TOW #23: "Life and death at his fingertips: watching a brain surgeon at work" by: Erica Wagner

Reading Goals:

• find adequate (but new) devices
• be able to identify her purpose in using each device

Writing Goals:

• to be cohesive in the way that my points flow together
• a strong analysis of evidence

At the top of the article, “Life and death at his fingertips: watching a brain surgeon at work,” sits a simple picture of a wrinkled old man in scrubs. His hands are folded in front of him and he is standing against a white wall. His white hair peeks out of his surgeon’s hat and his round glasses match his equally round face. This is Henry Marsh, Ukraine’s best neurosurgeon. He is 64 years old and will retire next year. In this article, Erika Wagner, writer for the NewStatesman, examines his life and what it takes to be a neurosurgeon, especially in Ukraine, through imagery and a personal narrative.

Wagner’s imagery allows the reader to better understand the world of a neurosurgeon. Not many people can visualize what brain surgeons actually do, but when describing Marsh’s surgery, Wagner states that what she saw through the microscope was, “A glittering, undulating landscape of shining whites and greys and reds is revealed in vertiginous 3D,” she also compares the arteries and veins in the brain to “deltas of a river.” This allows the reader who does not know much about the brain or brain surgery to achieve a better understanding of the very basics of Marsh’s profession and the intricacies of surgery. Once the reader can really conceptualize the difficulty of Marsh’s day to day tasks, Wagner then can branch out and describe, through her personal experience with Marsh, what it means to be the best brain surgeon in the country.

Wagner utilizes a personal narrative in order to connect with Marsh directly, and thus examine his life more directly. Instead of taking a disjointed approach and describing Marsh’s life from a distance, Wagner speaks to him directly, and includes dialogue. “‘What proportion of the body’s blood goes to the brain?’ Henry asks me-- and for a moment my own heart is in my mouth, and I feel like one of the interns he questions in the meetings he holds every day at 8am.” This personal narrative gives the reader a stronger connection to both Marsh and Wagner. Not only that, but it displays their personalities as well. Wagner is able to add personal commentary as well. She thinks aloud: “Would I trust Henry if I were a patient, or a patient’s relative? I reckon I would.” This add an extra layer of dynamic to her writing, making Wagner and the story she is telling all the more interesting.

Wagner is able to capture the meaning of Henry Marsh’s career and the implications of what he has done so far in the surgery world through imagery which furthers understanding, and personal narrative which allows the reader to connect to Marsh and Wagner.

(http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/03/life-and-death-his-fingertips-watching-brain-surgeon-work?utm_content=buffered8d3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

TOW #22 Save The Twinkie by: Nick Anderson

(Source)

Recently, there has been much backlash after Hostess, the company that makes twinkies, has discontinued them. To many Americans, Twinkies have been a staple throughout their entire life, and the thought of their childhood favorite no longer being available is, well, unthinkable. In this cartoon, artist Nick Anderson argues that there are way bigger problems than the death of the Twinkie, and that people should stop focusing their energy on trivial causes.

Parallelism helps Anderson to create his argument because it shows the difference between support of the two causes in this picture. On the left, there are two lone people holding a small “Save the Earth” sign. To the right of them, there is a mob with a huge banner reading: “Save the Twinkie.” The difference in support for the two causes are highlighted by the layout of this picture and the parallelism between the signs which differ only by one word. This helps to show the reader how ridiculous the amount of support for the Twinkie is compared with the cause that is beneficial to society.

Parallelism helps to bring forth the argument in a very prominent way, but the background colors and setting are more subtle devices that Anderson uses. In the cartoon, the setting is nowhere distinguishable. The ground is grey, and the sky in the background, is a blue-pink haze. This creates the feeling that the woman’s “Save the Earth” sign is targeting pollution. The simplicity of the background also works to draw the reader in to the central argument made without distractions. Thus, the argument is subtly clarified and the focus is drawn to the main image in the picture.

Anderson is able to make the argument that the hysteria surrounding the Twinkie dissemination is ridiculous through parallelism and a minimalist background. Thus, the reader is left feeling almost ashamed to be a part of a society that holds Twinkies in higher importance than the planet they live on.

TOW #21: Revenge is Sour by: George Orwell

George Orwell is a well-known British author who was prevalent during World War II. His article, “Revenge Is Sour” was published in the London Tribune in 1945. In his article, Orwell examines the true meaning of revenge when it comes to finally being able to punish the Nazis after the war. In order to fully examine the true effect of revenge, Orwell utilizes both similie and personal anecdotes.

In the beginning of his article, Orwell uses a simile to describe the officer he met when he visited a war criminal prison. Orwell describes how the Jewish officer who oversees the imprisoned Nazis kicked and verbally abused the men constantly. But Orwell makes an intelligent observation: “he wasn't really enjoying it, and that he was merely — like a man in a brothel, or a boy smoking his first cigar, or a tourist traipsing round a picture gallery — telling himself that he was enjoying it, and behaving as he had planned to behave in the days he was helpless” (para. 7). This simile is essential for Orwell to be able to examine the extent of the fulfillment of revenge because he is characterizing it in a tangible way for the reader. The reader can then understand that the officers only think they enjoy it because they would have enjoyed it when the war was still going on. Yet, they don’t now that the Nazis are pathetically easy to target. Not only do similes help the reader to conceptualize the concept of convincing oneself revenge is better than it actually is, but personal anecdotes help analyze this feeling too.

George Orwell uses a personal anecdote of a fellow journalist in order to appeal to pathos. Orwell writes how he was traveling with another young journalist on the only bridge into a decimated German town. Beside the bridge was a dead German soldier. The young journalist had never seen anyone dead before, and he immediately began acting different towards any German. Orwell uses this anecdote to appeal to the sympathy within the reader just as the journalist was suddenly sympathetic enough not to carry out his own forms of revenge (in this case by harboring remorse). This, by invoking sympathy within the reader, they finally understand that sometimes revenge just is not worth it.

(Source)

TOW #20: IRB Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns) by: Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling, my biggest (unrealistic) friend crush of all time has crafted one of the most interesting autobiographies I’ve read. Actually, it may be one of the only autobiographies that I have read in my lifetime (but still). Right from the very beginning of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Kaling makes us fall in love with her genuine heart and spirit. In her book, Kaling employs an explicit purpose and a casual tone which both make her writing extremely effective.

Kaling explicitly states her purpose, which helps the reader to know why she wrote the book. Many authors write autobiographies with just themselves in mind, because they want to discuss their incredible achievements. Mindy, on the other hand, has an introduction section in which she answers frequently asked questions about her book. In it, she says that she, “wrote this book in a way that reflects how [she] think[s]...[she’s] only marginally qualified to be giving advice” (3). Mindy later on talks about how her book is just really a manifestation of things she would like to say, times in her life that are worth talking about, with a few lessons thrown in, that hopefully gets a lot of laughs. Mindy being extremely up-front about how she writes first, to entertain people, and next to talk about things that are relevant to her make her writing effective in that it helps the reader to know the underlying purpose to all of her stories and opinions. Thus, if the reader is curious about why she told a specific anecdote, they realize that it may be just because she was trying to entertain.

Kaling also employs a casual tone throughout her book in order to relate to the reader on a personal level. Kaling occasionally says random things directly to the reader in the middle of her writing in order to create a dialogue between herself and the reader. In her second chapter, called “I Am Not an Athlete,” she begins it directly by saying, “I know, I know. Did you put down this book in surprise?”(21). This sense of causality allows the reader to relate to her on a personal level because she is not speaking down to the reader like the superior writer of the book. Kaling seems like she is just having a casual conversation with you as friends.

In conclusion, Kaling utilizes a clearly stated purpose and a casual tone in order to entertain and relate to her reader in an extremely effective way.

(Source)

TOW #19 Princess Cartoon

Reading Goals:

• Identify the relationship between the picture and caption
• Check to see if use of color could be strategic
• Analyze the purpose from many different aspects

Writing Goals:

• Clearly identify purpose(s)
• Fully analyze what each device does for this purpose, and connect it back
• strong introduction

(Source)

In today’s society, girls have very different attitudes than they had just a mere fifty years ago about success. Women's ability to climb the socioeconomic ladder without the help of a male counterpart in America is an important cornerstone of life our country takes pride in. In this cartoon from The New Yorker's weekly cartoon section, illustrator Christopher Weyant's purpose is to first shed light on the fact that women in today’s society have very different views on success, but on the other hand, to make the reader question the severity of modern day feminism. This is evident in the juxtaposition between traditional and modern mindsets, and humor drawn from the little girl's comment.

The juxtaposition illustrated in this cartoon brings to light the modern difference in cultural views because the cartoon replaces what you would expect with something completely different. In this cartoon, a father is reading a little girl a bedtime story. If one were to just see the cartoon without the caption, one would think the little girl is asking the father when the princess will find her prince. Instead, the caption reads, “Skip to the part where the princess climbs to the top of the corporate ladder”. One would think the little girl would be looking forward to when the prince comes to save the princess, but this young girl, encapsulating feminism, sees success as a self-propelled thing. This sharp contrast brings to the forefront how society today has changed in its views of women’s roles because this  dialogue differs from the expected. This juxtaposition adds a certain shock value to the cartoon that humor then drives home.

This cartoon utilizes humor in order to somewhat undermine the ridiculousness of over-the-top feminism. In the cartoon, the girl wants to see the princess “climb to the top of the corporate ladder”. This statement is humorous because girls that young usually don’t even know what the “corporate ladder” is. Thus, the underlying point here is that feminism is creeping into even something as innocent as a bedtime story. This cartoon may be trying to tell us that sometimes we may be going too overboard on the women’s equality issues, and this may be tainting sacred aspects of our culture, such as the traditional bedtime story.

In conclusion, the juxtaposition in this cartoon allows the illustrator to  show the difference between modern society’s views and past views on women’s rights, and humor works to shed light on the fact that sometimes modern feminism can be too sensitive and over the top. However, the best thing about this cartoon is that the illustrator crafts it in such a way that many different messages can be taken away from it, depending on the reader’s persona. One could see this as a cartoon praising women’s newfound social mobility, or one warning of the danger of too much empowerment.

TOW #18: Storm buries Northeast; 16 inches of snow in NJ by: Kathy Matheson and Michael Rubinkam

My father is convinced this winter is the worst he’s ever seen. Almost every day he says some variation of, “I’ve lived in this area all my life; I’ve never seen a winter like this.” Of course, who does not know that we have been bombarded with blizzard after blizzard. With another monster storm looming, I googled “snow in Philadelphia” and came up with pages and pages of articles. I clicked on one, by citizens/Yahoo writers Kathy Matheson and Michael Rubinkam, and got sucked into their description of the peril that the snow has brought us. Through descriptive diction and mini anecdotes, Matheson and Rubinkam are able to paint an accurate picture of winter here in the Northeast that makes readers feel for this area’s unlucky inhabitants.

In order to transport the reader to the frozen tundra that is now the Northeast, the writers use descriptive diction. In describing this storm, words were extremely varied, and evoked an image in the readers’ mind. The storm was a “fierce blast of winter,” “swirling,” and “stinging” people’s faces. Instead of conventional words, these more descriptive adjectives bring new life to this storm. With language like this to paint a picture, I could practically feel the snow on my tongue even if I was in Texas.

Working in conjunction with descriptive diction, mini anecdotes work to illustrate the dire conditions and evoke sympathy within a reader. One person was described to be “squinting to read the destination on an approaching bus in near white-out conditions”. Another was “wearing just a thin jacket huddling underneath an overhang as snow stung his face”. These short but effective anecdotes make the reader feel the same pain (or something far-off but seemingly close) as the poor victims of WINTER 2014.

In conclusion, Matheson and Rubinkam do a good job at attempting to convey our widespread pain here in the polar vortex. They use fresh and descriptive words, and construct a string of short anecdotes. Both of these achieve the desired effect: the reader inevitably thinks “oh those poor people!” Yeah, we know.

(Source)

IRB Intro: Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by: Mindy Kaling

  Every Tuesday night without fail, my mother and I sit down to watch one of our favorite shows (just second behind The Bachelor/ette), The Mindy Project. In this show, comedian/actress Mindy Kaling plays herself as a female gynacologist who owns a small medical practice in New York City. Sure, this show isn't the most sophisticated humor ever, but we think it's hilarious. I relate to Mindy's awkwardness and love of food on such a level that I think we're long lost sisters. Anyway, I love Mindy, and remembered my good friend Marta telling me about how she loved reading Mindy's book. 

  So, when I was watching the season finale a week ago, it came to me what my next non-fiction book was going to be: Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). Mindy's personal memoir covers all of her life experiences in a collection of humerous tales with an interlacing of Mindy's commentary on the lessons she has learned throughout her life. This is no self-help or woman-empowerment book; it is just a book by a really funny woman written to hopefully help give girls just like her someone to connect to or laugh with. 

  I hope to just have fun with this book and enjoy my favorite TV star's personal stories. I can't wait to enjoy some of Mindy's humor away from the TV as I wait with baited breath for her show to be back on in April. Maybe, I'll even learn a life lesson or two, but I'd be just fine with getting a few laughs.

(Source)