Cose

The case Cose makes for the importance of reparations to damaged parties takes two forms. The first is that parties done damage by the government deserve an apology and honest attempts at restitution in order for them to realize that society is making a real attempt to right the wrongs it has done. Until this happens, people are forced to live in shame with the things they have experienced and don’t believe society cares about them. The other reason is that, in the example of the blacks, the damage has persisted; keeping current descendants in a lower economic level due to their ancestor’s mistreatment, and the only way to correct this is to assist those damaged communities in becoming whole. Making reparations matters to society as a whole because it shows we are committed to the ideals laid down in the constitution and are willing to make sacrifices in order to stay true to whom we are. Also, in fixing those communities who were damaged by our past actions, we create a stronger, more unified nation in which to live. A house divided cannot stand, and until we fix the division our nation will never stand tall.

Cora vs. Willy

Cora Tucker and Willy Loman differ vastly in their dreams, how they pursue those dreams, and whether or not they get to those dreams. Willy wants to use his people skills to make money and become well liked, whereas Cora Tucker travels and sells information, trying to make a real difference without actually pursuing her own self-interest. Willy chases this dream of renown and financial success with simple, dogged determination, continually depending on simply a “smile and a shoeshine” to get by, relying on his personality. Cora Tucker chases her dream differently, by educating herself on the issues and getting others to get the facts for themselves too. She adapts to the situation and educates herself, relying on her knowledge and her passion to carry her message rather than her limited speaking skills. Because of the way she pursues her dream Cora Tucker achieves it. She has made many changes in a racially segregated area and involves herself with many activist groups that continue to make a difference. Willy, who relies on only his personality, forsaking adaptability and education, fails to live up to his dream and ends up friendless and dead. A similarity between the two of them, however, remains in the fact that many people dislike the both of them.

Willy vs. Miller

Willy Loman believes that individual opportunity is there for the taking, as long as you are willing to go after what you want. A salesman gets by on simply being liked, on knowing people. Without practical skills, he can make a living just on his appearance and personality. That Willy pursues this shows how much he believes in the dream of individual opportunity, that he can support his family just on his appeal. His conversations with Ben also represent how easy he believes it is to succeed. Ben goes into the jungle and comes out rich four years later. Willy believes he passed up this opportunity willingly for his boys, but knows that he could have been rich and believes his boys will become rich in time. Arthur Miller, on the other hand, believes individual opportunity is not ubiquitous. If one works hard and stays educated, success may come, but very few can survive as salesmen. This is shown by Bernard's success, because an intelligent, hardworking boy succeeds where Biff, a lazy Adonis, fails. Miller kills the salesman myth when his character Willy Loman commits suicide after failing to get by just on his appeal.

Discussion Question

Is there individual opportunity for the Loman family? Where does education play into individual opportunity? i.e. Bernard succeeds where Biff fails. Can a man make a fortune out of being liked?

Presentations deux

Well, to be absolutely honest, today's presentations were not much different than yesterday's presentations. Different people were talking about different subjects, but the basic setup was essentially the same. People used some device to grab our attention as per Nancy's instructions, told us about a charity, and then used another device to bring us back in before the speech ended. Elise Lockwood was perhaps the most efficient user of this style, with the impassioned story of Grace or someone who was beaten by her father and her boyfriend, who received help from Elise's organization. She then spoke of all of the wonderful ways her organization generated money and how they used it to support (female/children only) victims of domestic abuse throughout some area. She then ended with how Grace herself was now doing so much better with her three daughters thanks to the help of the organization. I liked the structure of Elise Lockwood's argument, not so much as in it differed from everyone else's, because it didn't, but because her emulation of everyone else's structure was just more intense.

Presentations

I though all of the presenters who gave their speeches today did a fine job. Nearly all of them took some aspect of Mrs. Webster's advice into their speeches, most noticeably in the opening and closing of their speeches. Nearly everyone used a quote, humor, or a rhetorical question as Nancy had suggested they do, including myself, and it worked very well in each of the presentations. Everyone had a good mix of appeals to logos with logical arguments and statistics outlining the needs of their charity and appeals to pathos in moving emotional stories about the needs of those served by each charity. The presenters mixed these aspects well to create a cohesive, persuasive argument that truly conveyed the importance of donating to their cause. I look forward to tomorrow's presentations and I know that I will have a very difficult time choosing which of the charities to allocate my donor bucks to.

Progress

I have selected my charity and done some limited research into the topic. My choice is Schools on Wheels, a charity that brings tutors to students that could not otherwise have help with their homework. I feel that this appropriately fits the focus of allowing individuals to pursue their own success because education is the number one way to achieve success in our society, and giving poorer students a chance at a future is vital. It is also a charity near and dear to the hearts of University High School as Wes Priest's wife is significantly involved. I may interview her for more personal information about the project. I have not done much research, but I have gone to the schools on wheels website and looked around, finding a story about a 13-year-old boy whose tutor not only assisted him with homework but also allowed him to become a major part of a soccer team. This could be great appeal to pathos in that the tutors provide futures for specific children, and not just academically.

Charity Work

I have mixed feelings about both the necessity and the logistics of this assignment. I believe that the idea of promoting a charity specifically may not be the best way to show that we have learned rhetorical skills because the very idea of charity may be contested (as emerson showed). It also is heavily in favor of an appeal to pathos because logically there isn't really any need for charities at all. And once the idea of promoting a charity is required, the requirements on that charity seemed at once too imprecise and too limiting. To find a charity that expands upon an individual's chance for success limits one's options too excessively or becomes too vague based on one's ideas. Take the Lord's pantry, for example. It hands out food to the poor, one of the main goals of charities assisting those in need. Does this expand their ability for success by allowing them to survive, or is fulfilling a basic necessity just perpetuating a never-ending cycle of poverty? Where is the line drawn? For these reasons, I am a bit confused and a bit anxious about the outcome of this assignment.

Self-Reliance

Emerson is taking a different view of success than we have used previously. In Ragged Dick and in Stephen Cruz's story, success was defined in terms of career status and earning power. When one gets a good job and earns a lot of money, being able to buy a lot of things, Alger would deem them successful, having achieved the american dream. However, Emerson believes that success comes when one throws off the shackles of society and can become one's own person without conforming to society. Great men are the ones who don't allow others to force ideas upon them, but value what exists in their own mind and attempt to communicate those ideas to others rather than be swallowed by the vast number of "others". When one knows who he is, and recognizes that life is for living, not for conforming to the american standard of success, and values that which he can create by himself, by his own labor, that man is truly successful. He has transcended societal limitations and become his own man, successful in that he only defines success by his own standards and not by societies.

Class in America-2003

Although much of his writing does not explicitly claim that the wealthy are exploiting the poor, it is clear through his tone and through some of his evidence that he believes the rich are unfairly exploiting those who are less fortunate. When he cites Harold Wachtel's quote about how inheritance is similar to a game of monopoly in which one game's gains are carried into the next, Mantsios is portraying the unfair advantages that the wealthy exclusively claim for themselves in terms we all can understand. However, in much of his writing Mantsios simply assumes that the wealthy are exploiting the poor and that his reader will agree that the harsh contrast his statistics show are brought about by this unfair exploitation. By showing the contrast throughh his evidence without directly saying that the rich are subjugating the poor, Mantsios pushes his reader towards distrust of the rich and empathy with the poor, strengthening the position that the poor are being taken advantage of by those more fortunate. There are alternative views, however. Mantsios says that more poor and getting into college, but quickly devalues that important achievement with other statistics saying they don't do as well. If one can focus on the advantages we are able to give our poor, one could show how the gap is shrinking and how fewer people are so disadvantaged.