Posted: March 6th, 2014
The earthquake in Haiti
Read pages 167-174 “The earthquake in Haiti” and then answer the following questions. If you annotate the different versions it will assist with your interpretation.
1. As you read these various accounts, which aspects of them had the greatest emotional inpact? Was it, as Jonah Lehrer wrote, the stories of individual trdegy? Or was it the more general descriptions of the wide scale human catastrphe? What accounts for the difference in your reactions?
In her masterpiece ” Making Sense of Haiti” Amy Davidson poses the question How do we get our minds around a disaster on such an incomprehensble scale? is it individual photgraphs and personal stories of rescue and death? Is it descriptions and statics that detailthe scope of the catastrophe? Is it video footage showing collapsed buildings, corpses stacked on the roads, and the people desperate for food and medical attention? Is it photographs from the air that presents a panorama of destruction? Or is it a roll of graph paper with the seismic readings of the eartquake? Or is it all of the above? What do you think. Pay careful attention to vocabulary and word usage.
In George Packer’s article Suffering” he explores the way people try to find some sense or meaning in a natural disaster like this, some way to help them cope with the human loss and suffering. What explanation explanation would you give for this earthquake and the suffering that follows? Why does Packer believe that thw word ha a moral obligation to help Haiti rebuild itself?
4. In the article “Aftershock,” the authors’ perspective is forward looking. Why do they believe the earthquake caused so much physical and human destruction? What steps must be taken to rebuild a Haiti that is safer, healthier, and more economically sound than the previous one?
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