1. A sentence, expression, or paragraph that you found beautiful – why is it personally beautiful to you?

– “Sentences become coffins too small to contain all the multitudes of grief.”

I found this sentence personally beautiful because it shows how language can fail to carry real human suffering. A coffin is meant to hold a body, but here sentences are described as coffins that are too small to contain grief. This made me think about how media reports often describe human lives in  short phrases or statistics, even though every person carries memories, relationships, and experiences that cannot fit into just a few words. It made me realize that a sentence in the news is too small to contain a real person’s suffering.

2. A sentence, expression, or paragraph that you felt told a very important and deep truth – what makes this truth important or special to you?

– “Translation is not just about transposing words from one language to another. But transplanting a feeling, a way of seeing the world, from one vocabulary of experience to another.”

This shows an important truth because language doesn’t only carry meaning, but also emotions and personal experiences. When something is translated, the feelings behind the words can change or even be lost. This is especially important in war, because when people’s stories are translated into English, their experiences may sound less serious or less personal, which can change how others understand their suffering.

3. A place in the article where you have a question – try to make the question relevant to things we’ve been talking about in class, or relevant to your own life and interests.

– “Everyone you know and love: terrorists. Militants. Strategic targets. Collateral damage.”

This made me think about how the language used in the media affects the way we see certain groups of people. When the same labels are used again and again, do they slowly make us feel less empathy for them? I wonder how media language shapes people’s opinions about conflicts in the Middle East, and if using more personal stories instead of labels could make people care more about what others are going through.