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LONG

The narrator of ͞A View From the Bridge,͟ an essay by Cherokee Paul McDonald, is jogging when a
͞lumpy little͟ boy stops him for help. The narrator doesn͛t really want to help the boy, but he decides to
take the time to help the boy find his shrimp and catch a fish. He realizes the boy is blind, and describes
the fish for him. By describing the fish for the boy, he realizes that he never looked a fish quite that way
before.

SHORT

This is a story about friendship.

Helping

Changing the way we see things.

Seeing.

Blindness.

The boy is physically blind but the narrator is mentally blind.

The narrator of ͞A View From the Bridge͟ helps a blind boy to see, and in the process learns how to see
things in a new way.

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1. uNITYͶwe are lacking unity. It͛s the ͞great need of the hour.͟ We suffer from a ͞moral͟ and an
͞empathy deficit.͟
2. SCAPEGOAT/DISuNITY/DIVISIONͶWe in the uS scapegoat others. This distracts us from our
3. COMMON CHALLENGES: poverty, injustice, inequality, and war.

͞The Great Need of the Hour͟ is a speech that Barack Obama gave in 2008, on Martin Luther King Day,
at King͛s church. In the speech, he says that we in the uS are lacking unityͶthat unity is the ͞great need
of the hour.͟ He says we suffer from a ͞moral͟ and an ͞empathy deficit͟ when we scapegoat others,
when we blame others for our problems. This distracts us from our common challenges: poverty,
injustice, inequality, and war.