IRB INTRO

This marking period I will be reading Winston Churchill by John Keegan.  I chose to do a historical biography this marking period, which contrasts with what I have read the past two marking periods.  This biography is written by Keegan, a contemporary military historian and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  I chose this book through a recommendation from my dad, who read and loved it.  I'm hoping to learn a lot about this prominent American figure this marking period and I'm excited to be trying something new!

TOW #16- IRB

One of the most impactful parts of "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand was the chapter called "The Boiling City".  In this chapter the author's use of detailed description brings the book to life.  I think one of the most important parts of this story is attempting to understand and feel the characters' emotions as the war consumes them.  And sometimes, it is important to recognize that we cannot understand what it is like to be them in that situation.  The author does a skillful job of describing parts of Louie's experiences so that the reader can get a glimpse into his life.  In the beginning of the chapter, Hillenbrand describes the city and the people in it.  She writes, "No one in Naoetsu was sleeping.  B-29's crossed over every night, and the air-raid sirens wailed for hours on end, competing with the roar of the planes, " (300).  Her use of personification between the sounds in this description gives the readers a piece of how Louie must have felt.  Her use of the word wailed gives the readers a grasp on the blaring noises in this city during the war.  Just something as simple as her word choice impacts the readers' perception of the text much differently.  Another deeply descriptive section in this chapter is towards the end.  Hillenbrand explains the crewmen's bomber plane flight over Hiroshima.  She describes, "...the sky over the city ripped open in a firestorm of color and sound and felling wind.  A white light, ten times the intensity of the sun, enveloped the plane as the flash and sound and jolt of it skidded out in all directions... A fantastically huge, roiling cloud, glowing bluish gray, swaggered over the city.  It was more than three miles tall."  (306)  Hillenbrand's account of this event that most readers have heard of or studied in history class is much different than most people have ever known about the bombing of Hiroshima.  It takes a much closer scope to the event, and makes it seem more personal, more impactful.  Again, her use of personification adds to her description.  Also, her transition between long descriptive sentences to short ones gives a blunt feeling to the chapter's end.  After more description she writes, "Below it, Hiroshima was boiling. " (306)  This final sentence leaves an impact with readers far beyond what any history book would tell them.  The imagery used in this chapter is amazingly descriptive and gives readers a chance to view certain historical events from a different angle entirely.  Hillenbrand's use of descriptive language in this chapter stood out to me as one of the most effective skills that she uses throughout the entire book.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it is very easily one of my favorite books I have read.

TOW #15- Visual Text

Tom Toles, the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post recently published this cartoon with the caption, "Inexplicable Metro robbery in minute-by-minute detail".  He made this cartoon with the intended audience to be train commuters.  It shows a man reporting his money stolen during his experience on the metro when in fact, he was not actually robbed.  Tom Toles uses hyperbole of an average person's metro experience and humor in order to show the lack of quality of the metro services.  He believes that the prices that are paid for the metro are too high for the efficiency of the system.  Toles uses hyperbole in his cartoon in order to exaggerate the bad quality of the metro system.  The man's second quote is lengthy and describes a terrible situation that I'm sure the average metro user does not experience.  The exaggeration helps Toles's argument by showing his audience how awful the system is and hoping that they can relate to the mishaps that occur with the metro system.  Although the quote is not really valid, it is very effective.  It helps the audience feel a connection by sharing a common annoyance of the trains.  Toles appeals to pathos by attempting to make the audience feel angry about their subpar train experiences that they paid full price for.  Toles also uses humor in order to compare the train experiences with a robbery.  When the man in the cartoon says he was robbed, he is not being literal.  He feels that he had been cheated for his money because of his poor train service.  This is an effective strategy for Toles because if people start associating the poor quality of the trains system with being robbed, that will only increase the anger of the audience.  Once they compare their experience with the metro to being robbed, it puts the idea into perspective.  His audience may think, "If I am not getting 100% satisfactory service, I shouldn't have to pay full price!"  Thoughts like these will help Toles build an audience of angry train commuters that feel that change must be made.  Toles used these devices to successfully convince his audience that the metro system is 'robbing' them of their money because of its poor efficiency and quality.

TOW #14- Why Teachers Are Aggrieved

An article written by Mark Mix, the president of the National Right to Work Committee, was published in the Washington Times this past week.  On Monday, the Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association case will be heard by the Supreme Court.  The case involves policies that force teachers to pay mandatory dues to a union that they do not support.  Mix's article proves the unconstitutionality of these policies across the country through the use of rhetorical questions and references to quotes of the opposing side.  To prove that the policies are not just, Mix uses rhetorical questions at the beginning of his article.  He asks the readers, "If you belonged to a club that benefited other members at your expense, would you consider leaving?  Would you resent it if the club collected dues from all members but only provided benefits to a select few?" (par. 1) In order to get his readers to understand the unconstitutionality of the policies that require teachers to pay dues to unions they don't belong to, Mix first has to get the audience, which is any working American who pays mandatory dues, to understand why the policy is unjust.  When he asks these questions, the reader can clearly understand that the mandatory dues that don't benefit the people paying them does not make any sense.  In order to further prove the unconstitutionality of the argument that the policy should stay in place, Mix references an attorney general supporting the California Teachers Association, Kamala Harris.  He proves that many teachers are not benefited from paying these mandatory dues when he tells his audience that Harris, "actually admitted that union bargaining disadvantages many teachers in a brief filed in support of the California Teachers Association."(par. 4)  Once he proves that even the opposition was in agreement that the unions don't give advantages to all of the teachers, he slices through the CTA's argument.  The strength of Mix's argument comes mostly from his appeal to logos because his article is used to invalidate the California Teachers Association's case.  While proving his point, he gets his audience to think about the unfair dues that they possibly have to pay to their unions, in hopes of helping working Americans make a change in their own states.  This article gives encouragement to those who work and are victims of the mandatory dues that do not benefit every employee fairly.  Mark Mix's article successfully accomplishes this through rhetorical questions and evidence from the opposition in the case, and on Monday we will find out whether or not this argument will be supported in court.

TOW #13- "Bright Lights, Big Predators"

Richard Conniff, an Amerian non-fiction author who specializes in human and animal behavior, wrote the article "Bright Lights, Big Predators" for the New York Times this past weekend.  The increasing population of wild animals in cities around the world has become a controversial issue due to the animals' threat to humans.  Conniff uses personification and comparisons of this issue to other issues in big cities to convey to his audience that the animals aren't as dangerous as they may think and the thought of coexisting in cities is not entirely impossible.  He uses personification to justify the animals' placement in cities.  Conniff shows his audience the innocence of the animals when he writes,  "That leopard on a hilltop in Mumbai didn't move into the city.  The city rose up and engulfed its world."  He uses the personification of the city to place a blame for this impending situation.  When people think of these animals invading their city living space, they are incorrect.  The city has been built in places of wildlife, so it is not the fault of the leopards for roaming around in the city lights at night.  Once Conniff shows his audience that the wild animals are not to blame for their coexistence with humans in cities, he uses comparisons to other issues in the city in order to convince his audience that they have had much greater danger before.  Conniff compares the wild animal situation with the existence of rivers in cities when he writes, "We have learned to protect and restore rivers in our cities, says Adrian Treves at the University of Wisconsin, even though floods sometimes destroy homes and drown people." By comparing the wild animals to another risky situation that humans are totally comfortable with in their cities, Conniff lessens the validity of the fearfulness towards such dangerous creatures.  If they have allowed things just as harmful in their city to exist peacefully in nature, why can't they do the same with wild animals?  Conniff then takes an even more common and effective example of a high risk allowed in the city when he writes, "... we let cars dominate city streets, though they kill more than 4,700 pedestrians in the United States every year."  Something as common as a car poses a much higher risk to city-dwellers than the four-legged prowlers of the night.  With these comparisons Conniff can show his audience that the risk posed by wild animals is nothing crazy when compared to the many other dangerous things that we allow to exist in our towns and cities.  His audience, people who live in the city, cannot ignore the strong points he makes against the rationale for eliminating the threat of wild animals to the civilians of large cities.  His article is effective due to his personification and comparisons, and makes his readers contemplate living a life in harmony with four-legged friends.

TOW #12- IRB: Unbroken

I am so happy I am finally getting the opportunity to read "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand because I have heard such great things about it from many of my friends.  Since page, 1 I have been hooked on this book and it has been such an interesting read so far.  One of the ways that Hillenbrand does this is by delving deep into the details of some of the little moments amongst the daunting events that take place in Louis's life.  The author makes Louis's story come to life and gives readers a connection to his story through her use of detailed description and a zooming perspective on the events of the book.  In Hillenbrand's description of the German Graf Zeppelin, she successfully makes Zamperini's childhood memory come to life through her description of the airship.  Hillenbrand writes that, "He could see only the blackness of the space it inhabited.  It was not a great presence but a great absence, a geometric ocean of darkness that seemed to swallow heaven itself." In this description the aircraft becomes a powerful monster rather than an amazing new advancement in aircraft technology.  The fear that people may have had at the time period easily transcends to the readers through Hillenbrand's description.  We, as the audience, are able to imagine ourselves there in that moment, watching the Zeppelin float above us.  This connection that Hillenbrand bridges from the biography to the readers helps her audience feel an attachment to Louis's story.  This description of the aircraft comes before the author begins to talk about Louis's troublesome childhood.  The zoomed perspective she has on the aircraft gives readers the context of Zamperini's childhood time period before the audience even gets Louis's entire story.  This is important to helping the audience understand the actions and emotions of the people in the biography.  After zooming in on the Zeppelin, Hillenbrand then takes a step back to change focus, and talks about Louis's childhood.  She writes, "Thrilled by the crashing of boundaries, Louie was untamable.  As he grew into his uncommonly clever mind, mere feats of daring were no longer satisfying.  In Torrance, a one-boy insurgency was born."  The change in focus gives the reader information about Zamperini's childhood, while still giving the audience and attachment to his life.  Hillenbrand is precise in the way that she places the details of the time period and the biography of Louie in order to give the readers the best understanding of what he went through during his life.  Through the changing scope and the detailed descriptions of historical context and Zamperini's biography, Hillenbrand creates a book that audiences can easily connect to in order to receive an inspirational reading experience.

"The Screening Process We Wish We Had" by Gary Varvel

      Protection and security of the people in our country has been a topic of controversy for quite some time and is clearly a very serious and relevant topic today.  This cartoon was from the Washington Times Newspaper created by Gary Varvel.  He has been a cartoonist for the Indianapolis Star for 16 years.  The audience for this cartoon is the US public.  In the visual text, "The Screening Process We Wish We Had", Gary Varvel uses juxtaposition of heart sizes and hyperbole of to argue that there is no easy answer to the issue of the security of America.  The cartoon expresses that America wishes that it had a machine that could measure the size of someone's heart.  With this machine it shows their ability to see that there is a man with a considerably smaller heart than the rest of the people in the line.  The juxtaposition of this man's heart size to the rest of the people in the line show how he must be more dangerous due to his small heart.  Varvel does this to show how the country wishes we could clearly tell the difference between someone who could hurt people and someone who is an average person.  Clearly, this is unable to happen so easily.  Varvel uses hyperbole to show how difficult finding a solution to the security issues in our country would be.  First, he exaggerates the size of the man's heart.  If someone is more inherently evil than another person or even has bad intentions, their heart would obviously not be smaller than a normal person's heart.  The author shows the difficulty of finding a solution to America's security issues through this exaggeration of the heart size.  Also, the hyperbole of the advancement of technology helps him to achieve his purpose.  It's evident to the audience that the machinery used in the cartoon is not realistic and probably will never be in the future.  Through the author's hyperbole of the technological advancements in the American security system, he shows the difficulty of finding a realistic solution to the country's security issues.  He argues the impossibility of finding a full-proof solution to this issue and leaves his audience considering the future of American security.  Although we wish that we could always be safe, and technology could improve our security, Varvel argues that we will never be able to be 100% protected.