Close Work with the text. 1. According to Sontag, what makes the attack of AIDS so “terrifying”?

Meaning

1. According to Sontag, what makes the attack of AIDS so “terrifying”?

2. Explain all aspects of the two main metaphors the author uses to define AIDS (invasion and pollution). How does Sontag’s examination of these metaphors help you understand virus more specifically?

3. Devise a new metaphor to explain the progress of this disease.

4. Why do you think people turn to metaphor to help them define certain diseases? How do metaphors help us understand AIDS?

Method

1. In what way do the words invasion and pollution help define AIDS? What two points of view of the disease do these words represent?

2. How is the language of AIDS different from that of syphilis?

3. Explain the headline Sontag cites in paragraph: “AIDS Virus Found to Hide in Cells, Eluding Detection by Normal Tests”.

4. In what way is AIDS “a disease of time”.

Discovering rhetorical strategies

1. How does Sontag use the language of science fiction to define AIDS?

2. What effect does Sontag's use of quotations have on the essay?

3. The author uses both comparison/contrast and analogy to define AIDS in this essay. Find an example of each of these rhetorical modes, and explain how it works.

4. What other rhetorical strategies, besides comparison and analogy, does Sontag use in this essay? Give examples.

Composition

Write freely about your current reactions to the AIDS virus: How do you feel about the disease? What should we be doing to control the spread of AIDS? What should we be doing to protect the rights of AIDS victims? In what way should we protect the rights of people who do not have AIDS? What do you think the future of the virus in Ukraine (the world) will be?

GEOFFREY CANADA

(born January 13, 1952)

Geoffrey Canada is an African-American social activist. He is the author of “Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America”. Since 1990, Canada has been president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York, an organization whose goal is to increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem.

This essay is adapted from his acceptance speech of the Heinz Family Foundation award for “contributions to the human condition” on January 26 in Washington. As you prepare to read, think about the following questions:

· Did you feel yourself happy when you were a child?

· What do your grandparents mean to you?

· Who played an important role in your upbringing? Mother? Father? Grandparents? Friends? Why?

CHERRIES FOR MY GRANDMA

America has won a great victory as the Soviet Union has turned toward democracy and turned its nuclear missiles away from our shores. But we have shown little of the grace and compassion at home that this victory should have produced. We have turned from a cold war the Soviet Union to a cold war with poor Americans, mostly poor women and children. I have heard much debate about the poor, much of it threatening and angry. There is so much this country needs to understand and to do about poverty.

I grew up poor in the Bronx. My mother raised my three brothers and me by herself. When she couldn’t find work, we went on welfare. When she could find work, it was in jobs that paid women – especially black women - so little money that we couldn’t tell the difference between welfare and work except that our mother wasn’t home when she was working.

People talk about poverty and the poor like it’s so easy to not be poor. But I know a different story. It takes great sacrifice and talent to work your way out of poverty. My mother used to make all of her own clothes. You couldn’t raise four boys on her salary and afford to buy dresses to wear to work. When we were young, she used to make our clothes, cut our hair and make toys for us out of cereal boxes. All her life she sacrificed for us. She put off getting her college degree and her master’s degree until we were grown and on our own.

And you know what? We hated being poor. We loved our mother but we ruined her Christmas every year with our tears of disappointment at not getting exactly what we wanted. I couldn’t help but be angry when my shoes had holes in them and there was no money to buy new ones. And I couldn’t help but stare angrily when I needed money to go on a school trip and there wasn’t any money to be had.

And while there was much love in our family, being poor strained our loving bonds. We had to blame someone, and my mother was the only target. And there she was giving up all she had for us, going without lunch, without movies and nights out, walking 10 blocks to the train because she couldn’t afford to pay the 15 cents extra to take the bus. And she would come home to four boys with the hands out, angry because we wanted something, needed something she could not give.

There are some Americans who think poverty stems from a lack of values and determination. But you can work hard all your life, have impeccable values and still be poor. My grandfather was the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Harlem. My grandmother was a Christian woman. They were hard-working, moral people. They were poor.

I lived with my grandparents during my high school years. My grandmother worked all her life: caring for other people’s children, selling backed goods or Avon products, doing whatever she could do to help bring money into the house. She was a beautiful woman, kind and intelligent. She was determined to save my soul.

I was a wild and reckless adolescent whose soul was indeed in peril. And I fell in love with my grandmother. A deep love that any of us would develop if an angel came into our lives. The more time I spent with her, the more I loved her. She cooled my hot temper and anger over being poor, and she showed me there was dignity even in poverty.

In all the years I knew her, she was never able to afford material things that others took for granted. She worked very hard but never could afford anything of luxury. She taught me how one could enjoy a deep spiritual love of life that was not tied to material things. This is a tough lesson to teach in a country that places so much value on materialism.

But each summer my grandmother and I would conspire to indulge her one vice: cherries. She loved cherries. Two or three times a week when my grandfather was at work, I would walk the mile to the supermarket and buy half a pound of cherries. My grandmother and I would eat them secretly because my grandfather would have had a fit if he’d known we spent an extra dollar a week on them.

My summers with my grandmother were measured by how good the cherries were that year. It was our little secret. And I was amazed at how much she loved cherries, and how expensive cherries were. Later when I went off to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., I would sit in my room and think about how much my mother and grandfather had sacrificed for me to be in college.

I would fantasize about how when I graduated and got a good job, the first thing I would buy with my first check in August would be a whole crate of cherries. It would have to be August because our cherry summers taught us that August cherries were the sweetest. I would dream of wrapping the crate up in gift paper, putting a bow on it and presenting it to Grandma. And many a night I would go to sleep in the cold winter Maine nights warmed by the vision of my grandmother’s excitement when I bought her this small treasure.

Grandma died during my sophomore year. I never got to give her all the cherries she could eat. And if you want my opinion, the summer of 1971, the last summer she was alive was really the last great summer for cherries.

Poverty is tough on families in many ways. It’s not quite as simple to get out of as people make out. We must be careful to make sure we build ladders so children and their families can climb out of poverty. It’s not an easy climb. You can climb all your life and never make it out.

Grandma, who sacrificed so much for all of us, I just want to say I know that in all I’ve been acknowledged for, I still haven’t reached the level of love and compassion that you tried to teach me. I think you accomplished your goal: you saved my soul. And I hope they let me bring gifts to Heaven. You’ll know what’s in the box.

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