write an essay of at least 200 words which answers the following questions. Remember to document your source properly, using MLA format.
1. What characteristics make this article a formal essay?
2. Is it factual?
3. Does it attempt to explain rather than to entertain?
4. What is its thesis statement?
Article:
1. I am sitting in an airplane returning from a trip to the Pacific Northwest. In four days, I interviewed three people. One woman was in an auto accident. As she was driving across a desert with her best friend, a drunken driver missed a stop sign and rammed her car. Her friend and the drunk died instantly; the woman survived with a shattered jaw, broken arm, collapsed lung, lacerated face, and various internal injuries. She has recovered now, except for haunting memories and the prospect of plastic surgery.
2. A young man had a story with a happier ending. His fiancee and he were hiking in a ravine of the Cascade Mountains when an ice bridge collapsed, burying them under tons of ice. The boy chipped his way out with a rock and went for rescuers. A helicopter lifted the girl out and, after spending five months in a body cast, she healed perfectly.
3. The third victim was an eighteen-year-old athlete from Anchorage, Alaska. In school he lettered in football, basketball, and baseball. But during his junior year he noticed a bothersome lump above his ankle so had it diagnosed. Cancer. He lost his leg below the knee.
4. In the past seven years I've interviewed scores of people like these. All have undergone severe pain. A grandmother in a nursing home with two weeks to live and a race car driver in a burn ward are two examples. Every time I return from such a trip, I mull over their stories and their responses to pain. I can often read their reaction with one look into their piercing, sunken eyes. Each victim plods through similar stages: questioning, anger, self-pity, adjustment, gratitude, hope, more anger. Some wear this pain like a badge of courage. Others spend years wrestling with God.
5. These encounters have led me on a personal quest into the problem of pain. When asked what was the greatest problem he had observed in the United States, Helmut Thielicke replied, "They have an inadequate view of suffering." I have come to agree with him. We elaborately prepare for many life changes--a new house, a wedding, a grandchild's birth, a move. But how many of us prepare to cope with sudden, extreme pain? How many know how to respond to suffering friends?
6. After several years of talking with the suffering and of reading books on the problem of pain, I readily confess that I don't have a hermetically-sealed envelope full of answers. I can't say to each sufferer, "Praise God anyhow!" or "Pray for healing and it will come." The perspectives that I have gained are less sweeping and perhaps less satisfying.
7. Some religions, such as Buddhism or Christian Science, deal with pain by denying its existence or by overcoming it. Islam accepts pain as the will of Allah. But Christianity walks a tightrope, affirming the loving concern of a benevolent God but facing squarely the cries of a pain-wracked world. I have found comfort in the Christian perspective because it does face up to the problem so honestly. "How can a good God permit such a world?" is the perennial question rustling through the pages of theology. I believe that Christianity offers substantial help for coping with this messy problem.