Herold’s AP Comp and Lang blog

Logos: Downe uses statistics and real examples, such as the cheap cost of beef and other essentials, and the kindness of the people around him who “will lend him a barrel” of cider to show that things are indeed better in America.

Pathos: Downe appeals to his wife’s emotions and her desire for freedom and equality in the sentence, “America is not like England, for here no man thinks himself your superior.”

Ethos: When Downe says, “I would rather cross the Atlantic ten times than hear my children cry for victuals once,” he is giving evidence of his own values.

Logical Fallacy: Downe uses a fallacy of omission by only using examples that support his argument and leaving out important details that might refute him.

Values: His opening sentence shows his values by saying how well he is doing, and that he would not have written if life in New York wasn’t going well. He shows himself as a responsible father by taking the initiative to settle down ASAP and get things all set up.

If you know anything at all about basic Greek and Roman mythology, you’ve probably heard of the goddess Persephone, and even if you haven’t, you at the very least know her story well – it’s so timeless that it’s recounted endlessly throughout our culture. In her myth, Persephone was a young girl who was so beautiful that countless gods tried to woo her, but her protective mother Demeter, afraid for her daughter’s innocence, shooed them all away. But Hades, the god of the underworld, got around that little snag by sneaking up on her one day while she was picking flowers, and whisked her away to the underworld to be his bride. Demeter, the goddess of the Earth, was devastated, and searched high and low for her daughter, finally uncovering the truth. With Demeter neglecting her duty to tend to the Earth in her despair, the Earth began to die, sending the people into hunger and misery. Finally, Zeus forced Hades to return Persephone, pressured by his dying people to help the Earth thrive again. Hades reluctantly agreed to return his wife, but before he sent her back, he tricked her into eating four pomegranate seeds, which forced her to return to the underworld for four months each year. When Persephone returned and was reunited with her mother, the earth flourished once again, but for those four months each year when Persephone returned to the underworld, Demeter’s grief caused the earth to become barren and cold once again.
The story of Persephone has not only been told countless times through literature, but has been visually captured in paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art. One such representation is an oil-on-canvas painting called The Return of Persephone, by Lord Frederic Leighton, painted in the years before 1891. Persephone, in her bright orange gown, is undoubtedly the central figure, and the bright clouds and sky highlighting her figure from behind make her seem to glow. Her face is obviously beautiful, and not merely in an everyday way. Her classically perfect features and her figure, or what we can see of it, are given an unearthly feel by the glow that surrounds her. Demeter’s reaching arms, as well, create two parallel lines that seem to lead directly to Persephone. The light from behind Persephone shines on Demeter as well, particularly on her face, symbolizing her joy at her daughter’s return. While at the bottom of the painting where Demeter stands, the colors are dark and the plants there fading and gloomy, symbolizing Demeter’s previous loneliness and despair, the colors surrounding Persephone are bright and joyful. The man in the background (presumably one of Demeter’s many lovers) is shadowed and unnoticeable. Demeter’s gaze goes straight past him towards her daughter; Persephone, too, seems to completely ignore him. Though joyful, the figures are delicate and flowing: Persephone’s outstretched arms seem as though she might float into the air and fly away at any moment, and if you look closely at Demeter’s feet, she seems to actually be leaping gracefully toward her daughter. Leighton’s painting emphasizes feminine beauty and grace, and shows the loving connection between mother and daughter.
Another very different representation of Persephone’s story depicts her first interaction with Hades. Jan Peter van Baurscheit’s The Abduction of Persephone by Hades, created between 1669 and 1728, is a terracotta sculpture in relief with a very different style and interpretation of Persephone and her character. Whereas The Return of Persephone shows her as beautiful, graceful, and feminine, in Baurscheit’s sculpture she is depicted quite differently. Though still beautiful, she is less obviously so; not as completely flawless as Leighton portrayed her. Her nose is pointed and her eyes slightly hooded; she is still very attractive, but in a quirky, unusual way. Her hair, as well, is flying out of its perfectly styled coiffure, and her posture is hardly ladylike: she is fighting hard to get away from her abductor. Her hand is on his shoulder, trying to push him away, and amusingly, at any moment it seems her left foot might slip into a most unfortunate position (for Hades, anyway). Her look of disgust and anger contrasts with Hades’ expression, which seems almost beseeching. Her higher position compared to him is telling as well. Despite her innocence and naivety, she is far from helpless: she is fighting for her life, and doesn’t look as though she’s going to give up anytime soon. Though the sculpture is a still frame of one moment in their struggle, they are not motionless figures. Their bodies together create a line, but whether it is moving toward Hades and the underworld or towards the sky and freedom is unclear. The fabric of Persephone’s unraveled clothing swirls around them and contrasts with their linear movement by creating a calm background for Persephone’s fierce, passionate struggle.
These two depictions of Persephone give very different ideas about her personality and character. The Return of Persephone shows her as beautiful and the embodiment of femininity. She is quietly radiant, calm, almost demure, and yet joyful at the same time. In The Abduction of Persephone by Hades, she is just the opposite: raucous, proud, and fierce despite her innocence. Each version of Persephone has its positive qualities, and though the two are completely incompatible with one another, each artist’s interpretation of Persephone stays true to her story and supplements the original Greek and Roman tale perfectly in its own way.
Baurscheit, Jan Peter van. The Abduction of Persephone by Hades. Image. Web
Gallery of Art. 21 Apr 2008. .

Leighton, Lord Frederic. The Return of Persephone. Image. CGFA: A Virtual Art
Museum. 2006. 21 Apr 2008. .

Fog of War was a refereshing view of the Vietnam War and of McNamara, a figure who is invariably portrayed an evil genius who manipulated and twisted his position and his situation to his own benefit, rather than doing what was best for his country and for the world. To make this documentary seem unbiased and honest, use of rhetoric was an essential strategy. The intensity of the music used and the masterful combination of the music, the dialogue, and the images were powerful and emotional. Another important aspect of the film was the fact that McNamara directly faced the camera, rather than facing an interviewer off to the side. McNamara’s position shows honesty and openness and portrays him as trustworthy. Rather than using a lot of dialogue and words, as Rosenbaum expected, the film said much more through its extremely emotional photos and videos. All in all, McNamara and the creators of this documentary did an excellent job of using rhetoric to persuade a hard audience, if not completely in McNamara’s favor, then at least closer to that direction.

Anderson’s humor stands out in this book review of “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.” It is the most convincing part of his rhetoric as he makes fun of books, readers, the book in particular that he is supposed to be reviewing, and himself. He points out his own flaws and inadequacies with the words “My signature move is a mildly orgasmic “Mmmmm,” which manages to suggest several things simultaneously: agreement, disagreement, ambivalence, and above all that my familiarity with the book in question is so deep it’s become muscular and sub-verbal, less a literary opinion than the visceral appreciation of a jaguar for the dawn.” Anderson is entertaining in his self-deprecation, which subtly draws attention away from his inability to actually review the book and towards his real argument about reading as a social booster and that “real reading is not just hoarding fodder for coctail chatter, it’s crawling, phrase by phrase, through a text and finding yourself surprised or disappointed or ruined or bored with every other line.”

The second-semester seniors sat in Stearns’ class, playing bubble shooter and checking their Facebooks, when he asked them to get together in groups and draw a cartoon about second-semester seniors. “Who’s gonna draw?” “Nose goes!” they yelled, Robin nearly poking herself in the eye in the process of attempting to get her finger to her nose in time. One could hear a chorus of evil snickers rise up around the classroom, directed at those with slow reflexes who would soon be forced to, God forbid, actually do work.

A visual essay was definitely an effective way of portraying this incident. Forman’s photos are very emotional and thought-provoking and remind the reader that racism is not just a thing of the past. Though its condition has improved, there have been many recent events that have just an strong of an effect on us as the busing incident in the 70s. The comparison between the busing incident and the Boston Massacre is an interesting parallel as well. Above all, the vision of the American flag, a symbol of freedom, being used as a weapon against its own people is a shocking and horrifying thing to see.

I definitely agree with Canaday’s analysis of the two paintings. There is more action in Peale’s, but Degas’ is far more interesting. He uses the art terminology very well, not only explaining the impression he got from the subjects and the painting but explaining the reasoning behind that impression and how the artist used artistic strategies to bring the focus to certain people or things.
The painting of the Peale family depicts a happy, wholesome, loving family, but one without much depth, it seems. It is nearly impossible that there were no feuds whatsoever, no tension between family members, and Peale certainly would have been aware of those, but he either was incapable of painting with that much expressiveness (which is not true) or he chose to hide any unpleasantness in his own family. The Bellelli family, on the other hand, clearly has some rifts of that kind. It shows the separate personalities of each individual, whereas the Peale painting shows only the group as a whole with no differences between individuals.

I’m pretty sure that Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the weirdest book I’ve ever read. It’s confusing, both because of the total lack of recognizable grammatical structure, and because of the fact that I was not alive in the sixties and therefore don’t understand half the words coming out of the narrator’s mouth (er, pen). He flits around from topic to topic like a bee from flower to flower. Or maybe a butterfly. There seem to be a lot of butterflies in this story. And in Day-Glo colors, no less. It’s completely random and, honestly, just…weird. I can’t think of a more accurate word to describe it.
In the beginning, it was a little too shockingly strange for me. I didn’t get the point of all the random punctuation Wolfe threw in there, nor the odd onomatopoeia syllables. In a society where drug use, at least in “civilized” circles, and almost certainly in the literary stick-up-arse community, is totally taboo, it was really strange to read an entire book about a bunch of self-proclaimed loonies driving around the country in a fluorescent bus tripping on acid.
But despite all the strangely incorrect grammar and uncomfortable subject matter, I ended up loving it. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the kind of book that grows on you as you read it, if you can get past the initial shock at the total insanity, and draws you in until you feel like you’re really there with the Merry Pranksters. The descriptive language is so vivid and intense that you’re almost tripping right along with the characters, and underneath all the crazy there’s an underlying message that was important in the sixties and, in my opinion, has become even more important in our MTV-driven world of consumerism and almost constant sameness: to let go, be yourself, and just “do your thing”, as Kesey tells the Pranksters. They may have taken that message a little too much to heart: there are constant tales of prancing nakedly through the daffodils and the like, and the consequent arrest/incarceration/trip to the insane asylum is not something most people aspire to. But even so, I find that it’s more important than ever now, with our world’s total lack of individuality, to discover your own differences and those of the people around you, and to embrace them and to love yourself, and others, just for being different and special.

Postrel examines the definition of beauty that society recognizes and redefines it. Even small children compare beauty and attractiveness, and she says that it is unlikely that we will change our ideas of what beauty is because it is most likely a biological preference that is ingrained in us from birth. Artificial beauty, which we see constantly in the media, almost more than we see real people, messes with women’s minds and skews their judgment by comparing their own beauty to the airburshed models they see on TV. It causes us to compare ourselves to every person we meet and judge others as well as ourselves based on looks, using the typical societal standard of beauty as an example. This example is fake and impossible to live up to, and it kills the self esteem of women throughout our society.

There is no doubt about the fact that Deborah Tannen is extremely bitter. She tries to hide it and stay unbiased and fair, but it’s hard for her because she is so passionate about the topic. Depending on the reader’s point of view, there could be very different reactions. Fellow feminists would sympathize with her self-righteous anger at being stigmatized by society. On the other hand, a whole lot of other people would dismiss her as just another crazy hairy lesbian feminist. Just as she notes all of the many ways that women are “marked”, she is marking herself.