A Quilt of a Country

Content Warning: This section references terrorism and racial and religious prejudice, including Islamophobia.

Quindlen’s essay is brief, combining persuasion, sociohistorical arguments, and anecdotal and personal expository. In just eight paragraphs, she uses logos (appeals based on reasoning), ethos (appeals based on moral character), and pathos (appeals based on emotion) to persuade the reader of her point. While the essay does not follow a rigid structure, a rhetorical arc is nevertheless evident. The first half highlights and diagnoses problems with American society, particularly as they relate to the country living up to its ideal of egalitarianism. At about the midway point, Quindlen posits some questions related to these problems, offering some resolution in the essay’s second half while leaving other questions open for the reader to reflect upon.

Published for a wide readership in Newsweek’s online edition, the intended audience of this essay is all Americans. Quindlen may particularly be trying to reach those who are questioning what it means to be American or who are especially susceptible to scapegoating other Americans. Quindlen wrote this essay in the aftermath of an unprecedented traumatic event in US history. Americans were still in shock and trying to make sense of the 9/11 attacks, and in some cases that meant trying to figure out whom to blame. Implicitly, she is cautioning the reader not to equate Muslim Americans (whom she invokes without naming directly as those “currently under suspicion”) with the extremist external enemy (8). Through rhetorical questions, she appeals to her readers’ sense of fairness and belief in the “American dream” to convince them of her arguments in favor of cultural pluralism.

One of the themes that permeates this essay is, therefore, Multiculturalism in the United States. At the time Quindlen was writing, the notion that the United States is or should be a “melting pot” was already falling out of favor. The metaphor of the melting pot signifies that all the different cultures and ethnicities that make up the United States eventually meld together and form a homogenous mixture. This necessarily implies a stripping away of differences. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, celebrates rather than erases cultural differences while also positing an overarching unity. Quindlen’s quilt metaphor aligns mostly with this model: Each individual square maintains its differentiated identity, and the whole quilt is better for it. This is how Quindlen interprets the US motto, “Out of many, one,” which she cites in her opening paragraph.

Nationalism, or what it means to have pride in the country, is a related theme. In the concluding paragraph, Quindlen makes her stance clear that patriotism is “taking pride in this unlikely ability to throw all of us together” (8). This is what makes her proud to be an American, and, in this essay, she has tried to persuade readers that pluralism is in fact one of the nation’s greatest assets. This understanding of Patriotism and National Identity opposes that notion of American pride that entails having unquestioning faith in the country’s institutions or fitting into a pre-existing rigid and singular concept of what it means to be American.

Quindlen ties her project of combatting Islamophobia and prejudice in general to her efforts to comfort the populace. What unites Americans across ethnic and religious differences, she argues, is a Calvinist-inflected psyche that loves challenges. In this, she is perhaps also writing for the enemy, who, in addition to causing massive destruction of human life and challenging US national security, was trying to attack the national spirit. Quindlen comforts the reader with her way of dealing with the exceptionality of the moment, which is by implying that it is not really that exceptional at all; there have been many instances of ethnic animosity within America’s borders throughout history. This encourages the reader to deduce that this too shall pass.

Quindlen’s tone is at once informative and straightforward. She establishes familiarity by addressing the reader directly in the second person and by divulging her personal origins to the reader. This intimacy is itself an act of unification and a gesture intended to provide solace. Despite her sometimes somber tone, Quindlen also ends on an optimistic note. She invokes the portraits of the diverse victims of the World Trade Center attack, implying that hateful acts toward fellow Americans should not be committed in their name, as it would be illogical and hypocritical: The victims come from all backgrounds, representing the makeup of the entire country rather than a limited and prejudiced view of what makes someone a “real” American (i.e., whiteness). She states that when the United States does succeed in living up to its multicultural, heterogenous, and egalitarian ideal, then it really is something to admire—a “wonder.” This is her version of American Exceptionalism, or the belief that the United States is a special and distinct nation.