Anna Quindlen’s claim in “A Quilt of a Country” is that America is a diverse nation that is it not supposed to work out, but instead mostly everyone gets along and is able to tolerate each other. She clearly states this in the beginning of the text when she says, “America is an improbable idea. A mongrel nation built of ever-changing disparate parts, it is held together by a notion, the notion that all men are created equal…”
When Quindlen describes America as a being “like the crazy quilts that have been one of its great folk-art forms” she means that America is a place filled with people from all different races and ethnicities, like how a quilt usually filled with different patterns. The description supports her claims because before the quote above she states that United States is ‘built off of bits and pieces that seem discordant” which goes to support the part of her claim when she basically says that America is a diverse nation that is not supposed to work out especially when she uses words like discordant which is typically a word used to describe something that is conflicting. And when she compares America to a quilt which supports the part of her claim that basically says that America is a diverse nation.
The opposing viewpoint that Quindlen responds to in paragraph 3 is that this nation (America) is not a failure and nation who doesn’t tolerate others. She mentions in the text that most often stories of the nations unfortunate events are most often talked about such as slavery and civil rights movement. In order to counteract that statement about she says, “This is a nation founded on a conundrum,[4] what Mario Cuomo[5] has characterized as “community added to individualism.”… The New York of my children is no more Balkanized,[7] probably less so, than the Philadelphia of my father, in which Jewish boys would walk several blocks out of their way to avoid the Irish divide of Chester Avenue…Do the Cambodians and the Mexicans in California coexist less easily today than did the Irish and Italians of Massachusetts a century ago? You know the answer” When she says those words, she addresses the concern that America doesn’t tolerate others, but instead that for years, America tolerates people no matter their differences.
In paragraph 4 the sentence structure and words that are repeated are “What is the point?” The effect of this to emphasize her point that although we may be hostile towards one another, we are still a diverse community that is able to get along with each other
In Quindlen’s conclusion, the words she uses to link her conclusion to her introduction is “Like many improbable ideas, when it actually works, it’s a wonder.” When she says those words, it draws a parallel between the first and last paragraph, which emphasize on the idea that America as a nation is an impossible idea. This supports her
