The Art of Persuasion: Swift Style

This week we decided to read a master piece of a satire. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is the ideal way to write a rhetorical essay. He has great use of ethos, pathos, and logos. He is good at using ethos with adding in his random knowledgeable friends from the “states”. I like how he does this by adding credibility, but at the same time keeping it sarcastic by not giving actual names. His use with pathos is there with talking about eating children, most people would get emotionally worked up if some one mentioned eating their children! Finally his use with Logos is there throughout the essay. He uses words to make him self sound more of the higher class type, also he throws out numbers all over they essay to sound as if he has researched. He is also very good at making the reader think he is being serious. In fact he was so good at this that people actually thought his proposal was serious. They couldn’t distinguish between the Swift and the narrator.

I’m hoping having read Swift’s rhetorical essay. To take notes from it on how to be persuasive for my next essay. Having seen multiple examples on ways to use ethos, pathos, and logos. I think I can work those types of persuasion into my paper with better use. Meaning I have a better grasp now that I’ve seen them used in actual text!

Riley

For this weeks reponse I chose to post on Riley’s blog. She put out a good point about how we speak negativley of nature. And the piece speaks out to me.

Writing Without Specifics

I found it extremely hard to write my essay without any true guidelines or prompt. There was so many ways you could interpret how to write this past essay. It nearly took me a week just to figure a basic idea in which to write about. Then when I finally got the basic idea in my head I had to turn the idea into a description of an experience, or multiple experiences I have had with it. This took me another couple of days to figure out moments, in which I had experienced, in my case “Changing”. Then finally putting all of those thoughts together in a way in which it was a narration. I felt like I couldn’t write the essay as well as I would have liked to. It felt rushed by the time I finally figured out what to write about and how to write it. On the next essay i definitely plan on making sure I spend a lot of time more in the process of getting an idea. That was surely the hardest part about this essay.

Having said all those things about the process on the last essay we did. I was overall happy with how the lack of a prompt made me have to try and think about what to write and how to write it. Instead of the usual here’s what to write and here is how I want you to write it. It did make it hard and it was annoying, but it is helping me gain some skills on how to start thinking on my own. I didn’t much enjoy this essay. Because I wasn’t quite prepared for how much effort I would need to give in the idea process. So hopefully I can enjoy the next one by being more prepared!

Descriptive Narrative Essay

Austin Masuga

Cynthia Bateman

English 101

20 September 2011

 

 

 Petty Change and Other Things Not to Worry About.

 

           The smell and the weight of the air as I opened the door to my dorm made me feel vulnerable. It was like a shower of air, and instead of dirt and sweat, it washed away everything that I had ever known. For the first few moments I was empty. An entire books worth of life was behind me, and now all I had were empty pages. What should I write? The weight of each and every decision I made mattered more than it ever had before.  I realized how truly under prepared for life I was. I quite simply was not ready for the change, and that terrified me.

In high school all that I wanted was to be liked. It was critical for me to be liked. I was always thinking about the cause and effect of my actions in my “friends” minds. Now in college this hardly matters, no one gives a crap about who I hang out with. What matters now who do I really like, who do I get along with, and who do I want to be around. The change in the social structure collapsed all of my mental stigmas.

Moving from Tuscola to college imposed a lot of changes. At home I never really had to think about the basic necessities; toilet paper, toothpaste, tissues. I never had to think about food, all my favorites were at my beck and call. Making the change from home to college was rough. I had a hard time making even simple decisions about what to eat. The situations were so trivial. All I had to do was decide what to eat. However; every time I got hungry instead of my criteria being what and where to eat  my criteria: were who should I eat with, what time should I eat, will there be food there that I like, will I be judged if I eat alone? Basically everything that I was worried about had absolutely nothing to do with eating even though all that is what I was trying to do.

I cruised through high school, I really didn’t care all that much. I had the opportunities to be an advanced student but I chose to take the easy route. Now, however, I feel much more pressured about academics because if I do poorly it affects the rest of my life. Unfortunately, my high school academic career didn’t quite prepare me for the change to college.

Up to this point my main stressor has been change. Genuinely I think that in the environment that we live in change does not really matter because whether we want it to happen or not it does: there is actually nothing that we can do about it. In this however I am a hypocrite. I have a hard time getting over all the changes that life has thrown my way. Furthermore I can personally attest to the fact that I do not in any way shape or form embrace change. I resist it just like the rest of the world.

Change is a fact of life, it is there period. It cannot be tailored to what we want; it simply is what it is. Worrying about how, when, and were life goes is futile, it is pointless. I suppose that somewhere in my psyche I know this but it is definitely not developed enough for me to act on in on a day to day basis. However, when I do take the time to think about it I do realize the fallacy of this style of thinking and privately realize the importance of accepting change.

 

 

Paul

I chose to write on Paul’s blog for this week. He gained a different perspective on the interaction of the two main characters that I didn’t think about with relating them to the real world. I wanted to let him know I agreed with him on his thoughts.

Follow Up On Wall-E

In my first weekly post I talked about how I thought it was interesting how we watched the beginning of Wall-e without sound. After having watched the first part of the movie without sound I actually started to notice the benefits. I gave more thought to the meaning of the music and background noises. The music was added a kind of dreary feeling in parts in which there was no human life around and just piles of Human wastes. It added to the effects of desolation and abandonment. I think the movie was trying to give you a bad feeling about the way the Earth was. To show us signs of how life could be in the future if we just sit back and allow our wastes consume us.

My actual hypothesis seems to be holding up pretty well. Having almost finished the movie Wall-E I believe I was pretty dead on about my thoughts with sustainability and our overall ability to maintain our resources. But I would also like to throw out a new theme I started catching onto, on how we are selves need to start getting involved in making a difference. A perfect example of this is when Auto is not allowing the Captain to take the ship back to earth. He stands up and says something along the lines of “I can’t just sit here and do nothing, that’s all I’ve ever done that’s all that anyone on this blasted ship has done , nothing!”. I think that is sending a message to the audience on how we need to get involved and make a difference.  Therefore to help our environment and our Earth.

Luke

I chose to write on Luke Walker’s blog this week. I felt like I could relate to his opinions and thoughts on the Nietzche reading.

Wall-E

For my first weekly post im going to give some of my thoughts and opinions on the start of the movie Wall-E. I thought it was very interesting that we chose to watch the beginning of Wall-E without sound rather than just postponing the screening. I’ve never really thought about music playing such a key role in the development of a story. I’m curious to how my opinions and thoughts about Wall-E will be altered by listening to it with sound on monday.

As the more and more I watched the beginning of Wall-e, I started to pick up on some signs in the movie that I believe are getting at the main point. I think the ultimate point of this movie is sustainability and overall the ability to maintain life on Earth. Eventually we are going to run out of resources. I think it’s getting at how we need to conserve and do a better job of protecting our environment. I got this idea from every one leaving Earth in space ships. Also how he finds the one piece of life (the leaf) around massive piles of trash. I could be completely off in this prediction. Hopefully with watching the movie next week I can either get more detail to support my hypothesis, or to lead me down a different path.

Self Introduction

Hello class this is Austin Masuga. I’m currently a freshman here at SIUE. I chose to come to SIUE for many different reasons. One of the main reasons I chose to come to SIUE was the fact that they offer a major called CMIS. I really enjoy computers and I wanted to eventually have a job in the technology field. That’s why I decided to start looking more into majors relating with computers. Another reason why i chose to attend SIUE was for the fact that this college is definitely reasonably priced. I’d rather not be in debt for the rest of my life!

I learned in High School the type of writer I am is the procrastinater! Being the procastinater is not the type of writer you want to be people! Being stressed out about papers at the last-minute is never any fun. It also doesn’t allow you to do your best writing possible. And will most likely have plenty of mistakes in it. I somewhat enjoy writing if it is a topic of interest. If im suppose to write about something I don’t care for or about i really despise writing. My High School teacher would probably say a lot of my papers look rushed and lacking content. Coming to college my preconceptions about writing were “Oh know!! huge essays every week!!”. I was always told about how many papers I would have to end of writing in college english course. I feel like this class and the direction I think this class is going I don’t really see that being the case. I’m glad this class is more of a blogging or free type of writing then constant essays. Also it allows me to write in a way in which I wouldn’t have a gun loaded next to my computer, just kidding. Overall I’m glad i ended up coming into this english class. I enjoy what we have been doing so far with analyzing pieces of literature, hopefully I will soon catch on to other sides of stories that I haven’t been looking at.

Overall I have really enjoyed my time spent at SIUE so far. I’m really enjoying my decision to come to this college. I have awesome teachers for the most part except for math, oh well. I have been enjoying being away from my parents a bit as well, the freedom that college gives you is sweet! Well that’s me in a nut shell about SIUE, writing, and english!