Another way in which she appeals to the reader's emotions is not to necessarily induce sadness this time, but rather to stir up some hostile sentiment. In my opinion, she tears down the reader by characterizing the life of an American person as almost senseless both before and after the day of September 11, 2001 asking "did we even like ourselves?" Could we even pause our absolute lives long enough to appreciate our families and friends on a regular basis after something so significantly shocking and horrendous? She makes it sound as if on that day an American's "oversized sneakers and KFC" life was reduced to something even more unbearable and superficial. It was interrupted with the reality that everything cannot be plastic and perfect. This dinner-on-the-table-by-five and walk-the-dog-every-morning characteristic that she suggests is not necessarily the life all Americans live. To suggest that the readers do not already have hardships and heartaches is ignorant and haughty.
The overall aim of this article is to cause the reader to understand that, in her opinion, the only way to move forward and see around something such as the tragedy of 9-11 is to separate it in her own mind, suggesting that the reader do the same. "That morning cracked our world cleanly in two, that day that made two days, September 11 and 9-11." She insinuates that in order for the reader to ride out the weather they must put these two days into different parts of their brain, at an attempt to ignore that this event ever occurred to the people of America on the good days. Overall, her Epideictic article procures the idea that it was bad before, but then it got worse, so lets sing a happy song and try to appreciate the good things while they last. This isn't necessarily a negative way of thinking, I just feel that it is a bit artificial. There could be other ways of dealing with this discomfort than ignoring the bad feelings that are aroused, that even myself being not in any way personally effected by this holiday feels on the day of September 11th.
4 comments:
I liked your analysis of this article. I believe that you are right that the reader mostly took an emotional stance in order to persuade us to her way of thinking. I kept thinking about how maybe this article did not actually persuade me or Kelsie obviously to agree with the writer. I then wondered what happens when a writer tries to use emotions to convince us and just does not do so effectively?
Is that something we must talk about, does that make her article "bad discourse"? I don't know
I also really enjoyed your analysis. I like how you explained how she appeals to the readers' emotions because that obviously can help with the nature of her persuasion. You did a great job at the end of your analysis of suggesting other ways to deal with emotional discomfort after such a tragedy. Many people deal with things different and by Quindlen offering her suggestion of how to cope is just that: a suggestion.
i also really liked your analysis. when i read this article i was having a tough time trying not to cry. she did a very good job on pulling the emotions out of the reader and it worked well for her and you did a very good job at highlighting this point in your analysis.
Your analysis of this article was very strong and interesting. I really liked how you pointed out that not all Americans live their lives with dinner on the table by 5 as the author had suggested and that she was over-reaching in lumping all of America together. I also like how you developed the connection between the author's son's birthday and 9-11 and really showed how one day had become two. This is an emotion article and I thought you did a great job pulling out some of the flaws instead of just emotionally buying her entire argument.
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