TOW #10 - Political Divide Splits Relationships – and Thanksgiving, Too

In Political Divide Splits Relationships – and Thanksgiving, Too by Sabrina Tavernise and Katherine Q. Seelye, the presidential election is conveyed to separate families. People had very strong opinions about who the next president of the United States should be and has created tensions between families, especially if they had different opinions about the election. Many family plans for the holidays were cancelled or even moved to remove the possibility of family members who voted for either Trump or Hillary from attending.  Thanksgiving is known for the time family gathers but this year after the election, family members have been dealing with the repercussions of the election as family relationships were affected by this political divide. Many democrats refuse to sit across the table from family members who voted for Trump who believes in things that they despise. Some relationships, no matter who voted during the election, are still secure and their relationship was not affected by different political ideas. Sabrina Tavernise is an American journalist for the New York Times and Kate Seelye is a Middle East journalist for NPR. The audience is any person who has experienced changing relationships with their family after the election. This article was written after the 2016 presidential election after Donald Trump was elected. The author’s purpose in this article is to inform the audience how the 2016 presidential election has politically divided the relationships between family and friends and express that family can continue to have strong relationships even with different opinions.  The rhetorical devices used in this article are strong diction and cause and effect. The strong diction used in the article depicts the serious effect the election had on family relationships. Cause and effect is used in this article to show how the results of Donald Trump winning this election affected many families across America. I believe the authors achieved their purpose because after reading, the audience can accept that even if their elected president won or lost the election, family relationships can still be strong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/political-divide-splits-relationships-and-thanksgiving-too.html?_r=0

IRB Intro Post #2 - Open

For my second non-fiction book, I am going to read Open by Andre Agassi. This auto-biography was written by Agassi to share his difficult life and how he overcame life set-backs and hardships. Andre Agassi is an inspirational tennis player who won several grand slams throughout his career. Even as a little kid, Agassi despised tennis, he continuously grew annoyed when he had to pick up a racquet every day of his life. As he grew older, however, he became dedicated to tennis and strived to become the champion he became when he turned pro at the young age of sixteen. Agassi proves that hard work and dedication will create the desired outcome in any person’s life. 

TOW #9 - The Results of the 2016 Presidential Election

In this political cartoon in the New York Times by Moir, Hillary Clinton is shown to be clearly winning the race against Donald Trump until she sees the FBI and Russia are helping Trump finish the race to become the next president. This political cartoon pictures the devastation Clinton felt when Trump’s presidential election began to take the lead on November 8^th, 2016. The road in this political cartoon is extremely rough and represents the entire conflict that occurred between these two candidates during the election. Moir is an Australian cartoonist who regularly creates cartoons for New York Times Syndicate on international events. The audience is for people in America who believed that Donald Trump was going to lose and show them that he has many people who are supporting his run for president. The purpose of this political cartoon was to represent the rapid change of the election and show the audience that Hillary Clinton was in the lead until Donald Trump rapidly changed the results of the election with his supporters. The Russian president, who preferred Trump to become president, and the FBI, who reopened Clinton’s private e-mails directly before the election, are on the back of this bicycle to represent how Donald Trump was able to effectively use events that occurred before the election to successfully become the next president. The rhetorical devices used in this political cartoon are imagery and juxtaposition to effectively prove the purpose of this political cartoon. The vivid imagery in this cartoon represents the two presidential candidates wearing the American flag, the FBI agent wearing all black, and the Russian flag being worn on the person on the back of Trump’s bicycle. The juxtaposition in this cartoon is expressed through Hillary Clinton alone on her bike compared to Donald Trump who had an enormous amount of help from the FBI and Russia’s support to easily begin to win the presidential election of 2016. I believe that Moir successfully achieved his purpose because this image obviously shows how Trump was able to change the election’s results and win the race to become the next president of the United States.

 

TOW #8 - The Glass Castle

In Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls adequately shares her life experiences to her audience. After graduating from Barnard, Walls moves into a new home with her boyfriend Eric and finally accepts her parents’ decision to live in an abandoned building. Walls’s parents are satisfied with their lifestyle, and Walls recognizes they have finally found a home with similar people. Walls’s sister, stabs her mother after being kicked out of her parents’ home. The entire family attends the hearing and argues the cause of Maureen’s mental state. This argument created a further drift between the family relationship. After a long period of time, Jeannette Walls’s father passes away due to a heart attack. Their last conversation made Walls realize her father truly loved her no matter what happened throughout their lives. Five years after her father dies, she left Eric and married John who encouraged her to reconnect with her family for thanksgiving. During this dinner, it is evident that the family still holds anger towards the parents but Jeannette Walls convinces her siblings to leave their anger behind and focus on a better future. Jeanette Walls graduated from Barnard in 1984 and worked for the New York magazine and MSNBC. Walls also uses her life experiences to create credibility. Walls’s audience is anyone who grew up with a difficult childhood. Walls wants to express to her audience that there can be better opportunities for people even if it seems impossible at the time. The rhetorical device used through Walls’s memoir are juxtaposition and symbolism. The juxtaposition is used when Walls described how her parents were living in an abandoned building but lived with all of their belongings compared to Walls’s life in a home filled with all of Eric’s belongings. The most important symbolism in the memoir is The Glass Castle. It symbolizes Walls’s ideal house as she grew up in a damaged family. I believe that Walls effectively achieved her purpose because she is able to prove to her audience that even living with a difficult childhood, a person can live a successful life.

TOW #7 - “Italian Village Devastated by Sunday’s Earthquake: ‘We’ve Returned to the Stone Age’"'

Castelluccio Di Norcia, Italy, is a village on the central Italian mountain that was impacted the most by a horrific earthquake that occurred in Italy on Sunday October 10, 2016. In Time, Matteo Witt and Carlo Piovana wrote an article, “Italian Village Devastated by Sunday’s Earthquake: ‘We’ve Returned to the Stone Age’” to inform their readers about the devastating damages that resulted due to the earthquake. Witt and Piovana are both writers for the Associated Press. There was an earthquake in Italy during August of this year that left 300 dead and about 15,000 of the citizen’s north of Rome being provided with shelter. Thirteen citizens refuse to leave their homes, most of them farmers, because they do not want to leave their animals or their livelihood behind. These people believe that leaving their homes would cause them to “truly have nothing left to come back for” (Witt and Piovana). The citizens of northern Italy were advised to move into housing that would be safer such as camper vans or containers, a better protected house.  People have described northern Italy after the earthquake as returning to the stone age or experiencing the apocalypse. Due to the destruction caused by the earthquake, it was almost impossible to get to Castelluccio without a helicopter. Medical supplies such as water and food were transported to Castelluccio three days after the earthquake occurred due to the inability to safely arrive to Castelluccio. In this article Witt and Piovana use exposition and strong diction to express the terrible effects the earthquake left on northern Italy. The exposition in the article is to explain the aftermath of the earthquake and show how people and homes were affected. The strong diction is used to express to the readers how atrocious the earthquake was in Italy. The author’s purpose in this article is to inform the readers to completely comprehend the earthquake’s effect in northern Italy. The readers of this article wanted to become better informed about the aftermath of the earthquake. I believe that these authors’ successfully accomplished their purpose because they efficiently informed their readers the effects of the earthquake in northern Italy.

http://time.com/4554305/earthquake-italy-norcia/?xid=homepage