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Anna Quindlen

Decent Essays

In the past few weeks, I have read two essays regarding the immigrant population in the United States. They both pass along the same meaning, yet they are still quite different in abounding ways. The two articles that I am exposing are “A Quilt of a Country”, by Anna Quindlen, and “The Immigrant Contribution”, by John F. Kennedy. They both converse with the theme in relation to immigration. To establish ways in which they are similar, we will obviously first take a look at their theme. I took an excerpt from “A Quilt of a Country”, that says, “...the new immigrants are not so different from our own parents or grandparents.” (Quindlen 7). I took a second excerpt from “The Immigrant Contribution”, that stated, “...I discovered that the immigrants …show more content…

First off, the pair’s tones are very differential. You’ll see that Quindlen uses more of a sophisticated tone and that the words are a little bit lengthy. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just that you can tell that it may not have been aimed at the younger generation. A quote from Quindlen’s paper explains, “This nation founded on a conundrum, what Mario Cuomo has characterized as as ‘community added to individualism.’” (Quindlen 3). Kennedy’s piece has more of an informing tone. In one of his lines, he says, “So, of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, eighteen were of non-English stock…”, (Kennedy 3). I was unaware of that basis and I thought that it was interesting. The following difference is that Quindlen’s article seems to focus more on the immigrant themselves, and Kennedy shows more of the factor of equality that the immigrant has. Quindlen’s quote is expresses, “‘The old neighborhood Ma-Pa stores are still around. They are not Italian or Jewish or Eastern European any more. Ma and Pa are now Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi, Jordanian, Latin American.’” (Quindlen 7). Kennedy’s quote from his article that shows the prospect of equality is, “...in a democratic society there should be no inequalities in opportunities or in freedoms.” (Kennedy 16). This is showing us that equality doesn’t mean actual equality of persons or freedoms. It means that we all have the same chance to

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