TOW #19: IRB: The Hard Knock Life

I originally decided to read Monuments Men as my IRB for the marking period, I actually have been hooked on a book my cousin let me borrow titled Decoded. This book is actually a biography that explain how Shawn Carter, aka Jay Z, prospered from a impoverished kid living in Brooklyn to the famous celebrity we now know today as Jay Z.

Since the text is a biography and not an autobiography the author needs to establish their sense of ethos due to the fact they are retelling another’s life, however I believe they flex their knowledge in their depth of knowledge about Jay Z within the first few pages of the text.

While the text is interesting and primarily focuses on the rhetorical device of anecdote to stress the overall growth Jay Z has illustrated through his not so easy life, there is another device Random House uses in order to exhibit the man Jay Z truly is. Every few pages, there is a few lines of Jay Z’s actual lyrics however to make things interesting the writers of Random House decided to annotate those lyrics and show why Jay Z made them or even why he came up with them.

The use of lyrics may seem elementary since the audience will have some recollection of the song because they are most likely a Jay Z fan reading about his life, but it is more complex with that. The addition of the lyrics tie what the audience knows about Jay Z to the story of his life, because for the most part most rappers rap about their lives and their struggles to reach the fame and glory they desire. The familiarity of the lyrics to most audience members is what actually makes the use of lyrics successful in this biography because if the audience can tie what they know about Shawn Carter’s music to the story of his life, they can now piece together the life of Jay Z and reach the purpose of the text which is to highlight the humble origins and rigorous journey of Jay Z. 

TOW #18: Visual Text- Heinz Ketchup

While flipping through a recent Sports Illustrated magazine, this advertisement caught my attention the second I flipped to this page because of the red background in comparison to the many white backgrounds that are present on the other pages of the magazine.

This visual text published by the makers at Heinz clearly is informative and is telling the audience in a unique way that their product is the most natural ketchup on the market. By making the classic Heinz container look like a stack of tomatoes, the audience not only is familiar with the shape of the Heinz bottle, but also realizes the message that Heinz is sending to their audience.

I am not a ketchup fanatic, which is what Heinz takes into mind with this simple advertisement because if they really wanted to tell us about how it is 100% tomatoes they could have listed reasons why. However, Heinz was smarter than this by making their advertisement completely visual. The audience does not have to read an entire paragraph or look at this page for more than a second while flipping trough the magazine because the image resonates in the readers mind as soon as they glance at the tomatoes shaped bottle.

I think it was strategic by Heinz to create both a simplistic yet complex image that gets the point across to the reader because all it takes is a glance at the page and the purpose of Heinz’s advertisement is reached and thus successful with this ad. 

IRB #3: The Monuments Men

For the third marking period, I decided to chose a nonfiction text that is based off a historical account rather than my past one which focused on research and investigations. While I have become familiar with The Monuments Men because of its film that is being released in the near future, I have decided to read the book and hopefully compare it to the movie once it comes out. I think this topic seems pretty interesting because I did learn a lot about World War II freshman year, however this twist on the war shows aspects of what world war life was like for Europeans who were not exactly in the same situations than the ones we learned about. In addition, since I am Jewish I am interested in this time period where some of my ancestors faced some of the most inhumane treatment in history; therefore, I have a lot of knowledge to expand on because I learned about WWII and the Holocaust in both school and Hebrew School. Not only do I hope to gain knowledge about this subject because it is a subtopic of the war I am unfamiliar with, but I also am interested to see how a historical text uses rhetorical devices to enhance the text and ultimately achieve its purpose. I also always find it interesting to read books and compare them to the movie because for the most part the movie is always inferior to the book rating because it is altered than to book.

TOW #17: Written Text: Following the Rules

Jason Marsh, editor in chief at Greater Good Science Center recently created a hypothesis that indicates that adults follow the rules to a strict interpretation of rules rather than kids, even when their other option deals with ethics. Marsh not only references historical experiments done by deceased scientists that proves his hypothesis, but also current events that have been all over the news to strengthen his idea. While his purpose is to convince the audience that his hypothesis makes an argument and is true, Marsh builds up his argument from a smaller idea to a bigger picture as his text continues.

With the use of current examples such as a man left for dead by local fireman or a boy denied a school lunch because his account was in the red, both examples connecting to the emotional appeal of the audience that we follow the rules too much as adults. To contradict these examples with one that even furthermore supports Marsh’s idea, he uses an example of a boy who went across his street to save his fallen elderly neighbors, even though the boys mother told him that he should not go check on her.

By using such powerful examples to illustrate Marsh’s purpose, the audience gets a better idea of his hypothesis because they not only can visualize the events as they are read off the page, but the ethical side to each example clearly depicts that we follow rules to the point where we have no ethics. Marsh wants us, the audience and the citizens of this country to realize that we are so used to following rules that we literally will take a child’s lunch away, or not save a man we know needs help because the fire department was not actually called for help.

These powerful examples add up throughout the text to a point where the readers soon judge those bystanders mentioned in the text, then realize as a people we need to change our interpretation of rules to prioritize on the well being of others than constantly following guidelines.  

This link can be found at

 http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/01/opinion/marsh-empathy-utah-school-lunches/index.html?hpt=op_t1