Breakthrough Writer

1A Sample Thesis Fill-Ins for Essay #2

Provide mapping components for the following thesis statements:

Like “The Culture of Enjoyment” and the “hashish dream” described in “The New Mecca,” the strange madam in “Room No. 12” represents the qualities of the Western consumer industry, which destroys smaller nations through ____________________, _____________________, ______________________, and ______________________.

“The New Mecca” portrays Dubai as a suffocating Bitch Goddess, which traps and extinguishes the soul through _______________, _________________, __________________, and ____________________.

1A Qualities of the Bitch Goddess as Gleaned from “The New Mecca” 286:

1.    One is lulled into helpless surrender by irresistible beauty. See 288
2.    It is a dream world that you prefer over reality; you fall in love with an idea of life but not life itself. 289
3.    The BG promises an end to Ache, the satisfaction of all desires: 291
4.    The BG replaces all values with the Culture of Enjoyment or the Hakuna Matata, top of 292
5.    Fantasy of Endless Affluence and Abundance, Shangri-La; see 299
6.    After short-term pleasures have lost their novelty and allure, ennui or numbness sets in.
7.    Eventually, one cannot appreciate anything and they begin to feel they’re missing the boat and are overcome with envy. This is the typical BG narrative.
8.    As one acclimates to the BG’s indulgence and pampering, one becomes inert, paralyzed, and helpless. This too is part of the BG narrative.
9.    Often one doesn’t know one is snared into the lap of the BG until it is too late.
10.    Most people indulge the BG in cycles, splurging in its decadence, followed by a time of Spartan self-denial and temperance, followed by splurging, self-denial, etc.

Improving Your Grade with Better Transitions

Too many of you are using simple, redundant transitions such as

First . . .
Second . . .
Third . . .
Fourth . . .
Lastly . . .
In conclusion . . .

For more varied, sophisticated transitions, please consult pages 50-57 in Rules for Writers by Diana Hacker. Thank you.

1A Study Questions for "Room No. 12" on page 220

One. What evidence is there that the strange woman, Bahiga al-Dahabi, is, to use George Saunders’ words, an allegorical figure of “The Culture of Enjoyment” or “Sudden Fun”? As such, how is she a demonic figure who represents the Western World’s big money and its effects on the Middle East? 220-222

Stated as a thesis: The strange widow in “Room No. 12” is an allegorical figure of “The Culture of Enjoyment” described by George Saunders in “The New Mecca.” First, she is “eccentric” and wishes to impose her ways on the people’s traditions. She is running from something and is endangering the others. Second, the hotel manager is “astounded” by the widow’s rapacious appetites. Third, she infects the others with “adolescent dreams” (224). Fourth, the orgiastic partying during the storm suggests selfish mindless hedonism in the presence of struggle. (226 “mad depravity”). A frenzy of consumerism on page 226. “The World is a Smoke and a Drink” 227. See their bloated paralysis on 229. Fifth, religion is belittled, degraded on page 228.

Two. What effect does the widow have on the hotel? 223, 224, 225, 226

Three. Why is Blind Sayyid immune to the widow’s powers? 224, 225, 229

Four. Who do the widow’s visitors represent? 225

Five. How are consumer appetites and hedonism, similar to modern Dubai, expressed throughout the story? 227, 229

Six. How is the dream state similar in the story and Saunders’ essay “The New Mecca”? See page 228

Seven. What religious conflict do we see? 228

Eight. What is the fate of Room No. 12 and the other rooms? 229, 230

1A Lecture Material for "The New Mecca"

Lexicon for “The New Mecca” 286
1.    The Bitch Goddess: the womb of luxury where consciousness is extinguished as one retreats into an overwhelming sea of pleasures and self-gratification resulting in helplessness and, ironically, despair. See 288, 289, 291, 292, 299, and 300
2.    The promise of Hakuna Matata 288
3.    Platonic: transcending our earthly reality as we bathe in our mythical our unconscious reality, regression to our primordial state of consciousness when we had no struggle and a sense of our innocence: see page 289
4.    The promise of sated desires and the resulting euphoria: see 291
5.    Hedonism or “Sudden Fun” in which pleasure becomes the highest condition of reality. The world is seen as a giant margarita and your only objective is to suck the straw to the very last drop. In truth, this delusion leads to death and despair. See 292
6.    The Dream of Perpetual Adolescence, a “hashish dream” of perpetual intoxication: see 299
7.    Ache, the pain of knowing your desires will always outstrip your capacity to satisfy them resulting in envy and resentment: See 300
8.    Irony: a cynical view of life’s absurdities and falsities that causes one to respond to others in a glib, often insincere, “joking” manner. See page 308
9.    Empathy: maturity, selflessness, and imagination work together to see the world from other people’s eyes resulting in finding a common humanity.
10. Meretricious, flashy in a cheap, gaudy way; see bottom of 299

Study Questions for “The New Mecca” 286

One. Explain the seduction of “elaborate Theming” described on pages 288 and 289. What inherent dangers are suggested? Also see pages 291, 298-303

Two. What are the city’s demographics? 289, 290

Three. What is Saunders’ “epiphany”? 291, 292: He’s a man who prides himself as a skeptical anti-consumer but he realizes the technology has advanced to a level of omnipotence that renders him helpless to its charms and infatuation.

Four. What does the essay say about the dangers of rampant consumerism? 292, 293: We lose our identity, our sense of time, our faculties of skepticism and irony, our moral sense (enjoying life at expense of slave labor), how acquisition feeds even more desire and betrays the promise of contentment and satiety.

Five. What’s the “downside” of Dubai’s Consumer Nirvana? 293-295, 297, 304: small group gets rich while the poor pay for it; foreign workers are embracing one form of hell as a substitute for a greater hell at home; the rich hedonists embrace their euphoria on the backs of the poor; the labor is so backward that it has driven this modern city to the Middle Ages.

Six. What failure of American imagination and empathy are described on pages 308 and 309? Americans see the Arab world as “The Other” or Las Otras; they fail to see the simplicity and purity of heart; the poor man who puts cookies in an envelope; perceptions of labels are different, for example the Taliban, see page 308 bottom and 309. The poor actually want a lot of what America brings but not the bullying, the killing of innocents, and exploitation, see 309.

Seven. What is Saunders’ bittersweet conclusion about Dubai in terms of what it says about Americans? 311: We all have the same desires, savory or otherwise, and the inability to see our common humanity and condition results in hostility. He captures this paradox in Dubai.