The Book-Of-The-Semester Project 2007 - 2008

1.  Summarizing and Responding

Read the passage below and summarize its main points in one paragraph.  Then, in another paragraph, write a response that shows why you agree or disagree with Sidney Poitier.

“A lot of black leaders, along with a lot of sympathetic white people, would say it’s too early in this country for forgiveness.  We haven’t dealt with accountability yet, admission of guilt yet.  And we certainly don’t have equality yet. But among the things that we must try to get done is the nurturing of a civilized, fair, principled, humane society.  Now, if a part of that nurturing – part of the movement toward it, some of the efforts spent in that direction – would bring us to a new understanding, a new acceptance, even some forgiveness, what then?  And not just forgiveness from the people who’ve been wronged.  Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances.  People have to forgive themselves too.  The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior.  That should be a sacred process.
            Compassion for other human beings has to extend to the society that’s been grinding the powerless under its heel.  The more civilized the society becomes, the more humane it becomes; the more it can see its own humanity, the more it sees the ways in which its humanity has been behaving inhumanly.  This injustice of the world inspires a rage so intense that to express it fully would require homicidal action; it’s self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage.  Simply put, I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me.  I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness” (128).

2.  Writing a Letter

In describing the rage that consumed him when the Miami police followed him home for 50 blocks, Sidney Poitier writes, “Fifty blocks is a long time to think about what’s happening to you, to stew in the insane injustice of it all.  But it’s also a good long time to internalize messages such as discipline, independence, the value of character, and toughness of mind” (131). 

Write Sidney Poitier a letter, telling him what you think of the action he took at that young age.  Explain what you would have done if the same thing had happened to you.  Consider how this action was just one of many others that moulded the foundation of the person who is telling us his story. 

3. Working with Quotations  

In evaluating how his role in In the Heat of the Night reflected a sign of progress not only in his career but also in society, Sidney Poitier writes:
“From the way it was in my early days in America, to the point at which I was playing a senior detective representing the Philadelphia Police Department, solving a murder mystery in rural Mississippi – that was movement.  But the true progress it represented didn’t come from unbridled rage any more than it came from polite submission.  Progress then and now comes from the collision of powerful forces within the hearts of those who strive for it.  Anger and charity, love and hate, pride and shame, broken down and reassembled in an igneous process that yields a fierce resolve.”

4.   Agreeing or Disagreeing with Definitions

Sidney Poitier writes how being an “outsider” and “survivor” can be the same and different at the same time: 

“Life offered no auditions for the many roles I had to play.  And nowhere along the roads I traveled can I recall (83) ever hearing the word ‘outsider’ applied to me.  I had for years considered myself an old hand at the game of staying alive.  But with failure walking in my shadow every minute, waiting for the misstep that could derail my whole existence, ‘survivor’ seemed to me a more appropriate label under which my life should be filed.
Over time, however, I began to notice the frequency with which ‘outsider’ was applied to others.  The term began to resonate with me, causing me to wonder who I was really, at the center of myself.  Eventually, I came to see myself in the outsider, and the outsider in me.  I knew that outsider and survivor often work as partners, but they’re not twins” (82-83).

Show whether you agree or disagree with the distinction Poitier makes between the words “outsider” and “survivor.”  Refer not only to his experiences but also to your own  as you develop your answer.