TOW #7 - Trump Political Cartoon

As the race to the White House heats up, both the Republicans and Democrats have found themselves in battle with their own party members. With Joe Biden officially out of the running, Clinton and Sanders have all but cleared the Democratic field. While the GOP has not had the same "smooth" run, with party members and American citizens alike wondering while Donald Trump is still in the running. Rick McKee of The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle utilizes symbolism, metaphor, and diction in his illustration of this situation in his latest political cartoon. Behind the walls of the brick house, an elephant couple (representing the GOP) look out the window with scared faces as they find someone in a Trump costume has still yet to leave. As the caption states the thoughts of the symbol of the GOP, the elephant, it underlines the word still, representing the party's concern that Trump is still in the running as even those outside the party thought Trump was joking or would not last that long. Taking place on Halloween, a caricature of Trump stands outside the house of the GOP holding a paper bag with the words, "Trump or Treat." Trump replacing the word "trick" on the iconic phrase "trick or treat" plays on his presidential run being anything but a treat, for the party. The shocked elephants stare at the pupil-less, big-haired, and smug Trump waiting for him to finally leave. McKee effectively represents the party's concern that Trump is still in contention for the Republican nomination through symbolism, metaphor, and diction. The GOP side is represented well through the emotions and diction of the elephants, while the at the same time representing the feelings of millions of Americans who took Trump's run as a joke. Despite unpopular views, Trump's "trick" is that he's still leading the Republicans in most polls and it seems he won't be gone any time soon.

TOW #6 - "The Crack Up"

F. Scott Fitzgerald, the infamous American novelist whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz era, writes in his essay The Crack Up about a much less magnificent topic, midlife crisis. In the essay, Fitzgerald chronicles his personal "crack up," a loss of self-identity leading into a spiral of declining self worth. The reader is led through Fitzgerald’s psychological journey: feigned direction in life; the sudden realization that all stability in his life is a façade; the black depression that follows as he realizes he has lost trajectory in life; and finally, tentative acceptance of an existence that is far from ideal. Throughout this journey, the reader is uncertain as to what the author’s purpose is. Fitzgerald’s account is highly personal, and seems to lack any objective in its narrative. However, if the reader persists on through Fitzgerald’s melancholy trek, they are rewarded with a bitter-sweet resolution and purpose. Fitzgerald resolves that, in order to bring himself from the grip of depression, he must accept that he is not as relevant as he once thought he was; and that he must reserve himself to the role of jaded miser in order to salvage his ability to function in society. Thus, through informing the reader on the topic of gradual depression, or “crack up," Fitzgerald is able to prove his point that life manages to creak on, even when all seems lost. In order to make this point, Fitzgerald employs various types of rhetoric, but most prevalently an extended metaphor involving a cracked plate. He compares a person’s depressive breakdown to the cracking of a plate. Like the cracking of a plate, depression can happen slowly over time until it consumes a person. But also like a cracked plate, a person can be repurposed, though not to their former glory, thus connecting to the author’s argument that a “crack up” isn’t the end.

TOW #5 - "The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election"

The 2016 Presidential campaign is underway as the election is only a little over 390 days away, a mere second in the grand scheme of things. Nicholas Confessore, a New York-based political reporter, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish write about the "overwhelmingly white and rich" families funding the 2016 president election in order to emphasize their measures to protect their own wealth through use of imagery and statistics appealing to ethos and logos. The New York Times article states that out of the roughly 120 million U.S. households, just 158 families provided nearly half of the money for campaigns to capture the white house. Imagery is evoked as they depict the top 1% of American households that have donated millions to the political arena as "white, rich, older, and male" billionaires that have made most of their fortunes in just finance and energy. The writers also highlight their residings "in an archipelago of wealth and exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns." The imagery serves to provide background for the readers to portray the behind the scenes of the 2016 campaign. As well as confirm the stereotypes of the top 1%, and highlight their overwhelmingly majority preference to "lean right." The families who have invested the most have been contributing millions to Republican candidates. The classification of "minted billionaire" donors that have deployed their vast wealth are reflecting the shifting composition of the country's economic elite and the measures to protect their own wealth. The article also makes multiple appeals to ethos and logos through various statistics and quotes from investors, political, and demographic experts. Revealed through interviews and hundreds of public documents, lies a class distant from much of America. One of the many statistics reported states, "The 158 families each contributed $250,000 or more in the campaign through June 30, according to the most recent available Federal Election Commission filings and other data." The information from the FEC filings highlights the contributions of over half the money in the president election, the vast majority of it supporting Republicans. And most Americans who have been following the presidential campaign are well aware of the Republican candidates pledges to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains, and inheritances; and shrink entitlement programs. The big investments in the elephant party are driving the widening inequality as the share of national wealth and income going to the middle class has shrunk. Appealing to ethos and logos, the writers are quick to make a point about why most of the funds are headed to the elephant party. Confessore, Cohen, and Yourish successfully showcase the reasoning of huge funding to Republican candidates to make aware to the American public how the right are trying to stay rich. The authors make their stance on the top 1% from the very beginning to the end of the "entrepreneurs who have opinions of everything."

TOW #4 - IRB "Seeing Voices"

Written from the hearing perspective of Oliver Sacks,  a neurologist and author who felt the brain was the "most incredible thing in the universe", Seeing Voices is a book about deaf issues, mainly pertaining to language learning. Despite in the opening admitting that he doesn't know any sign language nor has he ever participated in Deaf Culture, Sacks writes an interesting book about his discoveries about learning language and his stories of historical figures. As a self-proclaimed impartial observer, Sacks writes to inform the public about deafness, as it was published in 1989 when the idea of the deaf was not completely understood by the public. He clearly wants people to be less ignorant about the importance of the deaf and how learning about the deaf can change one's perspective. He went to multiple researchers, books, and schools to understand the topic and accurately present the facts. Despite the "cold-hard facts", Sacks frequently presents he also uses anecdotes to appeal to pathos. He tells the tale of David Wright, an Englishman who thought he knew what language sounded like until he was seven. Sacks wrote about how Wright's, who had lost his hearing gradually in early childhood and became stone deaf at the age of seven, vocabulary had been affected. Readers easily are able to connect that hearing and learning go hand-in-hand because the words we constantly hear we tend to incorporate into our own vocabulary. As communication and language is so essential for humans, learning about deaf culture truly changes one's perspective. "We see through our eyes and feel through our fingers because we have been conditioned to do so." Sacks' observations about language are quite profound and important, as he bolsters the argument for sign language being taught to the deaf. He makes very valid and interesting points not in particular to deaf people or culture, but about language learning, and I cannot wait to continue reading.