1. The first idea constructed by the author of the essay on lines 1-13 is that America is a nation resulting from pieces of various nations. This means that America is a culturally and socially diverse country, where each person has their own experiences and concepts and where each person has a different origin from each other. The second idea that the author raises is that this diversity should mean that all citizens are equal, but that is not what happens, since the history of America is told by events, where the freedoms and rights of groups of people were denied because they were not considered free and of equal value.
2. The author shows that these events that show injustice and denial of rights (such as lynching of blacks, denial of rights to women, murder of gays) are failures in the freedom and equality that America preaches, which indicates that the nation had great failures and it is these failures that question the country's real capacity to be fair and successful.
3. In line 22, the puzzle that the author refers to is related to the fact that as an increasingly individualistic country where many citizens proliferate, the feeling of superiority manages to remain united and in community in adverse moments?
4. The author believes that the country is divided, fragmented, because most of the time, citizens are on the verge of starting a fight with their peers because they do not see them as equals, but as something different and a citizen who does not belong there. . To exemplify this, the author states that in America an Arab can be a taxi driver for a Jew, or, a Jew can be a taxi driver for an Arab, even if both are part of American society, they do not see themselves as equals they can raise hate speech against each other.
