TOW #13 – “Mobile Lovers” by Banksy

Done in Bristol, famous graffiti artist Banksy creates a satirical warning toward modern technology based on how much time we spend on it. This piece aims to convey to the general public that we should live more in the moment and less on our phones, and it is expressed through the main idea in which, despite having someone right in front of them, neither of the two subjects look away from their phone to acknowledge each other whatsoever.

The use of irony in the main idea is the most prominent message of the artwork. It translates to what some assume to be the reality of our interactions in modern day society, and it also exaggerates the limit of phone snubbing just enough to perhaps make fellow ‘mobile lovers’ recognize their behavior toward others in their presence and try to change it little by little. Most would assume that no one would ever think to pull their phone out of their pocket while embracing someone they are close to, however the visual serves to only emphasize the ironic habit of choosing online contact over personal in order to get a response.

The colors also aid in passing along the message as well. Banksy’s graffiti is generally dark in its color palette, but the obvious bright blue lights emitting from the cellular devices in both of the subjects’ hands draws the eyes of the audience to the faces of the subjects themselves. Their expressions are detached and emotionless as they focus on the screen just over their companion’s shoulder despite the intimate position the two are in, and it only furthers Banksy’s argument to lower the amount of attention we give our screens when there are people around us to interact with as well. While many may do this to a lesser extent, it is still a reasonable argument for the artist to make when phones are often present during face-to-face conversation between friends.

TOW #12 – "The Color of Water" by James McBride (IRB)

In a tribute to his mother, along with all mothers, James McBride, recipient of the National Book Award in 2013, shares his mother’s story along with his own story for everyone else to experience. It is with his past in which he conveys to his readers that the concept of race, of identity and of religion, are not our central issues. These qualities can easily be overcome by love and sheer will power, and such is expressed by his mother as she endured her hardships from life.

The first half of the book is a telling of the two’s childhoods; it tells of how his originally Jewish mother moved to America when she was only two years old, and how James McBride grew up in Queens as a mixed child in a predominantly black community. His mother, Rachel McBride, lived with a strict and largely unaffectionate family. Her father only stayed for the benefits of being an American, and her mother suffered from polio which disabled her entire left side. When she moved from her hometown of Virginia to New York where she married two black men, she was ostracized from her Jewish community, the white community, and the black community alike, however she powered through the discrimination thrown her way to focus on her twelve children, James being the eighth. James never had much alone time with his mother, and to gain some was truly a feat in his early years, but as he grew older, his question of his identity grew ever stronger. He wondered constantly whether he was black or white, despite his mother’s constant attempts to steer him from unnecessarily focusing on such ideas, and he often tried to figure out her past through his pestering of what exactly he and his siblings were supposed to be considered (most of them sided with the black community).

His take on identity, race, and religion shows very little throughout the first half of the book on his side, a fleeting mention during a certain time as he reminisces his past, but his mother’s idea of the concepts shows constantly in her unwavering answers to his stubborn curiosity. James once asked what color God was, but when his mother answered that he was a spirit, he merely asked what color his spirit was instead. “’It doesn’t have a color,’ she said. ‘God is the color of water. Water doesn’t have a color’” (McBride 51). As she pushes for this idea, McBride structures the text in which their stories switch in perspective with every chapter, and from his plain text we jump into his mother’s italics as she retells her own past, and it is in these moments where we see just how affected she was as a teenager by the mere thought of race, identity, and religion. Her struggles, forming a jigsaw with her current ideals, allows us as a reader to piece together the bits and pieces ourselves, and through this we can hope to better understand the validity in the McBrides’ claims simply through their personal experiences. The casual approach that comes along with it also helps the audience put the two narrators on a more human and mundane viewpoint. The book is told almost as if we were conversing with the McBrides ourselves, and it aids in allowing us to feel sympathy more easily for the events they share, bringing us even closer to understanding the unimportance those three ideas should really have in our lives overall as we try to relate to their obstacles in life.

TOW #11 – Chief Seattle’s Oration of 1854 (Text)

          When asked to give up Native American land for the sake of the United States government to use instead, Chief Seattle, the leader of his tribe with a desire to accommodate white settlers rather than fight them, merely agreed. He did not yet speak for the entire tribe when he did so, but he knew moving was not so big of a deal because of the way their culture was, and the focus of that culture was not simply in the place they lived. In 1854, he gave a speech to a presumably white council on the topic of this move, and within the speech he argued for the respect of his people as well as their ancestor’s land.

            Chief Seattle’s words were seemingly successful in their endeavor to make white Americans feel as though they are responsible for taking care of the land as well as the rapidly decreasing Native American populace. This idea of family, of “white chief” and “our father” before he declares Indians to be mere “orphans” may strike an emotional chord in the white settlers with a family of their own. That emotional appeal to sympathy could aid him in convincing the Americans to take care of the land as well as his people since they essentially seem to have nowhere else to go.

His structure of the speech also serves to persuade, and to agree only to show why they may not because there “is little in common” between Native Americans and Americans would seem like a convincing factor to address and work out in order for the white settlers to actually win over the Native American land. His single condition seems fair and almost easy when it appears like the majority of the tribe could agree to the exchange, so the Americans would see no issue in providing the respect they ask for if it meant getting what they wanted when it seemed so close to their reach. 

TOW #10 – “The Strange Psychology of Stress and Burnout” by Alina Dizik (Written Text)

            Well-known to virtually everyone, stress is a familiar condition that anyone can relate to, and many tend to find the ability to bond with others, no matter how brief, based on the stress involved in certain activities such as school or work. Alina Dizik, a freelance journalist and writer with stories published in various popular news outlets such as Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and Financial Times, addresses those particularly in the workforce on the effects of stress. She acknowledges how stress can be a good motivator for upping one’s efficiency and focus on a task as many people tend to think, but she also goes on further to explain when stress begins to reach the point of being unhealthy, which many more people take longer to notice until it is too late. She does not go too much into detail on the actual effects of the harmful long-term stress besides noting common issues especially known in the US to be associated with it, but she aims to educate working adults on how to identify when stress is becoming less of a healthy push and more of negative lifestyle.

            The article starts with an anecdote about a neonatal nurse, Jennifer Welker, and her experience with stress as both healthy and unhealthy. Her work with newborn children led to experiencing many deaths in the hospital, but the pressure she endured from it was turned into a force that only made her stronger and more immune to the difficult situations to allow for more efficient work. It got to the point where she believed she “was too good at [her] job” while spending time often in a morgue, but eventually the pressure broke through her carefully constructed exterior, and she crumbled under it. She then had to turn to a jewelry business, at first only part-time, and it soon became her new full-time job when the stress became too much to bear. This personal account was aimed to create a clear idea of when stress is no longer a helpful force and merely a troublesome one, and it also shows that it is important to abandon that unhelpful pressure much like Welker has. It essentially sets up the fine line that Dizik creates by allowing the audience to know exactly what she is talking about in her article.

            This fine line is further drawn with the contrast between the healthy sort of stress with the unhealthy version. Using parallelism, she shows the clear difference in effects coming from both sides, and it appeals to her credibility when these differences hopefully come off as logical and reasonable for a reader to take in. By stating the health problems long-term stress causes while short-term stress tends to only help people become more focused and efficient, the reader is able to see sense in the claim she is making, and is also more willing to learn what she aims to teach them toward the end of the article on how to identify where their tipping point lies with pressure.

            Although Dizik made a good point of showing the clear divide between healthy and unhealthy stress, I personally do not feel as though she actually taught me anything more with the article besides the fact that realizing the harmful sort of stress is harder to diagnose in one’s self. Her offered solutions were ideas that I could come up with on my own without the help of outside influence, so although I have a reinforced fine line between good pressure and bad, I did not otherwise really gain anything from her article.

IRB Intro #2 - "The Color of Water" by James McBride

My Independent Reading Book for the second Marking Period is The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. This is an autobiography and memoir of James McBride published in 1995 which follows and retraces his mother’s footsteps. His mother, Ruth McBride Jordan, immigrated to America from Poland to be raised in the South, and when she was an adult, she moved to New York where she met and married a black man. The book tells of the many issues with race, religion, and identity she faces as she tries to raise her children, and it reveals how she still triumphed above all of these problems with love, a sheer force of will, and the insistence that only school and church really mattered. This memoir was another recommendation I received as well, and I am eager to learn what it was like growing up as an interracial family in New York.

TOW #9 - "Burning Man" by Alexandr Milov (Visual Text)

          “Burning Man” is a piece created by the Ukrainian sculptor Alexandr Milov. His work consists of two wire frames of adults sitting back to back with children reaching out toward one another trapped inside. This piece implies that, while age and experience has taught us enough to disagree and disconnect with others for so many various reasons, our natural desire from when we were young was to simply connect with everyone and form bonds so that we are not alone. This desire from our childhood has never left us, even if it seems hard to forgive others as we get older, and we still aim to make amends in the end, but we let our own selves get in the way of doing so.

            The children on the inside of the two adults is what really delivers the message. It would have been one thing to have the two adults alone sitting back to back for a reason to be interpreted, but the presence of the younger forms is enough to express disagreement on the outside, but a want to connect on the inside. This helps Milov attempt to tell us that, while we may argue and fail to see eye-to-eye with others on some occasions, we still all want to try to get along in the end, and we should let ourselves find forgiveness more easily on the outside in order to do so. A viewer could even go as far as to say it serves as a comfort for the effects of an argument. Yes, the two parties are upset with one another for reasons we do not know, but they may eventually reach back out and resolve their issues with one another because they still wish to maintain their bonds like their inner child would want them to do.

            The adults themselves, being made of wire while the children are more solid, also shows that while humans grow and learn, they still maintain the qualities of a child at heart, and we do not simply lose them because of the experiences we gain as we grow. This helps to reaffirm the point that we should be able to let ourselves forgive those we are unhappy with, and we should not let what may be our past experiences and thoughts get in the way of allowing relationships to thrive.

            This work let me see my emotions in another light, and as I think about the unconditional acceptance young children tend to have compared to the guarded barriers an adult would put up, Alexandr Milov makes a great point on the interactions of human beings. His choice of materials and composition especially helped with conveying his idea.

TOW #8 - "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

          Finally facing her fears of being ostracized by the community she has immersed herself in as a regular contributor to MSNBC, Jeannette Walls reveals her past in her memoir, The Glass Castle. The second half of this book takes the reader from her age of ten on to what may be her early twenties, now married to John Taylor in an old farmhouse for one last Walls family reunion during Thanksgiving. Throughout this half of the book, Walls’s issues had only intensified, growing to the point of being unbearable as she struggled to save up a sufficient amount of money only to lose it all again in one fell swoop to her father’s drinking habits. When she finally took a bus to New York to live with Lori, who had moved out as soon as she graduated, things began to improve in the author’s lifestyle, but her parents still insisted on remaining poor, just barely getting by even when they followed their children to the big city. This memoir was shared to inspire its readers, especially the less fortunate facing severe struggles such as poverty, into striving to reach their goals even if their childhood is tough. It also serves to let those who have already succeeded know that, despite whatever their past may have been, they should feel no reason to be ashamed of it.

            One of the things I feel Jeannette Walls did really well in particular is the way she organized the entire book. While it was told in chronological order from her earliest memory to the more recent ones, each sub-chapter within the five chapters of the book were merely snapshots of her life. While many of the details she gave seemed as if they could’ve been easily omitted from the text at the time just to move on in the story, Walls told every occasion with what felt like a sense of purpose. Each of these snapshots, no matter how insignificant they may have seemed to me as a reader having just read a much juicier part a mere few pages preceding it, had some sort of importance to the memoir as a whole. One instance that stood out to me immediately was the use of the word ‘skedaddle’. The word seemed to lose its importance in Walls’s life as I grew immersed in all her other struggles that seemed to come one after the other without pause, but when she said to her father, “Promise you’ll stay here until you get better […] I don’t want you doing the skedaddle” (Walls 261), I was abruptly reminded of her earlier years when she first saw the constant movement and poverty as an adventure.

It was a sort of full circle that tightened the links between the snapshots all the way from her memory as a three-year-old because they all contributed to who she is in that moment with her father in the hospital as well as her success from all the hardships she pushed through since the beginning. It told me as a reader that every moment mattered, led her to success, and now here she was sharing everything without fretting over the criticism she believed she would receive for so long. This openness with both good and bad events also reassures the reader that, even when times are tough, everything builds who they choose to become, and if they succeed and escape from it, they should not be afraid to recount those times to others.

TOW #7 -- "Betrayal" by Mario Sanchez Nevado (Visual Text)

"Betrayal" is a digital art piece uploaded by Mario Sanchez Nevado on 2012. Nevado is a freelance art director, Illustrator, and Photographer born in Barcelona, and he currently lives in Spain where he mainly creates CD album cover art for music bands. This art piece serves as a message towards everyone in regards to global warming and pollution which has become a large issue for today’s society. His work portrays humans as quite literally betraying mother nature by killing her despite all the life she supports including ours, and Nevado created this most likely as an effort to raise more awareness of just how drastic the effects of human activities are becoming for the sake of money.

Looking to the right side of the painting, the hand holding the gun appears to be smoldering hot, causing even the skin above to be damaged by it. This represents how humans are collectively causing the Earth to rise in temperature in the form of global warming while simultaneously damaging themselves, and yet the hand still holds the gun firmly as if to ignore the repercussions of it all. The gun itself, carrying a city upon the frame, is a clear indicator of what the major source of global warming is originating from. This city is all black, giving it an ominous and toxic appearance as it pumps out an equally black smog that begins to invade the light and purity of mother nature. The city’s placement gives off an idea of being directly built on the presence of this threat in order to thrive since, without it, there would be nothing for the city to be built on. All of these little details add up to show humans holding mother nature at gunpoint, expressing how drastic and effect our actions are producing by implying that we are essentially murdering our Earth for the sake of profit and corporations to keep these cities that rest on the gun operating.

On the left side of the picture, we see mother nature in a form quite literally symbolized by a feminine and delicate figure. She shows no resistance to the threat being presented to her as if there is nothing she can do about it except shed tears in response to being killed by her own product of evolution. This concept of being unable to resist translates to the reality that is the Earth’s inability to simply recover or defend itself from what we are doing to it. The pollution and harmful effects of our actions are damaging and killing our Earth, and it has no way of fighting back against it unless we take away the gun ourselves. 

Overall, Nevado has painted a powerful image that grabs our attention and is hopefully causing more people to see the consequences of our choices as a global society. It shows our actions to the true extent of their repercussions and helps viewers bring the large-scale Earth down to perspective.

TOW #6 - "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris (Written Text)

          David Sedaris, nominated for three Grammy Awards, writes an essay, “Me Talk Pretty One Day” about his experience in a school in Paris with the hopes of learning French. His teacher always threw insults and ridiculed all the little things her students said, picking apart their answers and leaving them sputtering for a response with their limited vocabulary when she somehow turns it around on them. For Sedaris, he originally believes his teacher to simply be out to get every single one of them, boiling with some sort of unreasonable hatred that led some of her students to believe they just were not good enough for learning the language at all. He soon realizes, and thus wants to share with all other students who have had a seemingly terrifying teacher in the past, or even the present, that her method of teaching, although challenging, also helped him learn things before he even realized it. Her nitpicking had led him to study much longer than required and put in so much effort that he began to actively learn the language himself rather than from the perspective of another.

           Sedaris’s diction is one of the devices he uses effectively to convey this message. His referral to the teacher’s various actions as “accusing” or as an “attack” (Sedaris 220) helps to convince the reader that he believes her to be a vicious and terrifying woman who aims only to harm her students, especially when he begins to share how his fear, along with other students, began to seep into their everyday actions. The fact that he still refers to her insults as “abuse” (Sedaris 222) even at the end of the essay would hopefully leave the reader with the impression that yes, she is still merciless, but he now takes the abuse in stride because he knows it is what helps him strive to learn at a much more effective pace than if his teacher were to coax him gently through baby sets without much fear of failure. Had he been cushioned with every fall, he never would have learned to efficiently survive on his own in the “sink or swim” (Sedaris 219) course. I believe the way in which he applied this approach of creating his moral of the story serves its purpose surprisingly well, and the responses it managed to pull from me occurred before I even realized it.

TOW #5 - "Professions For Women" by Virginia Woolf (Written Text)

             In a speech delivered to the Women’s Service League by Virginia Woolf, a novelist and critic who has provided psychological insight through her works in the past, she speaks to the group with the intention of convincing members to share their experiences regarding joining new fields of works that were exclusive to men. By sharing their experiences, she hopes that it would aid in gradually destroying mental obstacles that women face constantly since many would soon begin to assist each other in getting through what may become common struggles among them. Through this method, she wants women to find more comfort in their chosen places in society and less tentativeness, and she starts off the idea with experiences of her own as a woman writer.

            With the objective to persuade, Woolf starts off the speech by discrediting herself as a completely reliable source for a look into the struggles of women. In the very first paragraph, she states, “My profession is literature; and in that profession there are fewer experiences for women than in any other, with the exception of the stage--fewer, I mean, that are peculiar to women. For the road was cut many years ago--by Fanny Burney by Aphra Behn, by Harriet Martineau, by Jane Austen, by George Eliot--many famous women, and many more unknown and forgotten, have been before me, making the path smooth, and regulating my steps. Thus, when I came to write, there were very few material obstacles in my way” (Woolf 525). By getting this point across and establishing it in the very beginning, Woolf uses the organization of her text that way in order to return to this point later in her speech. If she is able to make the audience believe that her profession is a more lenient one towards women, then she is able to more properly convince them when she asks them to try comparing her supposedly easygoing field of work to the more underdeveloped fields in which women are just starting to get a feel for things within.

            Woolf also alludes to a poem by Coventry Patmore called “The Angel in the House” in order to bring the concept of an idea into perspective for those who may not understand. The poem itself speaks about the ideal image of a woman in the form of the Angel, and Woolf uses Her in the form of her first experience. While writing a review, she claims to have been haunted by a phantom, the Angel, and in order to escape Her whispers of being an ideal and pure, Woolf kills her. “Had I not killed her,” Woolf insisted, “she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own” (Woolf 526). The Angel, also being a symbol for the traditional expectations of women, is the first obstacle Woolf revealed to have hopefully overcome in her career. Her allusion helps the audience understand the situation she speaks of, being pressed down by gender roles, much more easily, and they can more quickly relate as, during their time, it was only more recent in their perspective that women were starting to be allowed in all fields of work. This would help coax other women into sharing their experiences as well if they have a sense of familiarity in the community and can believe that their knowledge will also be relatable as well as useful among their group.

            Finally, Woolf uses parallelism between the experiences of men and women while writing to further her point. While this second professional experience becomes more specific to writers, it still carries the overall idea she tries to convey. She confesses that a writer’s “chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible”. She describes that ideal state of mind, but the only pronoun used in the description consists of “He”. She then moves on to acknowledge that, feigning a hypothesis that ‘she’ could be interchangeable with ‘he’ in that description since all writers are supposedly the same, but instead she asks the audience to imagine a girl writing in that unconscious-like state. “Now came the experience, the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men,” Woolf explained, “The line had raced through the girl’s fingers. Her imagination had rushed away… And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was a foam of confusion. The imagination had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream” (Woolf 527-528). This use of contrasting the girl’s erratic writing process with the much smoother writing process of the man, Woolf is able to emphasize the extent to which a man’s expectation, the later explained dashing against the rock, inhibits the abilities of women. With this emphasis, Woolf can show that she knows what it is like to be stopped from expressing oneself based on what outside influences may think, the outside influence in this case being men, and is able to possibly evoke a sense of empathy in her audience who would most likely know what it is like being in that position. The mutual understanding helps to possibly achieve Woolf’s goal in convincing her audience to begin sharing their experiences with one another in order to solve these issues collectively as a whole and overcome them together.

            Overall, by using these different devices, it would seem highly likely for Woolf to have garnered the desired effect with her audience, and I feel as though she was very clever in expressing her ideas and intentions through her speech.

Tow #4 - "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls (IRB)

     With a memoir of her past, Jeannette Walls writes The Glass Castle to motivate others into working to achieve their dreams even if they grew up with a rough childhood. The idea of a successfully well-known author being brought up from next to nothing serves to inspire others into striving for their own goals. The first half of Walls’s memoir consists of her early years from three to ten. The book is organized into chronological snap shots of Walls’s life, and the reader learns about the family’s not-so-perfect dynamics as well as the different places they hopped as a result of bill collectors and other legal issues since they have little to no money. They are often left eating very little food until the few opportunities arise in which there are items to eat, but nothing is ever set to last, and they soon move on yet again to the next town. Although almost anyone with past struggles could look to this book as a source of inspiration, those with more extreme problems, such as poverty, may feel the weight of this book the most.

     Walls uses colloquialism in her memoir for credibility. In many instances, Walls recounts her memories through her child-self’s eyes, and she often echoes the insults her father or others used most likely because she had no real knowledge of what they actually meant at the time. For example, “the Owl Club had a bar where groups of men with sunburned necks huddled together over beers and cigarettes. They all knew Dad, and whenever he walked in, they insulted him in a loud funny way that was meant to be friendly. ‘This joint must be going to hell in a handbasket if they’re letting in sorry-ass characters like you!’ they’d shout” (Walls 55). Like most children, Walls freely repeats words that she had heard around her and, unlike most, she is rarely, if ever, reprimanded for it. This embraces the reality of her skewed childhood with the fact that vulgar language was not as heavily restricted as many more middle-class families would expect despite the good manners the children display towards most adults. It makes the reader feel less skeptical of the bibliography if the more unappealing sides of the family are not obviously avoided for the sake of a more positive image, and they will be more likely to feel motivated by Walls if they find it easier to believe said bibliography. By using this technique, I feel as though she successfully managed to generate that sort of effect for her audience in order to reach her end goal.

TOW #3 – A Vegan Lover (Visual Text)

PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is an organization based in Virginia which aims to convert people to veganism all over the world in order to save the animals. This advertisement attempts to persuade those who are not vegan into abandoning meat and ordering a Vegetarian Starter Kit through the common desires of the general public. In this case, PETA focuses on the sex aspect mainly in regard of older males as well as females possibly in a relationship with one.

            The ad depicts a conventionally attractive woman in order to grab the attention of the audience. Her body language gives off the feeling of having just woken up, and she smiles at the camera as if to imitate that it is the viewer she is waking up next to. This generates an appeal to lust and desire since the majority of the intended audience would want to have the fantasy become a reality. The words, however, invoke the desire to go vegan for both men and women. For both sexes, the statement that meat can cause impotency causes them to feel either guilt (for men) or alarm (for women) since, in theory, there is a chance there will not be anything a woman to enjoy in a relationship if their partner consumes meat. As a result, a man may feel convinced to buy the Vegetarian Starter Kit, or the woman would feel compelled to buy a starter kit for either one of them. The colors, pink and blue, have a history of designating female babies from males in American hospitals. Because of this, PETA may be trying to target heterosexuality by mixing the two together, implying that the consumption of meat can greatly affect that sort of relationship. Heterosexual couples would, as a result, feel the most convinced by the ad into converting to veganism.

            Using certain colors and guilt invoking elements in the ad, PETA may have been able to create an acceptable argument. However, the claim itself seems a bit farfetched in comparison to personal experience. Before viewing the ad, no other sources would have ever suggested that meat could cause issues such as impotency which can lead to more skepticism toward the ad than agreement. 

TOW #2 - "Bop" by Langston Hughes (Written Text)

"Bop", written by Langston Hughes, is an essay that consists mainly of dialogue between two characters, the narrator and a man named Simple. Simple informs the narrator of the origins of Be-Bop, a type of music invented by African Americans as a result of the prejudices they face in society. In this example, the harsh treatment is through police brutality. The narrator was clueless about the topic, believing that it was not much different from the other forms they mention, but Simple elaborates that while Re-Bop and Be-Bop are similar, Re-Bop is a mere imitation of what white people think Be-Bop to be. Langston Hughes was an African American poet, novelist, and playwright. He was a major contributor to the Harlem Renaissance and one the first poets to experiment with jazz poetry. His essay serves to bring the effect racial inequality has on a group’s culture to attention for all Americans. He especially wants to grab the attention of the white Americans who are clueless to the harm the prejudice behaviors bring to a people based on differences they may have from the majority.

Hughes implements colloquialism into his writing as a way to show the contrast between how groups communicate. For example, Hughes wrote, “Bop comes out of them dark days. That’s why real Bop is mad, wild, frantic, crazy—and not to be dug unless you’ve seen dark days, too. Folks who ain’t suffered much cannot play Bop, neither appreciate it” (Hughes 191). While the narrator rarely, if ever, use slang, Simple uses a much more abundant amount of it. It is insinuated that the narrator is either white or is in a group not as exposed to the racism, expressing the difference between the two.

            The author also uses juxtaposition as well in his essay, offering a clear understanding of the behavior towards the minority in comparison to the majority. These lines spoken by Simple reads, “White folks do not get their heads beat just for being white. But me—a cop is liable to grab me almost any time and beat my head—just for being colored” (Hughes 191). This prejudice that lead to increased police brutality against African Americans is what lead to the invention of Be-Bop, showing how the difference in treatment began to show in African American culture.

Using colloquialism and taking advantage of juxtaposition, Langston Hughes was able to bring to attention the racial inequality that constantly affects our cultures for all groups.

TOW #1 "Graven Images" by Saul Bellow (Written Text)

Saul Bellow's essay, "Graven Images" introduces an interesting perspective on the idea of the power of photographers and the role media has in the present-day's society. As a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts, Bellow explains to his audience, the people of any age who are interested in media or care about their public appearance, the influence that photographers have on the public portrayal of anyone and everyone. He touches on how a photographer can manipulate a person’s image for their own social or political interests, and that they are the ones who ultimately decide how the public with view and interpret different people and events. He also includes that some photographers will draw out a person’s weaknesses instead of their strengths, and how the media will often invade private details to share and warp the truth.

Bellow utilizes logos in his essay to convey his point. Right from the start, he references former US president Harry S. Truman on the topic. The author wrote, “Harry S. Truman liked to say that as a president of this country he was its most powerful citizen—but sometimes he added, smiling, the photographers were even more powerful” (Bellow 564). This draws interest from the reader as well due to the quote coming directly from a president, and that sort of credibility makes the reasoning of Bellow’s argument that much more convincing.

As another rhetorical device, Bellow also used the phrase Amour propre often in his essay. The term is a French philosophical concept created by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that one’s self-esteem and worth depends on the opinion of others. He was able to emphasize his argument this way by connecting this concept to his writing. For example, he wrote “Amour propre, with all its hypocritical tricks, is the product of your bourgeois outlook. Your aim is to gain general acceptance for your false self” (Bellow 565). Bellow connects this to his argument with the idea that the people conceal their true selves for a positive public response through the photographs we take. The reader is able to understand this with further implications of how humans naturally desire outside approval in order to feel happy with themselves.

By efficiently using these devices in his writing, Saul Bellow successfully establishes his stance on how powerful a photographer’s influence is in the media, and how much they can alter the political and social views of their audience. 

IRB Intro #1 - "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir written in 2005 about a woman growing up with her dysfunctional yet loyal family. Her parents' behavior led to the children learning how to take care of themselves as well as function on an individual level as they found their own way in life with their parents following. Despite their success, their parents refuse to join them, choosing to remain homeless even after countless offers of aid. I chose this book as a recommendation from Ms. Pronko. This was the second time the book had been recommended for a non-fiction read, so I hope to be able to gain more interest in non-fiction by reading more stories that can draw me in starting with this one.

"Coatesville" by John Jay Chapman

With the attendance of only two people, John Jay Chapman, a graduate of Harvard, delivered a speech in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. He spoke about a lynching that had took place there and about the indifference the people felt towards it. Chapman claimed that, even if the bystanders took no part in the lynching, everyone was to blame for it. He explained that the true cause for the crime was due to the people as a whole and that America must correct an evil within everyone and they wish to stop future crimes from taking place.

Chapman argued that the cause of these crimes was due to the lack of love in the hearts of the American people. He expresses this through figurative language and Enumeration. “As I read the newspaper accounts of the scene enacted here in Coatesville a year ago, I seemed to get a glimpse into the unconscious soul of this country. I saw a seldom revealed picture of the American heart and of the American nature. I seemed to be looking into the heart of the criminal—a cold thing, an awful thing” (Chapman 71-72). Utilizing satire to make his next point, Chapman blames the flaws in humanity in order to bring in his real purpose: Reflecting and reshaping. After pointing out the issue, the indifference, in humanity, he writes, “I say that our need is new life, and that books and resolutions will not save us, but only such disposition in our hearts and souls as will enable the new life, love, force, hope, virtue, which surround us always, to enter us” (Chapman 73). By abandoning our hate, Chapman believes will we be able to find the kindness to erase the evils in all of us. Overall, the essay is nicely tied together and effectively turns the lynching in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, into a much broader concern that may inspire people to want to change the way they are towards others.

Bibliography

“John Jay Chapman”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encylcopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 28 Aug. 2016

To feel apathy towards evil is to wish death on all kindness

source: blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com

"Corn-pone Opinions" by Mark Twain

Mark Twain is the author of two literary classics known as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His essay, “Corn-pone Opinions”, speaks about the patterns of public opinion and conformity. He writes towards everyone, including himself, because everyone is involved. It is most likely that there is not a single person in the audience who has not ‘gone with the flow’ and conformed to a trend in order to win positive public opinion at some time in their lives. Twain explains that while some think a man only conforms to a majority view rather than expressing his own, not everyone follows those same expectations. He argues that new ideas are not always buried deep within to never come into the light for consideration. Most new ideas and trends are a result of a person who refused to conform to the majority and continued through life being the way they wanted to. As a result the people would catch on and the trend would begin.

Twain simplifies and enhances his ideas with several analogies. One analogy he makes is in regards to fashion. He writes, "A new thing in costume appears--the flaring hoopskirt, for example--and the passers-by are shocked,  and th irrelevant laugh. Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has established itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs" (Twain 2). With the simplification of the concept, the reader is better able to grasp what is being proposed. Mark Twain also uses repetition in his essays which also shows the reader just how habitual the pattern is. With every analogy, Twain ends it with some variation of "we merely notice and conform" (Twain 3). I find that, with these examples and sense of repetition, Mark Twain was very successful in drawing in the audience and having them listen to what he has to say. Many readers would most likely see a validility in his ideas. His word choices and rhetorical devices efficiently prove how people are merely affected by the decisions made around them.

Bibliography

Biography.com Editors. "Mark Twain Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 27 Nov. 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.

Nobody wishes to listen to those that do not conform to the majority

source: www.twainquotes.com/Public_opinion.html

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston, a known American novelist, speaks about her life in the sense of how she is independent of her race yet still connected to it. Being a major part of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston wrote the piece to convey the individuality in her dark-skinned self as well as point out the fact that, despite differing skin tones, we are all human inside. She wrote for the rest of the black community with the intention of letting others feel self-pride in their own ways as well. 
In this essay, Hurston expressed her feelings towards race while growing up. Going into school as a child never made her look back on her identity in a negative light despite being surrounded by lighter-skinned citizens with that exact goal in mind. They wanted her to feel shame, but she never found a reason to fall into despair when the slavery her ancestors were subjected to had ended a long time ago for her. Despite knowing that many people wanted her to feel ‘colored’ in society, Hurston points out that she never felt ‘colored’ unless she was put in a large majority of the contrasting skin tone and vice versa if only for the idea of being the odd one out in regards to appearance. 
Hurston’s juxtaposition of certain phrases and use of rhetorical devices such as sarcasm and somewhat elaborate metaphors or analogies was what really enforced her ideas. Her use of sarcasm in one line caught my attention. She wrote, “Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you (Hurston 115). The dismissive attitude towards being “tragically colored”, as she put it, amazed me in an admirable manner. Even if her grandparents did not share the same social status as the whites, she was still human either way and should not have to look back on those events to let it define her as a person. Her bag analogy of all the different races also drove home the argument of everyone being human despite their skin color. She wrote, "But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow" (Hurlston 117). Hurlston continued on to explain that, even if a person were to empty out all the bags into a pile and randomly refill them, their contents would not change much at all. The bags would all still contain the same sorts of junk. With these kinds of comparisons that are easy to visualize, Hurston was able to successfully make her point to the audience.

Bibliography

History.com Staff. "Harlem Renaissance." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 26 Aug. 2016.

Even if our tones are different, the skin is all made the same.

source: georgemagar.deviantart.com