Blindness

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

Does a government have a responsibility to isolate entire groups of people on the assumption that they might pose a threat to the general public?

Teaching Suggestion: Discuss the similarities and differences between quarantine, detention, and imprisonment. When are these measures justified? When are they not? Can students recall a moment in history when people were detained on the assumption of threat to the general public? Depending on student background, examples may include the incarceration of Japanese Americans; these and similar sources might guide connected discussion.

• “Japanese Internment Camps” – An article about the United States government’s forced internment of Japanese people, many of them US citizens, during World War II
• “Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II” – A National Archives web page discussing President Roosevelt’s executive order to detain Japanese residents

Short Activity

Smell is one of our strongest senses, and it is a key player in recalling memory, even decades after an event. How does smell play into your everyday experience—are you tolerant of most strong smells, or can your entire mood be altered when you encounter an unpleasant or strong smell?