"Save the Seals"

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is an organization very well known for having controversial and eye-catching ads such as an ad for the "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign in which PETA has a celebrity pose completely nude. For a change, PETA took a more serious approach to an ad featuring a celebrity and for this ad, they chose Steve-O, a daredevil and TV personality. Those who know of Steve-O are aware of his wacky sense of humor and stunts that are both outrageous and painful. Their attention would most likely be brought to a cause even Steve-O is serious about.
PETA was quite clever in coming up with this ad, because it uses all three major rhetoric tools: ethos, logos, and pathos. The use of ethos is quite apparent with "Steve-O for PETA." Why should we trust Steve-O of all people? What does he know? Again, he is known for being a fun-loving and reckless guy, so whatever issue wipes the smile clear off his face must be an important issue.

Since I do not know any women or even girls my age who watch the shows Steve-O appears in, I assume this ad is aimed at teenage boys and young men. Men tend to be less sympathetic towards animals than women are mostly because somehow sensitivity and sympathy equals inadequate masculinity. If someone with as masculine as an occupation (or even appearance for the matter) as Steve-O's shows sympathy, then clearly it is okay for all of the other young men to do the same. In a way, this is a mixture of both pathos and ethos.

This ad appeals to pathos with the word choice. "Each year, many seals are killed" simply would not cut it. More accurate words are used to paint the truly horrifyingly gruesome picture of what happens to seals for their fur such as "slaughter," "massacre", "babies," and "cruel". Also, notice the angry and protective look on Steve-O's face. That helps give the reader the same emotion towards the issue. Plus, can you not help but think the seal drawn on his shirt is adorable? It let's the reader see seals in a more appealing light.

For logos, this ad has a simple, yet powerful paragraph. "Each year, tens of thousands of seals are..." That's enough to grab the reader's attention to the rest of the sentence.

To make an advertisement successful, it needs to have a combination of pathos, logos, and ethos in order to keep the attention of the reader. The reader will need someone they can trust endorsing the ad, the ad to get inside his or her head, and have the facts along with statistics.

"One Tribe"

The Black Eyed Peas are known for their very upbeat and easy-to-dance-to songs. Most people, myself included, have seen the new Pepsi commercial about Pepsi funding meaningful/charity projects. That is where I heard a tiny little excerpt of the song, "One Tribe." Since I did not pay too much attention to the lyrics, all I thought of the song was that it was very catchy.

I did not get a chance to see the lyrics to "One Tribe" until I went CPYC, a church camp that takes place in Pleasantville, this month. One day, the lesson everyone learned was to not judge people by appearances, but instead on the good we see within them, so we listened to "One Tribe" in our "small group" that day and really payed attention to the lyrics. The song was obviously fitting to the lesson with lyrics like "Don't care where you are / Don't care where you been / 'Cause where we gonna go / Is where we wanna be." Where people are and where people have been represents the not-so-good exterior others see, while where people want to go represents the beautiful interior everyone has somewhere within them that people should see.

Church camp aside, I listened to the song again and listened to the lyric "Let's cast amnesia / Forget about all that evil .... that evil that they feed you." Sure, I heard the lyric, but it really made me think. Who teaches us our prejudices and grudges? Our family? Our friends? Our teachers? The media? The truth is all of them are "feeding us that evil." They feed us racism, sexism, stereotyping, and profiling. Think about it, a lot of the unfortunate events in the world sources from that evil. The only possible way it could stop is if we erased our memory of the evil that the world pours into our head.

Would it not be great if we could just forget about everything that happened in the past and our differences and come together as one tribe?

Through the Eyes of a Pig

What do people see when they look at this photo? Obviously, most would recognize a close and warm bond between a mother pig and her piglet, and that is exactly what I recognized when I first looked at the picture, but then I took a much closer look into the picture. Disregarding the feel-good caption below the photo, I saw fear and sorrow in the piglet's eye. The piglet has a very personified facial expression in which it looks as if it will burst into tears.

One may ask, "What is the piglet so afraid of?" Take a look at where the piglet is sitting- a feeding trough. This darkly foreshadows the feeble and miserable piglet's horrendous fate as a part of someone's meal and the gruesome slaughter it will have to face beforehand. The mother has a quite peculiar facial expression. She knows from previous experiences exactly what her piglet fears and knows that her young one has every right to be worried, yet still attempts to assuage and comfort it. This piglet will be one of the many piglets people had severed from the mother's care then killed. Imagine how heartbroken and hopeless one would be if every single one of their children were brutally murdered. That is the level of pain this mother pig constantly feels and she will always feel that very agony until she cannot produce anymore young (at that point, she would be slaughtered) or until she dies.

Some peoples do not have compassion for animals because they like to think that animals cannot feel as humans feel, but whether someone looks at this photo and sees a mother loving her child or sees a piglet and its mother in fear, he or she will clearly detect an emotion that some people will never know of.

Annoted photo link

This sums me up.

Of Mice and Men

[WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!]
Analysis of Detail

From his first paragraph, John Steinbeck sets the scene in Of Mice and Men through his use of imagery as he describes the natural world as a parallel to later events in the novella.

"The Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green" describes a deep and green river close to the hillside that George and Lennie were walking along and also describes George and Lennie. George "runs deep" in that he is a very understanding person, despite his vulgar language. Lennie runs "green" because he is, in a way, innocent and does not know what he is doing is wrong until he does the action. This also foreshadow the ending, because Lennie also "drops in close to the hillside bank" from being shot in the back of the head. "Slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains" describes an unstable treacherous mountain. This quote describes Lennie, in a way, because Lennie has a lot of strength (in fact, he has no awareness of how strong he really is) and is very unstable, like a rocky foundation. This also hints that the plot will have smooth slopes at first, then will be rocky at the end.

For a change in description, Steinbeck chose to vaguely describe Curley with "a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway." Lennie, who came down from a different ranch, physically injures Curley in a fight. Curley's wife does not beat Curley physically, but what about mentally? I clearly dected that Curley's wife is a tramp. She seems to flirt with the other men who work on the ranch, which would be an emotional beating to any spouse. If the reader takes the literal meaning, the quote merely describes a river that leads into a pond. Steinbeck seems to describe a limb that used to be strong, but weakened over time with "the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it." This symbolizes George throughout the novel. First, he is mentally strong and can handle Lennie. Over time, George seems to break because he is influenced to shoot Lennie in the head before Curley shoots him in the "guts" to prevent any pain.


Analysis of Point of View

John Steinbeck used the third-person point of view throughout the novel to really emphasize the seclusion each man experiences. One indicator of this lies in the passage "Crooks did not see him...on raising his eyes...a scowl came on his face."
"Lennie smiled helplessly in an attempt to make friends." This proves that Crooks was often alone. He scowls at the appearance of Lennie after all. He must not have many human bonds at all considering how bitterly he behaves toward a man that obviously does not have any average mental capabilities. Also based on this, Crooks appears to appreciate his privacy more so than relationships. He continuously attempts to shoo people from his room. Lennie on the other hand apparently desires friendships, and always looks for them. His loneliness led him into Crooks's room. Lennie always tries to have a companion, even if they are dead (like the mouse) at times. Lennie desires the sense of security that comes with not being alone. George's words also sum up the intent of Steinbeck when he says, "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place." He means that ranch workers have no one to rely on and must live out an existence of wandering, for they "don't belong no place." Looking at the whole novel, this statement means that, in the end, ranchers will only have themselves to rely on. However, George backed Lennie and Lennie backed George.

Analysis of Tone

Of Mice And Men has a tone of both of inspiration and despair. The inspiration appears in quotes such as "The afternoon sun sliced in through the cracks of the barn walls and lay in bright lines on the hay." This image pleases the mind and gives one an image of sunlight, which is quite inspiring to most. "But in the barn it was quiet and humming and lazy and warm." This also paints a pleasant picture and would give the reader a soothing image. Despair reveals itself.."He went on sorrowfully ... Suddenly his anger rose." This refers to Lennie after accidentally killing a pup. These details are very , mainly because Lennie says, "Why do you got to get killed? You aint so little as mice"after that. This brutal quote even brings tears to some eyes. Not only because a puppy was accidentally, but because someone feels so much sorrow for a mistake they cannot help.

Analysis of Theme

This novel very much represents, "I am my brother's keeper." Both George and Lennie depend on each other. George obviously "keeps" Lennie in that he basically watches over him and makes sure he does not get into any trouble, very similar to a parent and child's relationship. Lennie, in a way "keeps" Geroge because he depends on him so much. As independent as George appears, both Lennie and George depend on each other because of Lennie's handicap. Lennie cannot even function correctly without George and George depends on Lennie because he feels the need to protect Lennie. In a sense, George gives protection to Lennie and Lennie gives George someone to protect.

Migrant Mother

What do you feel when you see this picture? What do you see? j

I see a starving, distressed, worried, yet hopeful family. The children cling onto their mother as their waiting for their father to come home. Maybe their also waiting for something else, such as the future with no more recession or depression.

That is where hope peers its way in. I sense a hint of hope in the mother's eyes

Over all, I feel more inspired by looking at this photograph rather than depressed. It reminds me to always have hope, though life looks to be rough.

Animal Farm's Animals

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, Orwell uses animals to represent Russian leaders and idealists after World War I. Thus, the story is not only a fairy tale, but a way to vaguely state Orwell's distrust against the Soviet Union. This allowed the book to be distributed to Russia without the authorities looking into it. Orwell characterized the animals to where one could easily detect which animal represented which Russian. Despite his personification of each farm animal, he still pays regard to the fact that they are unintelligent and unable to make certain products. This method would definitely appeal to people with very strong political views. In conclusion, Orwell's choice of characters (animals) obvioulsy attracted more readers than what the novel would if the personalities were protrayed through humans.