TOW #18

                One February 1^st, 2017, world-renowned pop/rock sensation Beyoncé posted an image to the prominent social media site Instagram to announce her second pregnancy to twins with her rapper husband, Jay-Z.  The image shows Beyoncé kneeing on a bed of grass, in front of a halo-shaped flower garland, masked in a mint green veil and clutching her pregnant stomach. In the caption of the image, she surprised the world with her message, writing, “We would like to share our love and happiness. We have been blessed two times over. We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two, and we thank you for your well wishes. – The Carters” (Beyoncé). The sky above her is blue with one or two small clouds to symbolize how she hopes her pregnancy and the lives of her two unborn children will be. Parents want the best for their children, so Beyoncé used the background of her image to foreshadow the hopeful future of her children. Beyoncé also uses visual rhetoric in the veil that covers her face. It is green, which is a neutral color, to avoid ideas about the gender of the child. In addition to the clear sky and the green veil, Beyoncé used rhetoric in her text as well. Recent events and rumors would suggest that Beyoncé and her husband may not have been on the best of terms for the past few months or even year, but her anaphora in the caption of the word ‘we’ signifies a unity of the couple and is used to show the reader and viewer that the couple is strong and united. This reassured anyone who ever doubted their marriage that it is still okay, and proves that thy will be civil parents of their children. Though very subtle, these strategic details enhance the message Beyoncé is trying to convey through her post about her developing pregnancy and successfully express certain ideas. 

TOW #17

                On January 20^th, 2009, President Barack Obama was sworn into office as the president of the United States. Following his inauguration, he addressed the public with a moving speech about how the nation must work together in order to solve the plethora of issues it faced at the time. Throughout his time in office, Obama diligently worked to push past barriers and create the optimal environment for a nation of diverse citizens to prosper in. He made strides in lowering the price of health care, increasing minimum wage, legalizing gay marriage, and decreasing the unemployment rate as well as many other important actions. Some things he worked hard for yet did not change very much or still require effort to improve for a multitude of reasons. In his speech, Obama said, “Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.” (Obama). The president made a valid remark about the American School System that continues to hold true today despite his valiant efforts to resolve its problems. The schools in America continue to fail far too many of its students because of the rigid nature of its schedule and curriculum. Children in school are forced to make up their minds about the careers they wish to pursue past graduation but are then denied the supplements that are vital to achieving their goals. For example, say a student loves art and is very bad at their other subjects. A gifted student will still be required to take their core classes even if they are failing because they are trying to focus on the classes that truly matter to them and will actually help them reach their full potential as an artist. Such a situation would hold a student back from getting into a good college as a result of their poor grades and thus inhibit that student from receiving a good art education. This is just one hypothetical example in the midst of millions of real stories of how the school system has continually failed the students of America and led to an overall increase in stress levels and anxiety amongst students. Obama uses this argument as an example in a larger, inductive reasoning in which he uses examples like the failing school system and the high prices of health insurance to conclude that America was going through a troubling period in its history. Valid examples such as this aided his argument immensely and proved how true his point really was. 

TOW #16

Brian Doyle wrote “The Wonder of the Look on Her Face” about discovering some of the best writing tools while he was talking to a curious young writer. In order to properly explain the tool and to give it the justice it deserves, Doyle employs whimsical personification. Brian Doyle is an avid writer; he is editor of Portland Magazine and the author of a few renowned novels. This short story described his interaction with a nine-year-old girl who has an interest in writing as she asks him countless questions about his writing process. While talking to her and considering her questions, he was able to discover his favorite way to write a book. Doyle figured out that he likes to start writing books without clear outlines or any idea of how it is going to end so that he can make it up as he writes. He explained this tool, writing, “that didn’t seem as much fun as having a rough idea what might happen and then being startled quite often by what did happen. I said that I rather enjoyed that the people and animals in my books didn’t listen too much to what I thought should happen, hard as it was sometimes for me to watch.” (Doyle). His tool was to write without knowing the full course of the story so he could see where it led him. He used whimsical personification by saying that the animals didn’t listen to him because they were writing the story on their own. This assists his purpose of explaining how helpful the tool is by showing how unpredictable it made his stories through his use of rhetoric. He enjoys letting his story ‘write itself’ so he and the reader can be surprised by how unpredictable it is. I found this tool to be helpful in knowing how he uses this tool to write his books, and it also helped me understand how it is helpful in the writing process.

TOW #15

Young the Giant’s newest album, Home of the Strange, has a very interesting cover which employs vibrant color and unique imagery to accompany the songs in conveying an immigrants journey to America. The first single they released off the album, Amerika, tells the story of how Sameer, the bands lead singer, struggles to fit in to American society as an immigrant. Amerika, as a word, describes the worst aspects of America, for example its corruption, fascism, and racism. The song Titus Was Born explains his journey as a baby coming to America on a ship during an intense storm, which reflects the tumultuous environment he found himself in. The album cover is a valid expression of the theme of the music in the album itself. It shows groups of people of unique shapes and vibrant colors, which symbolize the diversity of people, holding distinguishable flags and entering a dark mountain in the middle of the cover. The dark, gloomy mountain has narrowed eyes and opens its mouth to allow the immigrants to enter. The image of the mountain shows how condescending the nation is when it invites people in but then puts up countless obstacles to prevent them from feeling completely at home in a foreign land. This conveys a message about how many people from different cultures and ethnicities excitedly come to America where they are promised freedom, when in reality, they are greeted with hostility and face many difficulties when trying to fit in and be accepted as Americans. I believe that the cover art of this magnificent collection of songs successfully achieves its purpose of helping the reader understand the harsh reality of immigrating to America. I think that the album as a whole, including the image and the music, has really helped me understand what people have to deal with when coming to this country. 

TOW #13

Elizabeth Wurtzel employed anaphora as a strategy to show how she thought that perhaps her life was turning around and thus how people and small things can significantly improve one’s mood just for it to fall back down again. She did so in her creative nonfiction book, Prozac Nation, which became a national bestseller and a major motion picture due to its profound truths about life with depression and trying to recover from it. In trying to make sense of the different aspects of depression, she mentions an anecdotal story of her short romance with a boy named Zachary; how that relationship elevated her mood just to deplete it shortly after when he broke up with her. She used anaphora by writing, “I start to think, Maybe Zachary and I will be together forever and it all really will work out okay. Maybe I will marry him. Maybe I am Cinderella at the ball. Maybe fourteen isn’t too young to know who’s right for you, especially since nothing ever seemed right before Zachary.” (Wurtzel 101). Through repeating ‘Maybe I will’ and ‘Maybe’, Elizabeth Wurtzel expresses how hopeful she was for the prospect of a better future, likely spent with Zachary. A few paragraphs later though, she breaks the unfortunate news that he broke up with her not long after their relationship significantly impacted how she was feeling. This instance, and this use of anaphora, was used by Wurtzel to show the reader how someone with depression has a fragile mental state that can easily be swayed by a simple interaction. It shows the reader how someone can transition from being a hopeful, loving character to an emotional wreck due to the actions of another person. I believe that her rhetoric helped her prove this idea and supported her purpose by showing how happy and hopeful she felt and how that great mood can be diminished so quickly. 

TOW #12

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times regarding an editorial article about the controversy in connection to Muslim women wearing traditional Hijabs and Burqas, Anne Rosselot strategically lists her credibility to support her point. The New York Times published the letter on its website due to its interesting points about people who disapprove of the custom of wearing the concealing articles of clothing. Rosselot’s purpose in writing and subsequently sending the message was to express her dismay and show the impracticality of how she is labelled as a bigot for wishing that people refrained from hiding their faces. In order to show her ethos as someone who is, in any other sense, not at all bigoted, Anne Rosselot listed her ethos as a liberal. She said, “I am a woman, a feminist, a Democrat, an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter, the proud mother of a lesbian, a progressive Christian, a supporter of civil rights, a believer that Black Lives Matter, and a welcomer of refugees and other immigrants.” (Rosselot 1). These descriptors of Rosselot show the reader how she is not a bigot, because these are all feelings and actions opposite to those felt and taken by dictionary definition bigots. By listing all of the many reasons why Anne Rosselot believes she is not a bigot, she shows how insane it is that just because she worries about the security risks that emanate from women wearing the headscarves. She thus builds credibility of her statement about how she is personally not a bigot in order to support her claim that people who disagree with one liberal ideal should not immediately be cast out as conservatives or rudely called bigots. I believe that this use of rhetoric was incredibly supportive of the author’s thesis and effectively helped her convince the reader of her point. 

TOW #11

In his second inaugural address on March 4^th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln employed the appeal to logos in order to strengthen his argument that though there was a lot to celebrate in America, there was even more to work on in order to create a better nation. Lincoln’s speech was very positive because he was glad to have been elected president again although it had and underlying tone that gave the speech an unhappier mood. Lincoln discussed how there were many things which the nation had to improve on before there could be cause for celebration. As an example of something that the country need to change, Lincoln stated, “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.” (Lincoln). In this quote, the president employed an appeal to logos in his specific fact about how many people in America were slaves prior to the Civil War. The shocking reality of 1/8^th of the country being slaves was an appeal to logic, or logos. Lincoln included this appeal to surprise the listener and convince them that slavery was a real problem that they were lucky to have changed, but also that there are still other issues which need to be addressed and fixed by the citizens. By appealing to logos in this way and by sharing a shocking statistic about the nation’s past in order to show how much work is still left to be done in the future, Lincoln further achieved his purpose which was to convince the listeners that the nation should be proud of where it has come from but also not neglect the progress it has yet to make. I believe that through this use of rhetoric amongst others throughout the piece, Lincoln proved the argument he was trying to make.