Before Reading

Our global community consists of billions of people belonging to various religions, races, and ethnic groups. What is the best way to build strong alliances between different individuals, groups, and nations? According to the following selection, the answer can be found in practicing toleranceor respect for the beliefs and customs of others.

SURVEY With a partner, create a brief survey about the importance of tolerance. Add to or subtract from the example shown. Ask a small group of classmates to complete the survey. Share the results with your whole class.

How ACCEPTING are you?

from ToleranceEssay by E. M. Forster

Survey About Tolerance1. How is tolerance practiced in your school? Give an example.

2. How is tolerance practiced in the world? Give an example. 3. In what ways do you practice tolerance? Give an example.

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READING 6 Understand the features of literary nonfiction and provide evidence from text to support understanding. 10 Analyze persuasive text and provide evidence from text to support analysis. 10A Evaluate the accuracy of evidence used to support the different viewpoints within arguments.

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Meet the Author

Complete the activities in your Reader/Writer Notebook.

E. M. Forster18791970

The Worst Years Edward Morgan Forster spent the early part of his life frustrated with the private boys school that he attended in England, where he suffered the taunts of classmates and the severity of teachers. His subsequent years at Cambridge University were much happier. There, he expanded his intellectual horizons, made close friends, and dedicated himself to literature.

Literary Triumph Forster began publishing stories soon after graduation and published his first novel in 1905. A number of acclaimed novels followed. The best known of theseA Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924)have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity sparked by successful film adaptations. During the 1930s and 1940s, Forster turned increasingly to social criticism and virtually gave up writing fiction.

background to the essayOn the Air This essay is one of several that Forster broadcast over the radio during and just after World War II (19391945) and later collected in his volume Two Cheers for Democracy (1951). In these essays, Forster often explores the means by which citizens of democracies can counter the spread of the kind of thinking that leads to brutal dictatorshipslike that of Nazi Germany, Britains foe during the war. With their claims of racial superiority and their mass murder of ethnic groups that they branded undesirable, the Nazis were the supreme example of intolerance.

elements of nonfiction: persuasive essayA persuasive essay is a short work of nonfiction written primarily to persuade readers to adopt the writers message, or thesis. The thesis of a persuasive essay is typically a position on an issue or a topic. For example, Forster states his thesis as follows:

In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilisation, something much less dramatic and emotional [than love] is needed, namely, tolerance.

A strong persuasive essay also uses powerful language, persuasive techniques, and a clear and logical argument to be convincing. As you read Forsters persuasive essay, be on the lookout for these elements.

reading skill: analyze reasons and evidence To check whether Forsters essay contains a clear and logical argument, analyze the reasons and evidence he provides to support his thesis. Specifically, make sure that he backs up each reason with at least one piece of evidence. Also check to see whether each reason logically supports his thesis. Recording the reasons and evidence in a graphic organizer such as the one shown here can help you do this. Add or subtract boxes as needed.

Evidence

Evidence

Evidence

Evidence

Evidence

Evidence

Reason

Writers Message, or Thesis

Reason Reason

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xample of intolerance.

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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilisation is a sound state of mind. Architects, contractors, international commissioners, marketing boards, broad-casting corporations will never, by themselves, build a new world. They must be inspired by the proper spirit, and there must be the proper spirit in the people for whom they are working. . . .

What though is the proper spirit? . . . There must be a sound state of mind before diplomacy or economics or trade conferences can function. But what state of mind is sound? Here we may differ. Most people, when asked what spiritual quality is needed to rebuild civilisation, will reply Love. Men must love one another, they say; nations must do likewise, and then the series of cataclysms which is threatening to destroy us will be checked. a

Respectfully but firmly, I disagree. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things: but love in public affairs does not work. It has been tried again and again: by the Christian civilisations of the Middle Ages, and also by the French Revolution, a secular movement which reasserted the brotherhood of man.1 And it has always failed. The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heardit is absurd, unreal, dangerous. It leads us into perilous and vague sentimentalism.2 Love is what is needed, we chant and then sit back, and the world goes on as before. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilisation, something much less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely, tolerance. Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. No one has ever written an ode3 to tolerance or raised a

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1. French Revolution . . . brotherhood of man: The French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799, had the motto Liberty! Equality! Brotherhood!

2. sentimentalism (sDnQtE-mDnPtl-GzQEm): a tendency toward too much tender, often shallow emotion. 3. ode (Id): a usually formal poem on a serious subject.

ToleranceE. M. Forster

In what way does the painting illustrate tolerance among different people?

a

PERSUASIVE ESSAYReread lines 111. According to Forster, what is needed to create a sound foundation for civilization?

Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.From the series Great Ideas of Western

Men (1955), George Giusti. India ink and gouache on paper,

247/8 185/16. Gift of the Container Corporation of America. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington,

D.C. Photo Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C./Art

Resource, New York.

Civilization is a method of living an

Language CoachOral Fluency Part of reading aloud fluently is correct pronunciation. In words ending with -gue, the g is pronounced /g/, and the -ue is silent. Read aloud the full sentence in lines 1920, paying attention to pronunciation.

484 unit 4: theme

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statue to her. Yet this is the quality which will be most needed after the war. This is the sound state of mind which we are looking for. This is the only force which will enable different races and classes and interests to settle down together to the work of reconstruction. b

The world is very full of peopleappallingly full; it has never been so full before, and they are all tumbling over each other. Most of these people one doesnt know, and some of them one doesnt like; doesnt like the colour of their skins, say, or the shapes of their noses, or the way they blow them or dont blow them, or the way they talk, or their smell, or their clothes, or their fondness for jazz or their dislike of jazz, and so on. Well, what is one to do? There are two solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you dont like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and then strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of the earth.4 The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the whole the way of the democracies, and I prefer it. If you dont like people, put up with them as well as you can. Dont try to love them: you cant; youll only strain yourself. But try to tolerate them. On the basis of that tolerance a civilised future may be built. Certainly I can see no other foundation for the postwar world. c

For what it will most need is the negative virtues: not being huffy, touchy, irritable, revengeful. I have lost all faith in positive militant ideals; they can so seldom be carried out without thousands of human beings getting maimed or imprisoned. Phrases like I will purge this nation, I will clean up this city, terrify and disgust me. They might not have mattered when the world was emptier: they are horrifying now, when one nation is mixed up with another, when one city cannot be organically separated from its neighbours. . . .

I dont then regard tolerance as a great eternally established divine principle, though I might perhaps quote In my Fathers house are many mansion