NonFiction Reading Response

                                                                                                                               

                                             "Outbreak" Reading Response
                                                 By: Taylor McGloin 812
   
      In the new upfront magazine I read an article called "Outbreak" By: Patricia Smith about the dangerous disease going around called Ebola. Ebola has infected 4,000 people in Guinea, Liberia. It is ravaging West Africa and alarming the rest of the world keeping them on edge and scared. In Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal the deadly disease has killed more than 2,300 people. The outbreak is very much out of control and just getting worse as the doctors and any kind of medical worker struggle to help prevent ebola but also treat the patients with a severe or minor case's of it. Ebola is turning towns into empty ghost like places and tearing apart families. The disease only continues to worsen.

     In this article, you can tell Patricia Smith feels terrible about ebola. You can also tell by her descriptive language that she sees how big of an effect it has made and finds it to be pretty severe. You can see this when she talks about how ebola took all the happy towns and turned them in to sad ghost towns instead. Also when she talks about the way Ebola is decimating families and ruining all the lives of people who have had their homes, cities, countries taken by storm with the deadly disease of ebola. Patricia Smith starts to ask retorical questions throughout her article like when she says "Past Ebola outbreaks have been quickly snuffed out. How, then, did this one spin so far out of control?" The attitude Patricia keeps through the whole writing piece you can tell she's worried about how far the whole disease has and will continue to go.

     During the article Patricia Smith took sad quotes from past or current Ebola patients like Jattu, Lahai, 26, who was a woman that had survived Ebola but when she returned to her village of Sierra Leone, even her family was too afraid to touch her or interact. "When I fell sick, everybody abandoned me" Patricia Smith helped the reader know about Ebola but also its heartbreaking effect on everyone. She introduced the readers to more of an emotional side to this sickness then the facts. Having to read this made me feel horrible that this is happening in other places yet we are doing nothing about it just because its near us.  Although Patricia tried to make it so she had no opinion there were definitely parts in her writing you could see her shock and her heartbreak and as she went along you (the reader) started to feel it too.
   
        This article has changed my thinking a lot. Being a 13 year old girl living in NYC you don't really take into perspective how hard this subject is. How it scars people, tears up families, kills, hurts and ruins lives its difficult. I've never really wrapped my head around it besides the fact of people are sick and its hard to take care of. A lot of people try and joke about the subject but this topic is the exact opposite of a joke. Patricia Smith showed me the hurt and damage with every word she said. I learned a lot from this and I think everyone else should too.