TOW #13- "Terrorism"

              On an uneventful Saturday morning, I came across a video that popped up on a social media website. Unlike other videos, this one wasn’t about people doing questionable things to follow our society’s standard of being “funny”. It was simply a conversation between a white American and Muslim student, talking about the topic of terrorism during a college class. When the professor told the students that words such as “mercy, peace, and compassion” are mentioned in the Karan 355 times and that Islam is a religion that preaches peace and tolerance, the white American student, just like any other white students would, asked why the world’s most troubled spots were plagued with Islamic terrorism if Islam is a religion that preaches peace. By appealing to logos and pathos, the Muslim student answers this question as well as putting the situation into perspectives.

            The Muslim student starts with the definition of terrorism. Although terrorists are often classified as Muslims who invade different parts of the world to act against other religions, he claims that the world’s biggest terrorists can be the “white superpowers”. He tells the class that everyone around the world knows that the strike of the twin towers killed 3,000 people, but that nobody knows that the bombing of Afghanistan killed more than 15,000 people as 50,000 tons of explosives were dropped onto innocent civilians. The numbers that he presents to showcase his argument stands for itself. It reveals how uninformed people are about the harms that come to the Islamic states from the US and Britain and how dramatized the terrorized events in US can be when comparing the harms that were done of both sides. Then, he continues by stating that overall, 500,000 innocent men, women, and even children were killed in Afghanistan in order to appeal to pathos.

            Finally, when the white student asked, “If Muslims like you feel that way, then why don’t you get out of our country?” he simply replies by saying, “We will… as soon as you promise to leave ours.”

             The Muslim student was effective by appealing to logos and pathos when putting the rest of the students into his perspective when talking about terrorism. I was able to be aware of how uninformed I was and thought his way of portraying his position was very effective.

TOW #12- "The Liar's Club" IRB

            In the memoir ‘The Liar’s Club”, Mary Karr recalls back to when she is seven, experiencing the most traumatic event in her life. Living in Leechfield, one of the “the ugliest towns on the planet”, Karr grew up in poison- infested environment with a family full of violence, dislocation, and fragmentation. During the first half of the book, Karr introduces her mom by describing how she was taken away to a mental institution due to her nervous breakdowns.  With her grandma suffering from cancer and her father becoming an alcoholic, Kerr and her little sister is left neglected and goes from door to door, begging for a meal. By including similes, Kerr displays the emotions she encountered during her brutal childhood experiences as well as her complex thoughts.

            In the beginning of the book, Kerr only has broken pieces of her memory from a tragic event. She can only describe this indescribable moment with similes that help readers grasp her emotions. As she recalls back to when she discovered a fuzzy memory of being assisted out of her house by the police, she says it felt like the moment “a crystal ball that whirls from a foggy blur into focus” (14). Once she can no longer piece her stories back together, she compares her frustration to a ghost and how “like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, the ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness” (25). With the use of similes, Kerr displays her complex emotions as well as her inner conflicts.

            It is undeniable that Kerr’s use of figurative language, such as simile, makes her memoir dramatic, portraying the great warmth and pain that built her strong sense of self. The gritty eloquence of her voice incorporated in her similes gave me vivid pictures and left me speechless.

TOW #11- “It’s Going to be Just Turned Around”

                As evidently shown in this political cartoon, this image depicts the American’s favor in changing the immigration law. From my background knowledge, I know that during the 1920s, Communism was expanding in different countries and that Americans feared the effects of having immigrants over: terrorists bombing their cities, foreign workers killing their land owners, and the expand of communism. Through the use of juxtaposition and appealing to logos, the artist proposes her though in order to change the present immigration law.

                Through juxtaposition, the artist clearly states what he is in favor of and what he isn’t. Using funnels that face the opposite direction, it makes it even more obvious that he wants to turn the immigration law around 180 degrees. One other difference in the two pictures is the white, dusty smoke. The smoke that is on the top left, surrounding the New York City shows not only the chaos, but the 40 bombs that harmed and threatened the Americans, essentially creating a negative bias toward the immigrants. The smoke on the right, showing the open end of the funnel shows the mess that is disturbing the peace in the United States. People are unrecognizable and their bags are carelessly thrown in the air. On the bottom right picture, however, the foreigners are patiently waiting until it is their turn to be selected and meet the requirements before they are allowed into the United States. There is no smoke on both ends of the funnel, which represents peace, and people are recognizable, walking in an organized order. This shows a logical reasoning as to why their immigration law should be changed and to show that it is the most rational solution to the problem.

                Evans uses juxtaposition as well as appealing to logos in order to portray his thought on the present immigration law. I think that the artist was successful as I was able to understand what he was in favor of with just a little bit of background information.