TOW #13: "The More You Connect, the Less You Connect"

"The More You Connect, the Less You Connect" by the Huffington Post

Included in a Huffington post article entitled “Is Your Phone Seeing a Lot More of You than Your Child?” this picture speaks volumes about how technology is effecting families poorly. While the father is looking at his phone, he is being completely blocked off from his child on the other side. To many young parents, this is a message that needs to be listened to because they are not aware of the effects some of their actions have on their children. Smartphones and other portable screens can be taken anywhere so a person is constantly connected, something that young adults have gotten used to over the past decade or so. But now that this generation is beginning to have families to take care of, they need to change their habits in order to be good parents. This picture employs hyperbole in making the phone much larger than it really is. By exaggerating the size, it can be more clearly seen how phones create a physical barrier between a user and those around them. The hyperbole and symbol of the phone acting as a wall captures how much technology separates people even if they are sitting right next to each other. Other details included in the picture also illustrate how big the problem is. The child’s side of the table is a bit darker because the back side of the phone blocks some of the light, leaving him alone in a small space. The father’s expression is a happy one, showing that he is completely ignorant of the fact that he is blocking out his own son and fails to notice how being on his phone is a problem. The placement of the phone, at the center of the picture, helps draw an invisible line down the middle to emphasize how separate the two family members are. The creator of this image did an amazing job summing up the negative effects of technology in a single image. By using eye catching symbolism, this photo sends a message that is hard to forget and may make some parents rethink the way they act around their children. 

TOW #12: IRB "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" (part 1)

Maya Angelou, in her famous book "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings", tells the story of her childhood full of hardships. Her and her brother, Bailey, are sent from their parents in California when Maya was just three years old. She grows up in Stamps, Arkansas with Bailey, her grandmother, whom she eventually calls “Mama”, and her physically disabled uncle. Maya spends much of her childhood working in her grandmother’s general store. Out of nowhere when Maya is around eight years old, her and Bailey are suddenly visited by their father who takes them to St. Louis to live with their mother. There, Maya is molested and raped by her mother’s boyfriends and returns to Stamps after she refuses to talk to anyone in St. Louis except Bailey. Published in 1970, Angelou’s story explains the hardships of African American’s earlier in the century. Adults who are uninformed about the kind of lives some African Americans had to lead during the times of segregation would benefit most from this book, which puts the everyday lives of these oppressed people into perspective. When talking about being sent to town by her grandmother for an errand, Maya remembers “There was joy going to town with money in our pockets and time on our hands. But the pleasure fled when we reached the white part of town… we had to cross the pond and adventure the railroad tracks. We were explorers walking without weapon into man-eating animals’ territory” (Angelou 25). Her inclusion of vivid imagery describing her journey and use of metaphor to compare white people to “man-eating animals” conveys to the reader how separated races were during segregation, and the fear that African Americans felt for whites. This kind of language ad description is continued throughout the book that outlines Angelou’s life. By telling her own story, Angelou tells the stories of countless other African Americans living in the segregated South. She is able to reach her audience and instill profound understanding within them, not only telling what happened but explaining indirectly what kind of effect it had on her. 

TOW #11: "Night"

                In his short essay “Night”, Tony Judt reveals great insights into his life as a person who suffers from ALS. The disease has slowly taken away feeling in his limbs until Judt became a quadriplegic, unable to move almost everything but his head. This has affected every part of Judt’s life, even parts that most of us would not even think of because we take so many of our daily activities for granted. In sharing how Judt spends his time and copes with his immobility, Judt speaks to those who have never had that kind of experience and cannot possibly understand what having such a disease is like. Many people have loved ones who suffer for illnesses like ALS. They see their family or friends suffering and slowly losing control over their body, and do not understand what to do or how to help. In order to explain to the general population what he and others experience, Judt mainly uses anecdotes. He talks about his night habits, saying “am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since—like the rest of me—they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed…and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts”. This short description reveals volumes about his like, also including vivid metaphors and imagery to display how truly uncomfortable and unnatural it is for those who suffer from ALS to withstand daily tasks. Even simple things, like shifting positions in the middle of the night, are impossible for people like Judt. He is forced to endure being uncomfortable for hours on end with being able to do anything about it, making his audience realize how much they take normal mobility for granted.