"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow 				Michael Pruess 6th period
We Will Be Killed with Our Families."
SOAPS + topic sentences

SOAPS

Subject: the genocide in Rwanda, and more immediately, that at Nyarubuye

Occasion: the author lived in Rwanda around the time of the slaughters and is writing about what it was like traveling around immediately after.

Audience: the author's audience is made up of those who, as he puts it, "hope for some understanding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge- a moral, or a lesson, or a clue about how to behave in this world..." - in other words, those who wish to know about the genocide in Rwanda and what the genocide means.

Purpose: to inform.

Speaker: the speaker is greatly disturbed by the slaughters and conveys this expertly.

Topic Sentences

The dead looked like pictures of the dead.
- Limited subject: the state of the dead at Nyarubuye
- Definite attitude: seemingly forced objectivity, plain description
- Order of development: begins to present the scene by feeding us piles of imagery

Like Leontius, the young Athenian in Plato, I presume that you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity.
- Limited subject: the reasons for writing/reading about the horrors of the genocide
- Definite attitude: disturbed yet fascinated
- Order of development: leads us into a section about his psychological response to the dead

Rwanda is spectacular to behold.
- Limited subject: Rwanda's beauty
- Definite attitude: admiring
- Order of development: contrasts beauty with the previously described horrors for effect- develops the reader's view of Rwanda