TOW #3: "Tuesday, And After"

                Featured in The New Yorker just two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, “Tuesday, and After” was written by The New Yorker staff, including contributions from John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, Roger Angell, Aharon Appelfeld, Rebecca Mead, Susan Sontag, Amitav Ghosh, and Donald Antrim. In the piece, the various author’s shared their own experience of the attack, and their observations on how the country should move on from that terrible day. At the time, all of America was teeming with questions and looking to someone for an answer. People were afraid and they didn’t know what permanent effects 9/11 would have on their lives and their country’s future. In an attempt to answer these questions and pose a few of their own, the author’s recount the event with intensely vivid imagery.  One contributor, John Updike, recounts the event by saying, “It seemed, at that first glance, more curious than horrendous: smoke speckled with bits of paper curled into the cloudless sky, and strange inky rivulets ran down the giant structure’s vertically corrugated surface […] As we watched the second tower burst into ballooning flame […] persisted the notion that, as on television, this was not quite real; it could be fixed; the technocracy the towers symbolized would find a way to put out the fire and reverse the damage” (Updike). By including such powerful metaphors and painstaking description, the authors are able to bring to life exactly what happened, and, in doing so, are able to sway the reader using ethos and pathos to listen to their opinion. Another author, Johnathan Franzen, used juxtaposition in his writing to give America some perspective on the terrorists who led the attack. He states, “Perhaps some of these glad artists were hiding in ruined Afghanistan, where the average life expectancy is barely forty. In that world you can’t walk through a bazaar without seeing men and children who are missing limbs” (Franzen). His inclusion of two different worlds in his explanation of what happened help to make sense of the event. As a piece intended both to comfort the American people as well as prompt them to think towards the future, “Tuesday, and After” was a very well written piece that the nation needed to read. 

TOW #2: Visual Text - Syrian Refugees

"African asylum seekers packed into a boat" by Massimo Sestini, The Guardian. 25 June 2014. Web.

In a stunning picture capturing a birds-eye view of a boat filled with Syrian refugees, photographer Massimo Sestini is able to convey more than words ever could. Fleeing from a nation in chaos, many thousands of Syrian refugees are desperately piling in boats and setting out across the ocean to seek asylum in Europe. Sestini, an award winning photographer whose pictures have been featured in many Italian magazines, held onto the outside of a helicopter to take the photograph. She did so in order to send a message; escaping Syrians are in desperate need of help. During a time where some countries will not allow refugees past their borders, this picture is intended to sway them into giving aid. Those capable of provided assistance, such as other European countries, the European Union as a whole, and/or the United Nations, should be assisting these people. The image serves to both inform the general public, as well as to prompt them to allow refugees into their countries and do all they can to assist them. Sestini uses a fascinating metaphor to drive her point home, capturing a boat as lost and hopeless at sea as all the Syrian refugees are lost in the world. They have no home to go back to, and can only helplessly drift with what family they have left. Many in the picture are looking up and even holding their hands up to the sky as if asking it for help, allowing these details to communicate the clear message that the world has the obligation to step in and help them. The boat is filled to the brim, illustrating how big the problem is and showing just how many people have been effected by the disasters in Syria. All alone in the ocean with no sign of supplies, the picture’s details leads to a very strong sway of pathos and also includes some logos proving how bad the issue is. Sestini was very successful in showing the world the struggles that Syrian refugees are facing and that they deserve help to get through these tough times. 

TOW #1: "What Are Master-pieces"

Through her trademark unusual style Gertrude Stein, in her unconventional essay What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them, attempts to explain her own thoughts on what constitutes a masterpiece. A well-known figure in American literature and often called a pioneer of modernist literature, Stein presents a throughout analysis of how great works are made. Stein addresses ideas to an intellectual and philosophically curious audience, perhaps to those who strive to create masterpieces of their own or readers inspired by great pieces. During the time the essay was published in 1935, America was still slumped in the Great Depression, causing many, like Stein, to lose hope that more masterpieces would be able to be produced. Stein uses her controversial writing style to add intrigue to her agreement, giving her ideas a unique flow. Her use of colloquial language and astonishing lack of use of normal grammar gives the essay a feel quite similar to a babbling brook. In abandoning the rules for typical prose and purposely leaving a certain amount of ambiguity in her writing, Stein is able to lead the reader to the conclusion, “And so there we are and there is so much more to say but anyway I do not say that there is no doubt that masterpieces are masterpieces in that way and there are very few of them” (Stein 138). In addition to laughing in the face of generic conventions, Stein illustrates her point by including unusual metaphors. She explains our perceived identity of ourselves by saying, “I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognizing that he knows, that is what destroys creation” (Stein 132). The use of figurative language and run on sentences keeps the audience on their toes and gives a deeply passionate tone to the text. Stein uses her essay as a way to explain to the world what a masterpiece is, what it is not, and why it is so rare. By repeating ideas of identity, memory, time, and human nature, Stein defends her thesis that a masterpiece includes none of these qualities and that is why there are so few. 

IRB Intro Post #1

Blink, by best selling author Malcom Gladwell, is a book explaining how humans make subconscious snap decisions. Supporting his ground breaking ideas with facts on the function of the brain, Gladwell explores "the power of thinking without thinking". He strives to answer where our 'gut feelings' come from, and how our first instincts are often so accurate. A mixture of fascinating facts and interesting examples, Blink presents many revolutionary ideas.

"How It Feels to Be Colored Me"

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Zora Neale Hurston, 1928

 
Growing up in the early twentieth century as a ‘colored’ girl, Zora Neale Hurston describes in her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” how her race has affected her life. Hurston grew up in the notoriously racist south, but at first had no exposure to any discrimination due to living in an all black area. After moving to a much larger, more mixed community in Jacksonville Florida, Hurston truly feels ‘colored’ for the first time. She remembers,“ It seemed that I had suffered a sea of change. I was not Zora of Orange County anymore, I was now a little colored girl” (Hurston 115). This awakening, however, did not discourage Hurston from being any less than she knew she could be. She clearly proclaims, “I am not tragically colored... I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature has somehow given them a low-down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it” (Hurston 115). The strong language she employs and straight to the point punctuation style she uses emphasises the power of her statement: she is not ashamed of her color and will not let it, or the way others feel about it, change the way she lives her life. Hurston’s strong convictions speak to anyone who feels society judges them, either by their appearance or their beliefs. To those who still dwell on slavery and refuse to look beyond the struggles of their ancestors Hurston says, “Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you” (Hurston 115). She uses curt sentences and vivid metaphors to urge the reader to move on, as she has, and look at what life has given you rather than what it has not. Through the use of strong wording, deliberate syntax, and stirring metaphors, Hurston’s passionate essay effortlessly communicates her message to not let anything define who you are.

"Zora Neale Hurston" by Leed's Post Cards

"Once More to the Lake"

"Once More to the Lake" E.B. White, 1941

A bittersweet mix of old memories and new experiences, E.B. White recalls the time he took his son back to the lake where he spent his summers as a child. In “Once More to the Lake”, White is able to compose a story that crosses the barriers of time by betraying a rural setting through the eyes of a child, much like his famous book Charlotte's Web. When White returns to his childhood haunt as an adult, it is his wish to share all the joy he had at the lake with his son. He sees so much of himself in his son that while they are fishing, he remembers “I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of” (White 181). Despite being absent from the lake for many years, White immediately feels right at home and remembers everything about the place as if he only left yesterday. This gives a mystical, nostalgic feel to the short tale, sending the message that some things will always have a place in your heart and in your memory: time makes no difference in the feelings one harbors for something special. For any adult who longs for their childhood happiness, they can still get back that feeling by revisiting their memories. The reader can feel the author’s love for the lake as well as the beauty of the nature there through White’s use of imagery. He describes the lake as a “constant and trustworthy body of water. In the shallows, the dark, water-soaked sticks and twigs, smooth and old, were undulating in clusters on the bottom against the clean ribbed sand... There had been no years” (White 181). By going into such deep description, the scene becomes deeply significant in communicating the message that the narrator wants to go back in time. Such language allows the reader to feel the pull and comforting familiarity of past memories, and will surely remind them of their own dreams of long ago.

"Silhouette of Father and Five-Year-Old Son Fishing" by Kevin Beebe

"The Handicapped"

"The Handicapped" Randolph Bourne, 1911

 
  Randolph Bourne, born in 1886, was disfigured at birth and became further disabled after tuberculosis of the spine left his back twisted and stunted at a young age. His struggles to live with what life threw at him are documented in his essay “The Handicapped”. It is the story of how he fought his own insecurities as well as the prejudices of others to find happiness, becoming a man who has “come to count his deformity even as a blessing” (Bourne 68) because of the world view it gave him. Once Bourne found his true purpose in promoting his “belief in social progress as the first right and permanent interest for every truehearted man or woman” (Bourne 64), he wrote this essay to share his revelation with others. Bourne promotes the “ideal of character militant rather than long-suffering” so that those who find themselves disadvantaged in life due to circumstances out of their control can have hope. His loud and clear message proclaims that people can better their lives by consciously  choosing the way they think about themselves as well as their situation. To illustrate his rather complex philosophical points, Bourne employs rhetoric in the form of figurative language. He explains, “I want to give to the young men whom I see - who, with fine intellect and high principles, lack just that light of the future on their faces that would give them purpose and meaning in life -- to them I want to give some touch of this philosophy -- that will energize their lives, and save them from the disheartening effects of that poisonous council of timidity and distrust of human ideals which pours out in steady stream from reactionary press and pulpit” (Bourne 64), using metaphor and imagery to paint a picture of understanding for the reader. In honestly expressing how his own demons haunted him and how he overcame, Bourne’s essay causes the reader to turn inward to their own lives to see how they can achieve the sense of purpose that so powerfully drives him.

"Barriers Falling" by Bigstock