Author: ssaborio

rivera annotationss

Both Patel and Scott explore how the difference of religion should not be a big issue in a community. They both understand the value of each specific religion and how some people fit better with other religions. However, they don’t believe that religion should be an issue that causes people to turn against each other in any way. Patel in “My Neighbor’s Faith: The Heroes I Was Looking For” describes St. Jude’s Catholic Worker house by saying “My grandmother was a Muslim Dorothy Day. Her home had been a Muslim Catholic Worker house. The heroes I was looking for were within my religion, in my very family”. It really stood out to me when he described his grandmother as a muslim Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day being the leader of a Catholic movement, it would seem odd to use her for describing someone who is muslim. It removed gaps between religions. In “Picking Lots” Scott who is a pagan says ” I happened to draw the lot of being born to Pagans. I honestly did not realize how strange a fate that was until I was almost twenty”. This goes against the common thought that people tend to have about pagans being these weird people completely removed from society.

A tactic both Patel and Scott use is showing that they are regular people just like anyone reading their articles. I can relate to sometimes thinking that people of other faiths must live completely differently than me or that they view the world in different lenses. However, both Patel and Scott come across as regular people who embrace all cultures and religions as valid. Scott demonstrates this in “Picking Lots” when he says “While I recognized that my life was strange, everybody I knew was just as strange—or stranger!—and so I still felt quite normal by comparison”. This is very true as I can remember being in high school and thinking this way.

Madness is a key element and theme of the poem “Howl by Allen Ginsberg. He starts of his poem by saying “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked”. Ginsberg is clearly talking about madness driving people past the standards, maybe the standards set by society. Throughout the poem he discusses different events happening causing chaos throughout America. He describes a raw anger, one that is passionate and strong. Not just a small little outburst but one that is a force to be reckoned with. I also found it interesting how we was able to include his stay at an asylum as part of his poem. When showing solidarity with his friend, Carl, who is receiving electric shock therapy, he writes “I’m with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses”. The theme of madness is present there as he pretty much says that the mind is having trouble taking in senses.

Allen Ginsberg uses a lot of symbolism and imagery in “Howl”. When portraying the broken state society finds itself in, he says “who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall”. The images described in “Howl” are very vivid. They run freely in your mind as they portray a destroyed society in a very frightening way.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay and address “Divine School Address”, he talks about the potential and goodness of man. About everything man is capable and how all greatness resides inside man and needs to be found inside of him. In paragraph #5, he mentions how people reap what they sow. That actions affect the course of one’s life. He says “Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity.”

In paragraph #7, Emerson says “Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity.” By this he’s trying to say that good is good, while evils is produced by lack of good, the same way darkness is caused by the lack of light.

In chapter 3 of Uncle Tom’s Cabin there’s a sad scene that Harriet Stowe writes about to highlight the personal problems that slaves have to go through also, not just physical pain. “‘Well, lately Mas’r has been saying that he was a fool to let me marry off the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his tribe, because they are proud, and hold their heads up above him, and that I’ve got proud notions from you; and he says he won’t let me come here any more, and that I shall take a wife and settle down on his place. At first he only scolded and grumbled these things; but yesterday he told me that I should take Mina for a wife, and settle down in a cabin with her, or he would sell me down river.’ ‘Why—but you were married to me, by the minister, as much as if you’d been a white man!’ said Eliza, simply. ‘Don’t you know a slave can’t be married? There is no law in this country for that; I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part us. That’s why I wish I’d never seen you,—why I wish I’d never been born; it would have been better for us both,—it would have been better for this poor child if he had never been born. All this may happen to him yet!'” Even George’s and Eliza’s right to marriage and love had been taken away from them. This passage shows the difficulties slaves had to go through and how dangerous it was for them and their lives to be dependent on their master and his desires. This scene gets to the readers heart and makes them empathetic with the struggle George and Eliza face in not being permitted to love each other freely. Harriet Stowe used emotions effectively in this chapter.

Another scene similar to this occurs in chapter 10. “Tom sat by, with his Testament open on his knee, and his head leaning upon his hand;—but neither spoke. It was yet early, and the children lay all asleep together in their little rude trundle-bed. Tom, who had, to the full, the gentle, domestic heart, which woe for them! has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy race, got up and walked silently to look at his children. ‘It’s the last time,’ he said. Aunt Chloe did not answer, only rubbed away over and over on the coarse shirt, already as smooth as hands could make it; and finally setting her iron suddenly down with a despairing plunge, she sat down to the table, and “lifted up her voice and wept.’ ‘S’pose we must be resigned; but oh Lord! how ken I? If I know’d anything whar you ‘s goin’, or how they’d sarve you! Missis says she’ll try and ‘deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that goes down thar! They kills ’em! I’ve hearn ’em tell how dey works ’em up on dem ar plantations.’ ‘There’ll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.” “Well,” said Aunt Chloe, “s’pose dere will; but de Lord lets drefful things happen, sometimes. I don’t seem to get no comfort dat way.’ ‘I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it;—and thar’s one thing I can thank him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and not you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe;—what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me,—I know he will.'” In this scene Tom is preparing to leave his family for what might be forever because he’s been sold to a different slave owner. It shows how vulnerable slaves were, their whole lives could be turned upside down and families could be torn apart so suddenly and unexpectedly. Anyone with any humanity could easily sense the evil and pain, slaves had to live with and with fear of. The author is very good at appealing to a person’s emotions by painting vivid pictures of families being destroyed by slavery and everything it carries.

 

One value/ quality that Franklin believes all Americans should have is Temperance, meaning self restraint. In general temperance means self restrain for food or alcohol, but it can also be used to describe self restrain from other faults such as anger.  Franklin refers to it in the most common way, he describes it by saying “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation” (Franklin, Autobiography, chapter 8). There are twelve other qualities that Franklin talked about in his autobiography. However, he started the list with temperance by mentioning “Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquir’d and establish’d, Silence would be more easy” (Franklin, Autobiography, chapter 8). By this he means that temperance should serve as a base or foundation for other values such as silence and so forth. In order to convince his readers that they should also work on those values in order to be better Americans he uses both humor and ethos. Humor because at times he pokes fun at himself or raises himself up in comedic ways. I also mention that he used ethos on his audience effectively. Though he also raises himself in a comedic way, he also does so in more seriousness. He even talks about a system of keeping check on himself that leads to perfection. Though he mentions how he failed at time to do so, he still writes about a plan that can take him to perfection, and he believes it’s realistic. This makes him seem closer to perfection than most and wiser, therefore making any advice he gives, “wise advice”.

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