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When Greed Gives Way to Giving

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Submitted By emmiebkr59
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When Greed Gives Way to Giving
Emmie Hester
Professor Lisa Hemphill
English 090
December 2, 2012

The audience for this essay is the readers of a newspaper in Miami, Florida. The newspaper is called the Miami-Herald. The writer is a columnist for them. I know this because the introduction of the essay specifically mentions these facts. The main audience is the readers of the column, but in some cases such as this, the piece can reach further. This article made it into our textbook.
One purpose of this essay was to tell people about the charitable works of one person in particular. The author then used this man’s generous gift to his employees to discuss charitable giving by people as a whole. The author’s main purpose for writing this story was to tell the readers about this special man, and to encourage all readers to reflect on charitable giving. I know this because I read the essay, and because the story starts by telling us of a man named Ben Thompson. The story then goes on to ask questions of the reader. The reader is asked in the next to last paragraph to consider their own charitable giving.
The thesis statement is the last sentence of the first paragraph. “Instead, Thompson decided to share the wealth”. The author goes on to embellish this sentence by giving the details behind this statement. She tells the readers about this man’s amazing decision to give a huge portion of the money he received from the sale of his company back to his employees, including people that no longer worked there. She provides details about this in the first few paragraphs, and then she encourages the reader to examine their own charitable giving.
The writer emphasized the charitable gesture of Ben Thompson by expressing her own amazement at this gesture. She cites the amazement of the employees who were stunned by this magnificent gift. She remarks on how rare this

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