TOW # 24 "Stuck In a Catfight --- One With a Dog" (essay)

In the chick wit column of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Francesca Serritella writes an amusing article about her life with her pets. In order to keep her audience interested, Serritella uses humor and figurative language throughout the article. The use of these rhetorical devices affects the tone of the piece and provides an interesting perspective on life with a cat and a dog.

The simple fact that this article was a piece based on personal experiences with two pets that do not get along would make most readers roll their eyes or yawn out of boredom, but Serritella from the very first sentence uses humor to captivate her audience. “My kids are fighting. They’re not my kids. I should stop personifying them. My cat is being mean to my son. Sorry, my cat is being aggressive with my dog.” The witty start to a dreary topic captivates the reader and changes their attitude towards the subject for the rest of the article. However, not only does this use of humor charm the reader, but it also changes the tone of the piece. Some of us have heard the advice to start a meeting with a joke, because it lightens the mood and makes the act a little less strenuous. Well Serritella does the same thing here, she lightens the mood and makes reading her article enjoyable. In addition to humor, Serritella also uses figurative language throughout the piece. Personification is a prominent rhetorical device, and although normally it is defined as giving human qualities to an inanimate object, the specific attributes Serritella gives to her pets I believe qualify as personification. She refers to her cat having a mid-life crisis, or “menopaws,” due to the uncharacteristically moody behavior she is having. Also, Serritella uses an extended metaphor in her piece when describing how she is using little dime bags of katnip as “cosmic cat grass” to help her unwind. Her use of figurative language coexists with the humorous tone throughout the piece, which is specifically shown when Serritella compares her cat’s tolerance to “drugs” as that of Seth Rogen. This combination of rhetorical strategies provides an interesting point of view to the topic, because we don’t usually relate dogs and cats fighting to drug problems and menopaws. The point of view she provides reminds her audience of similar situations they could be having with non-pets, and by doing so makes a formerly dull topic, extremely interesting.

Overall I believe Serritella achieved her purpose of providing an interesting view on a topic that can be colorless. Through her use of humor and figurative language she expresses her personal experiences that, as a columnist, is her job. In “Stuck in a Catfight – One With a Dog,” Serritella writes an exuberant piece that makes her audience want to read more.

TOW #23 "I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced" (IRB)

Nujood Ali is a young woman who fought for her freedom and won. Her triumph inspires other girls, who are in similar situations, to demand what is rightfully theirs, their childhood. In her book, Nujood uses symbolism to show her audience the importance of their innocence and the hope they have to gain back what was stolen from them.

Power is the ability to influence another person’s actions or behavior, and it is a prominent symbol throughout the entire book. Power shifts in life and it shifts in this story as well. At first, Nujood’s father held power; he was able to control and determine his daughter’s future simply by selling her. After she was sold Nujood’s husband held power; his abuse and oppression of Nujood kept him in control of her, and it is also what led to the eventual shift of power to Nujood, which led to her winning her freedom and taking back her childhood. The shift of power represents justice in this book. The power that Nujood obtained from the courts and from her mother gave her the ability to discover power within herself, and provided justice to everyone who tried to steal her childhood. This power is now what she hopes to awaken in other girls just like her. Another very important symbol in this book is Nujood’s birthday. At the beginning of the story Nujood explains how she does not really know when her true birthday is because her mother had too many children to remember. At the end of the book, on the day she won her divorce, the lawyer who helped her win declares that that day would be her official birthday from then on. Nujood’s birthday symbolizes her childhood and freedom. Nujood had always wondered when her real birthday was, because it was something she never had experienced, just as childhood and freedom is something she had never experienced either.

I believe Nujood achieves her purpose of inspiring other girls like her to fight for their life back. Justice, freedom, and childhood all are key ideas in this book and in her life, and they are symbols of what every young girl should fight for if it is being taken from them.  

TOW # 22 "Political Rhetoric" (VT)

Does the United States government lie to its citizens? Are the American people susceptible to the trickery of politics? These questions, I believe, are what a particular cartoonist was trying to answer in his drawing, and he or she believes, yes. In this political cartoon the artist uses juxtaposition in order to show their audience that agendas from both republicans and democrats are being hidden in plan sight.

This political cartoon uses juxtaposition in its drawing. The first two things that are apparent in the drawing are the two political parties’ “mascots,” the republican elephant and the democratic donkey. However, the artist included within the two animals, guns, which make up the donkey’s face and the elephants trunk. This use of two seemingly unlike objects reveals a deeper side of American politics, one that the artist wants his or her audience to question. The use of guns within the cartoon symbolizes how politicians use rhetoric themselves to push questionable policies and laws by wrapping them up in something pretty and something that the public will understand. The guns also signify a specific example of an issue that the two political parties have been fighting over for many years now, stricter gun laws. The artist makes his or her audience question whether or not they are being told the whole truth, and if they are being persuaded to certain sides based not on facts, but pretty packaging.

I believe the artist effectively shows his or her audience how politicians on either side have hidden agendas that the public is not privy to. Using juxtaposition he or she shows their audience that our government can and does play tricks on us.

TOW # 21 "After Life" (essay)

In a short essay in the New York Times, an author examines the afterlife, but not the life after death afterlife. Instead the author tries to define life as a never-ending cycle of abrupt changes and when that happens, a person’s old life ends. In the essay the author uses parallel structure and personal accounts to prove his theory that life changes occur when everything is ordinary.

In the essay the author begins with four short sentences:

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.  

He then repeats this way of structure after one paragraph, and then again later on in the essay. The use of these short abrupt sentences allows the author to change the tone of the essay very quickly. This foreshadows the entire purpose of the essay; things change, life changes, and it all happens in an ordinary instant. Throughout the essay the author debates the word “ordinary.” The setting of this essay is that the author is writing a document on his computer, and he is stuck. He has only written a few words in a year, and the phrase “The ordinary instant” is one he debates adding. While trying to decide, the author uses personal accounts to show how life changed in an instant when everything was ordinary. He recalls the time he interviewed witnesses who were at Pearl Harbor. He writes, “they all started off tell me what an ‘ordinary Sunday morning it had been.’ It was just an ordinary beautiful September day…"he also references to testimonies of 9/11. All of these expert testimonies that he has collected over the years, provide the evidence necessary to prove his point. That life changes when you expect everything to stay the same. However, the most influential testimony present in the author’s essay is his own. “The entire point slipping into the sea around us was the kind of conclusion I anticipated. I did not anticipate cardiac arrest at the dinner table.” This information is presented at the very end of the essay; it is the clincher, and it is the last piece of evidence to support his point. The effect of this sentence is not just that it shows how one’s life can end without dying, but also it appeals to the author’s ethos, and gives him the credibility to write this short essay.

            I believe that the author of the essay successfully proves his argument. That life changes on the most ordinary of days, and when that happens your old life is gone, and your new life, your afterlife begins.