Summer Assignment 2008
Answer the questions given below and turn them in to your discussion leader
on Friday, August 22.
Completion of the written assignment will help you reflect on the book
and will prepare you for the discussions
on campus this fall. To illustrate your answers, please provide references
with page numbers to specific
passages in the text. The questions have been designed to help you engage
in the discussion and to bring
your own energy and ideas to your group. We look forward to your contributions.
1. Reparations. (p. 197) Farmer refers to the 19th
century slave trade that created Haiti as a colony of France. He looks
to France to help create better health care in Haiti in the 21st century
as a form of reparations for past actions. What does France owe Haiti?
If we know how to cure a disease, must we cure it in all countries? Only
those we have wronged in the past? Under such a theory of reparations,
who would the United States owe reparations to?
2. Family v. Social Obligations. As we read Mountains
Beyond Mountains, we find many people who regard Paul Farmer as a
great man, a saint, a leader for social justice. Farmer is clearly willing
to sacrifice his own self-interest for the common good. One thing that
Farmer seems to sacrifice is a life that includes time spent caring for
his partner (Didi) and their two-year old child. He does not make meals,
read stories, go to school plays, or take care of this daughter while
his wife pursues her career. How do you feel about the choices that Farmer
has made? Would you think differently if his name was Paula Farmer and
her husband lived in Paris with their daughter? Would you feel different
about Paul Farmer if he were a single man? A priest? Should "saints"
have families?
3. Positive Influence. Kidder was a witness to Dr. Paul
Farmer's exceptional vision and unflagging dedication to the people of
Haiti. Can you identify and explain an experience in which you witnessed
someone's positive influence and were moved to action?
4. Indifference and Passive Injustice. Kidder writes
that, according to Farmer, the "most fundamental" error is the
"'hiding away" of suffering. 'My big struggle is how people
can not care, erase, not remember'" (MBM, 218-9). Are we guilty of
a kind of passive injustice by not responding adequately to those who
suffer from violence, poverty and treatable disease?
5. Self-value. How is Farmer's medical work related
to his sense of self, of community, of what medicine is? What do we learn
about his convictions about medicine for the people living in poverty?
About faith and medicine? About his general view of health? Of patients?
6. What do you think of the title: "Mountains Beyond Mountains"?
What does it convey? If you could choose one word from the book that best
describes what it depicts, what would that be? If you were writing a book
about your passion what would be the title and why?
On Friday, August 22, you will meet with your discussion group to talk
about this year's freshman read and to submit your written answers to
the questions given above.
Make sure you bring your book and the written
answers to the questions to your assigned discussion group.
|
