send a text to someone in the United States and Julie was with that girl, and so we did have initial confirmation around 7 p.m. the first night of the earthquake, Tuesday night, that she was OK,” Joan said. “Of course, you don’t know what happens with the aftershocks and everything else. It was extremely anxiety-producing.” And even hearing that their daughter is unharmed doesn’t end the anxiety. As of Thursday morning, four Lynn students and the two faculty advisers were still missing. And, while the university’s travel insurance carrier immediately dispatched a rescue helicopter from the Dominican Republic, the Prudhommes still didn’t know when they’d see their daughter. “The worst part is not having any communication with them, so we don’t know where she is, how she is, where she’s going, what’s her plan,” Steve Prudhomme said. “If we could just talk to her, that would be great.” His wife said that what was important was just knowing that Julie survived uninjured. “I think there were so many people there just trying to get one sentence out. That’s all we care about. ‘I’m OK’ said it all,” Joan said.
 * Still missing**

“We didn’t need the rest of it,” she added. “We’ll get that in good time, and, we hope, very soon, when she gets airlifted out of Haiti and into the Dominican Republic.” Getting out is a theme for survivors of the cataclysm. On Wednesday, TODAY spoke by phone with Frank Thorp Jr., who had driven eight hours from the Haitian countryside to Port-au-Prince, where he dug his wife, Jillian, out of the rubble of the collapsed mission building where they had been staying. “They couldn’t see her face. They could see one hand waving and they were able to talk,” Jillian’s father, Clay Cook, told TODAY. “With a little more digging, Frank literally lifted her out of the wreckage.” Although bruised, Jillian was better off than other mission workers. One co-worker suffered a broken leg, and a housekeeper lost both her legs in the quake. Cook, who called his daughter’s rescue “nothing short of a miracle,” said Thursday morning that Frank and Jillian had managed to get to the Dominican Republic and were hoping to get home to the U.S. later in the day. Another family waiting for their loved ones to get home are Kendra and Brett Schlenbaker of Bellingham, Wash. Three years ago, while doing mission work, the Schlenbakers, who have two biological children, Austin, 12, and Karson, 8, fell in love with two children at a Port-au-Prince orphanage. The children, Bjennika, now 8, and Djouvensky, now 6, are brother and sister. The adoption process is a laborious one, rife with red tape, but by last July, the family thought they’d finally completed the long process. But some documents got lost, and everything was delayed. And then the earthquake struck. When she heard the first reports, Kendra said her reactions were “fear and just a lot of turmoil, not knowing if they were OK. They were so close to the palace that had crumbled that we were very worried about their safety.” But Kendra had been in Haiti visiting the children and working on the adoption for several weeks ending in December, and she remembered that the orphanage kept to a strict schedule: Every afternoon, all the children were assembled under a tree in a courtyard outside the building. “They’re very rigid on their schedules, so when the quake hit at 4:30, everybody should have still been outside with all the handicapped children. That’s what we were praying for,” Kendra told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira. Fortunately, their prayers were answered. And, like the Prudhommes, the Schlenbakers got the initial good news by a roundabout route. “We got a phone call from one of our friends from church who got an e-mail from a gentleman who was on a mission trip down there,” Brett said. “He just happened to be staying at the orphanage when the earthquake hit. Sometime yesterday, he was able to leave the orphanage and get out to an area where somehow he got word to somebody in the States, and then an e-mail went around saying everybody in the orphanage was OK.” Part of the church associated with the orphanage had collapsed along with parts of the 12-foot-high concrete wall surrounding the compound, but all the children had survived. Now the Schlenbakers just want to finally get their children out and bring them home. Given the damage to Haitian government buildings, they’re not sure what the status of their paperwork is. Fortunately, Kendra has copies of all of it, and she has enlisted the help of her congressman, Rick Larsen. “The children are legally ours, and I have copies of all the paperwork stating that,” Kendra said. “We’re hoping that maybe the right people in government will see our paperwork and help us get passports and visas for the kids to get them out of the country. That way we can get them home. “Everybody talks about them as if they’re already living here,” she added. “To have them here would just be amazing.” On Wednesday, TODAY had reported on another orphanage outside of the capital that had also survived the quake. On Thursday, Laurie Bickel, one of the administrators of God’s Littlest Angels Orphanage, updated TODAY on the more than 100 orphans in her care. “All of the children are doing great. Nobody was injured here. Everybody is faring well,” she said in a phone interview. Bickel also described the scene outside the orphanage, where tens of thousands of Haitians are in the streets with nowhere to take refuge. “The amount of damage that is done is absolutely catastrophic,” she said. “People are just sitting in parks. They’re scared to go home or their homes have been destroyed.” And yet, she said, many people continue to attempt to take what joy life still offers them. “You get to the playground areas and the kids are just playing. They’re enjoying today; they’re enjoying that moment, and that’s how the Haitian people are,” Bickel said. “In the face of all of this, they’ve been singing and just praising God that they survived, and they are here and they will get through this.” © 2010 MSNBC Interactive. Reprints URL: []
 * Dug from the rubble**
 * Orphans of the storm**
 * Amid devastation, children playing**

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Haiti earthquake: survivors' stories
Haitians describe 20 seconds of shaking and then the horrific aftermath of the disaster in Port-au-Prince [|James Sturcke] [|guardian.co.uk], Thursday 14 January 2010 14.03 GMT A young earthquake survivor holds a piece of bread in a makeshift shelter in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photograph: Ricardo Arduengo/AP It sounded like a tornado, followed by a bomb dropping. Then the noise under the ground started, said Frantz Florestal, from Atlanta, who was visiting Port-au-Prince. "You heard the noise under the ground and it's shaking and shaking, and everybody started running," [|Florestal told the Atlanta Journal Constitution]. "Houses were falling and falling, all of the fences were falling, people were falling, people were crying." Twenty seconds later it was over, he said. There was nothing but rubble and dirt. "You cannot see the air. All of a sudden it's dark," he said. "After that you saw the sun, the sun was falling under the horizon." Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) aid worker Danielle Trépanier was rescued yesterday afternoon after almost 24 hours under the rubble of a collapsed staff house. At the time of the quake Trépanier, a Canadian logistician-administrator, was resting in her bedroom on the second storey because she had been feeling ill. Trépanier fell through two floors and landed in a small space in the basement under a mass of debris. The organisation said [|local employees had risked their lives] to save Trépanier from the basement, knowing from her intermittent cries for help that hope was not lost. When they pulled her out she was bewildered, in shock, with minor injuries. She has been in contact with her family and is recovering. The BBC correspondent Matthew Price was among the first British reporters to the scene. "This is a particularly grim sight," [|Price reported from a hospital in the capital.] "The stench is overwhelming. There are over 100 bodies here, adults and, at my feet, a baby. Perhaps even more uncomfortable is that there are people bedding down for the night … sleeping among the dead." Price said a "handful" of doctors were trying to tend the wounded. A man called Nicolas told him his daughter had suffered two broken legs when the radio station building at which she worked collapsed. "Her mother is helping her because the doctors do not have the proper materials to help her." Wayne Snow was born in the US but moved to [|Haiti] when he was two years old. He works for Youth with a Mission in Haiti. [|He told KLTV:]"They have bodies that are just piled up along the sides of the roads, and the hospital has also been damaged by the earthquake. We watched as people tried to dig other people out. Some were living and some were not. "We have water trucks that they're driving around the city getting water to those that need it. But there are several water pipes in the city that have been broken. So the water situation is grave as well. Fresh water is hard to get." Wisnel Occilus, a 24-year-old student, was in an English class when the building collapsed. "The professor is dead. Some of the students are dead, too," said Occilus, who suspected he had several broken bones. "Everything hurts." Hotel Villa Creole employee Dermene Duma told of a group of women singing traditional religious songs during the night. "They sing because they want God to do something. They want God to help them. We all do." Duma lost four relatives in the earthquake. Foreigners slept around the hotel's pool and scores of injured Haitians lay outside the damaged hotel. Bodies were visible all around the hilly city: under rubble, lying beside roads, being loaded into trucks. Scattered bodies were laid out on pavements wrapped neatly in sheets and blankets. Voices cried out from the rubble.

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