TOW #11: Girl in a Wheelchair with Horse(Visual Text)

Many believe that people tend to hang out and relate to those who are similar to them and share related interests. However, this photograph refutes the statement that friends have to share similar interests. The girl in the photo is in a wheelchair suggesting that she can neither walk nor ride horses. However, to many audiences’ surprise, the girl is hugging a horse. As the girl cannot ride a horse, one would expect that the horse and the girl cannot relate and share similar experiences. However, the ironical scene in this photo suggests that there are no limits to friendship and even the most opposite beings can become the closest friends just like the horse and the girl in this photo. Even more surprisingly, the girl does not look dismayed or depressed because she cannot ride the horse; she looks delighted and pleased just to be with the horse. In return, the horse looks peaceful and happy to see its friend. The anonymous photographer who took this photo intentionally juxtaposed the horse with a girl in a wheelchair. If it was a different animal, for example a dog, the photograph would carry an entirely different message and a weaker influence. Also the overall mood of the picture is very warm and pleasant with the sunlight shining on the two friends. Since interacting with a horse requires the person riding the horse, the photographer put someone who cannot ride a horse to demonstrate that a true friendship has no boundaries. This appeals to the audience’s pathos, as the irony and the overall mood of the photo evokes sympathy and warms the heart. It reminds the audience that even the most opposites can become friends and what really matters are the feelings not the similarities. Differences are just characteristics, they do not define friendship.

TOW #10: I Nearly Died. So What? (written, non-fiction text)

Grievances and adversities sometimes happen in life and people manage to overcome those hardships or recover from their failures. After these recoveries, most people realize their past mistakes and better themselves. However, Meghan Daum claims these realizations are people’s deceptions to the world and perhaps to themselves, come from the spectator’s expectations. With uses of her anecdotes, Daum, who has recently survived from a severe case of deadly bacterial infection followed by near-death coma, claims that nothing really changed for her. Although grateful for her fortunate case, she admits that she is the same “whiny ingrate” (16) she was when she was healthy. She claims that people really don’t change, including those who claim that they have obtained a kind of epiphany from their hardships, but are eager to meet the expectations of the society that anticipate redemption. She claims that “we’re obsessed not just with victory but with redemption” (17). Daum wants to criticize those who are so obfuscated by society’s expectations to the extent of not realizing that they actually had not become better persons. Daum also uses repetition of the word person to emphasize how the modern society stress what kind of person the survivors of some kind of adversities have become. She claims that she is “not a better person. [She is] the same person. Which is actually kind of a miracle” (21). When people refer to someone as a same person, people imply a slightly negative connotation as same means no progress. However, Daum eliminates this negativity that travels with the term same by adding that it is a miracle that she remained the same because she was not influenced by the society’s pressure and stayed adamant about her individual beliefs. Daum refuted actions that we believe we automatically do by stating that these actions are not so uncontrollable but are driven by our need for “stories of triumph over adversities” (17). Although her argument could have been very controversial, Daum’s use of anecdote and certain words made readers ponder about their tendency to succumb to the belief of popular culture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/i-nearly-died-so-what.html?ref=opinion

TOW #9: What's Eating in America by Michael Pollan (written, non-fiction text)

Nowadays, corn makes up not only almost everything people eat, but also almost everything that is around people ranging from fertilizers to wallboards around supermarkets. In Michael Pollan's "What's Eating in America," Pollan informs readers with damage of unnatural nitrogen, which is the building block of corn, and warns them that the manmade nitrogen that is used to make corn has many disadvantages that people were previously unaware of. Pollan has been writing on food production all his life, so he establishes some immediate credibility. Pollan is aware of the current society’s ignorance and unawareness of things they eat, the things that go directly into their body and become a part of them. Out of concern, Pollan tries to implement the same concerns in his readers with his uses of exemplification on the other uses of corn. He purposefully mentions Fritz Haber, the inventor of combining nitrogen with different elements to produce new, life-sustaining compounds, to claim that he was also responsible for the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II with his invention of poisonous gases. His inventions were so notorious that “his wife, a chemist sickened by her husband’s contributions to the war effort, used his army pistol to kill herself” (Pollan 303). With his use of horrifying examples, Pollan appeals to the readers’ pathos by helping them think about the negative contributions of corn. Pollan really makes readers question about the food that they have so trusted to come from natural plants; maybe these foods were manufactured in some egregious and unorthodox ways similar to how poisonous chlorine gas that killed millions of people was produced. Followed by his exposure on the true identity of corn that resulted from manufactured nitrogen, he reminds the readers that everyone has to rely less on synthetic corn and “build a more diversified agriculture… and give up our vast nitrogen guzzling monocultures of corn” (Pollan 305).

IRB Intro #2: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

The book I chose to read for my second IRB is Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.  I decided to read this book because Ashley Choi recommended it to me. This book is composed of short non-fiction articles on economics. I have a feeling that the style of this book will be similar to that of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I think it will be interesting to read what the author thinks about the issues he addresses in the book. 

TOW #8: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (IRB, written)

This week, I finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Throughout the book, Krakauer wrote about a very personal experience at Mount Everest during the Mount Everest disaster that happened in 1996. Started just from a curiosity and affinity for adventure, Krakauer’s expedition had not only taught him way more than about Mount Everest, but also changed his life completely. Even after returning home safely, Krakauer feels guilty for the deaths that have occurred within his travel group and wrote this book as a way to compensate and express his sorrow to the families of dead travelers. Although their death was not Krakauer’s fault, Krakauer’s intended audiences are the families of victims, who might have suffered even more due to Krakauer’s flawed article for Outside magazine on the deaths of the victims. Krakauer especially uses a sorrowful tone to deliver the truth about what actually happened during the horrifying expedition. Krakauer establishes his sorrowful tone from the very beginning by stating in his introduction, “The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time” (Krakauer XVII). He shows his regret and guilt by stating that he did not listen to the others who told him not to go, and that he is partly responsible for the deaths of those who died and that fact will remain in him for the rest on his life. Krakauer does not just end there, but again establishes his sorrow at the end in the author’s note, “my intent in the magazine piece, and to an even greater degree in this book, was to tell what happened on the mountain as accurately and honestly as possible, and to do it in a sensitive, respectful manner” (Krakauer 303). He again apologizes and states his true purpose of writing this book, to express his guilt and plead forgiveness although the families of the victims do not condemn him for the deaths. After reading this book, the audience not only understands his sorrow and guilt, but also feels sorry for Krakauer.