TOW #7: The Bedrooms of Children Around the World

Featured in an article in the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, photographer James Mollison found a unique way to capture the lives of children around the world by taking pictures of their bedrooms. A director of many Australian art galleries, Mollison utilized his artistic expertise to take astonishing photos that send a very deep message about how child rights and equality differ greatly in different countries. His message is addressed to those living in first world nations, like England and America, who are used to living a very high quality of life and rarely think of those who are not as fortunate as them. Mollison mixes photos from such privileged nations with photos of extreme poverty in Asian, South American, African, and Middle Eastern countries to show to viewers in an unforgettable way how fellow humans on the same planet live such different lives. By employing such powerful juxtaposition, the inequalities between the haves and the have nots of the world become abundantly. The images are simple, yet reveal so much about the lives of the children. Girls and Japan and America are spoiled by their parents, given whatever comforts they want, while girls in third world nations live away from their families as domestic servants to survive. Their rooms symbolize the kind of lives they have from the moment they are born; lives full of comfort and riches or lives of struggle and poverty. Image after image provokes a question in the views; why do some children have so much yet others have so little? Is the disparity between quality of life fair? The answers to these questions are very clear – it is not fair. Mollison’s use of symbolism and juxtaposition is simple yet very moving. Lack of words does not make the message any less strong, as the pictures represent one of the best arguments for human rights I have ever seen. Mollison’s goal to educate those from privileged backgrounds of what other people have to live through was very well achieved through this collection of photographs that went viral. In just a few snapshots of rooms, Mollison showcases the world’s struggle. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2595808/Sleeping-rubbish-surrounded-guns-poster-Chairman-Mao-Photographs-world-children-slumber.html 

TOW #6: The Fourth State of Matter

“The Fourth State of Matter”, written by Jo Ann Beard, is a narrative about the author’s life. Beard gives a detailed account of her everyday habits at home and at her job, as well as descriptions of her interactions with friends a co-workers. She creates a snapshot of her life and how, one day, all she knew was shattered. An editor of a physics journal at the University of Iowa, Beard left her office hours before some of her co-workers were shot by a disgruntled graduate student, Gang Lu. “The Fourth State of Matter” was published in The New York Times a short time later, winning the Whiting award for its excellence. The essay is Beard’s way of contemplating her loss of her co-workers, especially her good friend, Christoph Goertz. It resonates with anyone dealing or how has experienced the loss of a loved one, appealing to mature audiences who have an understanding and connection to life and death. Beard expresses her unimaginable emotions through the use of symbolism. Her collie, which she never names in her essay, symbolizes her inability to let go because her love is so great. The collie is very old and can barely walk anymore, so her owner must carry her outside to use the bathroom at night. After Beard had already taken the dog out once, she “climbed back under my covers already but her leg’s stuck underneath her, we can’t get comfortable. I fix the leg, she rolls over and sleeps. Two hours later I wake up and she’s gazing at me in the darkness. The face of love. She wants to go out again. I give her a boost, balance her on her legs” (Beard 1). Although the author knows in hear head that she should let the dog be put to sleep, she cannot bring herself to euthanize her beloved pet. In the same way, it is excruciating for her to let her killed friends go. Beard’s essay beautifully captures her experience of loss, and speaks volumes to her message that life makes everyone let things they love go. 

TOW #5: "The Force That Drives the Flower"

In her analysis of life and death titled “The Force That Drives the Flower”, Annie Dillard adds a unique perspective to a very ancient and abstract question. She views life from the eyes of different species, and then ties back the similarities and differences to human life. Her piece includes many fascinating facts about how organisms live only to reproduce, explaining the nature of life and death through real world examples. As a Pulitzer Prize winner and English professor at Wesleyan University, Dillard is a very gifted writer and researcher. This piece would fascinate anyone interested in science, in addition to readers with philosophical minds. Dillard very effectively uses symbolism to express her ideas, and this helps the audience connect deeply to what she is saying. When explaining the life as the individual verses the group, Dillard says, “Instead of one goldfish swimming in its intricate bowl, I see tons and tons of goldfish laying and eating billions and billions of eggs. The point of all the eggs is of course to make goldfish one by one—nature loves the idea of the individual, if not the individual himself—and the point of a goldfish is pizazz. This is familiar ground. I merely failed to acknowledge that it is death that is spinning the globe” (Dillard 3). The idea of many goldfish in a bowl helps to personify a topic that is very hard to grasp, while at the same time offering an incredibly unique view. She also alludes to other scientists and great thinkers from different time periods. Dillard concludes her essay by writing, “The world came into being with the signing of the contract. A scientist calls it the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A poet says, "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age." This is what we know. The rest is gravy” (Dillard 3). By including the words of others in her essay, Dillard explains her ideas in many different ways to allow understanding. This well put together piece enabled Dillard to achieve her purpose of analyzing the complexity of life.

TOW #4: IRB "Blink" (part one)

A book orchestrated to examine and explain the nuances of human thought, Blink, by Malcom Gladwell, is a very intriguing read. By blending elements of statistics, experiments, narratives, and studies, Blink provides a wide range of facts in order to help the audience understand why the mind processes information certain ways. Malcom Gladwell is a very well-known author who has written four other best-selling books and worked as a journalist for many years. Written for anyone who is interested in how their mind works, Gladwell’s book is very intellectually satisfying. The research happening in neurological and behavior sciences has advanced greatly throughout the past couple decades, leading to many fascinating breakthroughs that defy previously conceived ideas on the workings of the brain. By using anecdotes describing various examples, Gladwell is able to help his audience understand the purpose and points of his book. In his introduction, Gladwell begins his book with a story of how a museum discovered a statue they bought was a fraud after all of their scientific tests told them otherwise. He explains, “When Frederico Zeri and Evelyn Harrison and Thomas Hoving and Georgios Dontas – and all the others – looked at the kouros and felt an “intuitive repulsion,” they were absolutely right. In the first two seconds of looking – in a single glance – they were able to understand more about the essence of the statue than the team at the Getty was able to understand after fourteen months. Blink is about a book about those first two seconds” (Gladwell 8). By using dialogue from experts and citing specific examples, Gladwell not only makes his book more interesting but also greatly increases the story’s logos. Gladwell also uses varying sentence structure, utilizing syntax to his advantage to emphasis his important points. In the above quote, the last sentence stands out because it is very short in relation to the sentences preceding it. This allows it to become a bold statement; a very clear and clever way of defining the thesis. Gladwell provides his audience with compelling evidence and conclusions in a way that is logical as well as cohesive.