TOW #4 - IRB: "Tuesdays with Morrie"

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom is a book about an individual journey through life. Morrie Shwartz taught an eager Mitch Albom at Brandeis University. Inspired by his outlook on life and his diverse ways of teaching, Albom visited Shwartz during not only his office hours but personal visits. Upon graduation, Albom promised Shwartz he would keep in touch. This promise was one Albom did not keep and he greatly regrets this.

Years later, a far older, wiser and ALS stricken man, Morrie Shwartz is interviewed and put on “Nightline”, a special on ABC. Albom, flipping through channels, sees this interview with his old professor. Overcome by regret for not keeping his promise, Albom is angry with himself for allowing himself to lose touch with one of his greatest influences who is now months away from death. Albom’s feelings were so powerful that he flew to Boston, Morrie’s hometown, and paid him a visit. These visits became regular and each Tuesday, Mitch traveled to see Morrie and discuss life lessons.

These life lessons opened Albom’s eyes to new perspectives. His money-driven life became sad, as if the true meaning of his life consisted of success. The life lessons that Morrie describes are not just relevant to Mitch, but to a broad audience of people struggling to see the good in life. Struggling to breathe, eat and go to the bathroom on his own, Morrie has a clear vision of what struggle and death look like. He uses lessons learned in his own life to aid and direct Mitch find a happier path in life, one focusing on non-materialistic things.

Mitch Albom describes his relationship with Morrie using anecdotes. Albom flashes back to times when he was still in college and saw Morrie as a teacher and not as a friend. Albom also uses figurative language to describe the weakness of Morrie. He compares Morrie to fragile things, to things full of struggle and death. This helps the reader understand Morrie’s true state of living.

I believe that Albom is successful in communicating his purpose. He clearly shows how his life has been pulled in a different direction because of Morrie’s wise words.

TOW #3 - Article: "The Science Behind Dreaming"

                Dreaming is a complex concept, one people, even scientists, have trouble wrapping their heads around. Yet new discoveries are made every day that link us closer and closer to the true science behind dreams. In the article “The Science Behind Dreaming”, different research studies are depicted and the answer to what dreams are and how they affect us is revealed. The author, Sander van der Linden, a social-psychologist and professor at Princeton, compares the historical misconceptions of dreams to the idea of dreams that we have today, ideas with a surplus of technological backing.

            Trying to reach the general public, Linden aims to inform about the science behind dreams, an action each and every person goes through in their lifetime. He also clears up common misconceptions and gets straight to the truth, what dreams are really made of. In reality, dreams turn on electrical brain waves in our mind and trigger parts of the brain such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, areas that control our emotions and memories. This explains why dreams have such strong emotional connotations.

            Linden constructs her ideas in a very successful manner, making her evidence highly relevant and the purpose, to inform the general public about the science behind dreams, very clear. Using coherence, exposition and ethos, Linden constructs a purpose and gets it across to the audience. By using a historical analysis of dreams, leading into various different current studies and theories about dreams and eventually concluding with a summary of the research findings, Linden’s article flows and has coherence. He also establishes ethos by giving credible and current research from research teams located all over the world.

            All in all, Linden was successful in communicating his purpose to the audience of un-informed citizens. He backed up his ideas with an abundance of research and clearly laid out the true science behind dreams.

TOW #2 - Visual Text: Increasing Environmental Issues (cartoon)

                As technology develops and humans begin caring less and less about the natural world around them, a change occurs in nature, one that cannot be undone. Oil production, waste levels and the human race’s carbon footprint are all factors that are leading to global warming, loss of natural resources and the ultimate downfall of the environment. Although many are aware of this issue and are making an effort to turn the fate of the environment around, too many are oblivious to the destruction they are causing. Many efforts are being made to make these oblivious people understand the damage they are doing.

            This political cartoon is an example of an effort made to help their audience, people oblivious to the harm they are causing to the environment. The author successfully shows the audience what the world may turn into if their habits continue. The author of the cartoon is trying to uncover reality for the people blind to it. The cartoon reads “Earth Day 2035” in the top right corner, telling the audience that the setting is the future. The rest of the cartoon shows various camera men taking pictures of what seems to be a political leader in front of a backdrop of a healthy forest. Yet, surrounding the backdrop is the reality of the time period: cut down trees, fossil fuels, trash and more. The reasoning behind the creation of this cartoon is to take action on a problem much bigger than people realize, to spread awareness about our slowly dying environment in the hopes of causing a positive reaction.

            The author of this political cartoon uses many rhetorical strategies including satire, imagery and mood. The author is using humor to criticize the immaturities of the human race. Imagery is also being used by taking different elements and describing a situation without directly saying the context. Lastly, the mood of the cartoon makes the audience want to take action and make a difference.

            The author created this cartoon to raise awareness on the downfall of the environment. The author accomplished this successfully by appealing to the audience’s emotions and making them open their eyes to the harsh reality. 

TOW #1 - Article: "No Name Woman"

                Part of human nature is to wonder and dig in to your cultural past. Where you came from, traditions in which your ancestors participated in and so much more. These are things the author of No Name Woman wonders as she dives into her family’s past.

Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese-American who wonders how to differentiate Chinese tradition with reality, writes an essay on her fascination with her past, her roots in China and her life as a Chinese-American. Kingston writes about a story in which she sworn to her mother to keep a secret. The irony within this piece of text is already present, the author is making a family secret public. Kingston’s aunt, a woman with no name, was married to a man who moved to America. Two years later, the aunt was impregnated and gives birth to a child. Because of this, the aunt was proven disloyal to her husband and therefore shun from her surrounding villagers and her family. This caused an uprising, the villagers came and raided the aunt’s belongings: her livestock and her clothes. Once the aunt gives birth, she throws herself and her child to the bottom of a well. This story stays with Kingston as she grows up. Her mother uses this story to alter her mind, teaching her to choose the path of loyalty and to keep her family’s reputation at a constant.

The audience Kingston intended to reach with this essay is people stuck between whether their traditional past is fiction or reality. Her purpose is to find an in between of Chinese and American culture, to come to terms with her individual identity. Kingston uses rhetorical devices such as imagery and motif. She describes the story of her aunt in great detail, giving her aunt a real personality that the audience is able to connect with. An example of a motif also mention in No Name Woman is that of ghosts, people who are forgotten long ago yet still make an effect on the present day. The author well supported her purpose to create a meaningful essay.

IRB Intro Post #1

For the first marking period, I am choosing to read the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. This novel is about Mitch Albom and his sudden and meaningful connection with his old professor, Morrie Shwartz. Albom sees his old professor being interviewed on a television show and is compelled to reconnect with him. Although, Shwartz is very ill and does not have much time left to rekindle an old connection. With the time that Shwartz has left, Albom visits him each Tuesday to discuss a new life lesson. I selected this book because I think the perspective that a wise man on the verge of death has on life will be very different and new to me. I hope to gain a sense of appreciation for my own life and to discover new lessons life has to offer.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me analysis

In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, the author Zora Neale Hurston describes a change in her life. Hurston describes how she experienced a loss of innocence when she was revealed to the real world, a world where her color was not as accepted as she would hope. Zora Neale Hurston was a woman of color committed to making a change in the world for the benefit of her race and culture. She was a civil rights activist who wrote many different works of empowering words promoting civil rights. Through the depiction of her childhood, Hurston was able to describe the purpose of her essay. She writes of how she feels as if she sticks out or she does not belong. Although, at the very end of the essay, she compares people of different races to different colored bags. Once all of the contents of the bag are removed, mixed around in a heap on the floor, and randomly put back into the bags, the new contents would not be very far off from the original ones. Hurston suggests that the “Great Stuffer of Bags”, or the creator, intended for the world to be this way. This was an analogy that made her purpose stand out; everyone was created as equals. Her rhetorical strategies, including comparisons, imagery and figurative language, help guide the readers towards her purpose. Her audience is very general. She mentions people of her culture and people of other cultures, yet does not make them her intended audience. Hurston makes it clear that her audience is no one in particular, rather anyone who cares to hear what she has to say. This essay grabs the reader’s attention and gives them comparisons and analogies that make them not only question themselves and the author, but make them question the past.

Everyone is Created Equal

The creator intended on making a world full of equals, everyone is not so different after all.

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The Marginal World analysis

The Marginal World, by Rachel Carson, is written about the sea and how it is a whole separate world, yet it manages to evolve and thrive within the hectic world around it. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and writer, is a naturalist and author credited for her creative way of sharing the beautiful stories of the sea with the public. Carson uses imagery and figurative language to describe the beauty she saw within the sea. She tells of plant and animal life, hidden shelters and unique tendencies of aquatic animals living in a world unseen; the sea. Carson uses the sea and compares it to the life of an average human. This gives her essay a strong sense of purpose; life is not all that it seems and point of view changes the way one looks at the world. Carson describes the calm of the sea, how the development of aquatic life and the evolving sea world sometimes go unnoticed when the human world is always distracted. She uses this description to tell the audience that there is always a calm, a solution, or a haven within each obstacle in life. Carson does not target a particular audience, yet she does connect more with people who have gone through obstacles in their life, people who have been caught up in the hustle and bustle of living. The imagery and figurative language help to give Carson’s writing a certain style and rhetoric. The way she describes the sea gives the reader a view into what seems like a world far away. Yet she continues to use her rhetoric to connect this far away world to the world of every human on planet Earth. Carson was successful in achieving her purpose. Her comparison of tense to calm and ocean life to the real world gave the reader a new perspective on life, showing that it is not all that it seems.

A Cave in the Sea

The hustle and bustle of the real world continues as the calm life under the sea goes unnoticed.

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