Multi Modal Essay

Taylor Wisnieski

11/6/11

Professor Lutz

Multi Modal Essay

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan

             September 11, 2001 will be a day that no one will ever forget. On this day 19 militant hijackers associated with the Islamic extremist group, al-Qaeda, high jacked  four airplanes. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin Towers, one was flown to Washington D.C and hit the Pentagon, and the last one ended up in a field in Pennsylvania. During this attack over 3,000 people were killed and four hundred of those were fire fighters and police officers. Now, ten years later, our president, Barack Obama has announced the ending of the war all together. Before I go any further, I came across a youtube video from 2008 that discusses President Obama's decision to end the war by 2010. This video was from three years ago but what he says is going to happen during the process of ending the war is exactly what is happening now, only a year after he planned on having all troops out of Iraq.  

                                           

Ending of the Iraqi War

       This just proves that though President Barack Obama had the intentions of ending the war a year ago he was a little late. When President Obama was elected into office in November of 2008, he declared three months later that by the summer of 2010 our troops would be brought home. When the summer of 2010 came Obama's opinion changed completely and he was quoted saying, "time to turn the page" on Iraq and put the focus back on building back up the United States. The only problem I see is that the U.S made the decision to involve itself in the problems Iraq is experiencing with its government and now our president can't decide whether to bring the troops home or worry about our economy here. Now that Osama bin Laden is dead our troops have no reason to be there anymore and should have been brought home after his death because since then more people have been killed and Americans have spent more money on nothing. The thing that worries most Americans is that if in 2008 when President Obama told us he was bringing our troops home by the summer of 2010, how can we believe him now when he says that our troops will be home by the end of this year? While asking myself this question I did some research and though our troops will be leaving Iraq they may be sent to Afghanistan where there is still currently a war between the U.S and Afghanistan. Now that Obama has plans on bringing our troops home from Iraq he has other things to deal with in Afghanistan, he has pledged to end U.S combat roll in Afghanistan within three years. October 7, 2011, the U.S led war in Afghanistan marked its 10th year, having passed two milestones: The Taliban has been forced out of power and Osama bin Laden is dead. Though our troops have been in Afghanistan for ten years, there's no sign of our troops coming home any time soon. Lately there have been many high-profile attacks, such as, the assassination of Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani last month. With these types of attacks still happening in Afghanistan it is raising many questions by the U.S and is jeopardizing our peace negotiations with the country. Rabbani was killed by a Taliban negotiator who he was supposed to meet with in Kabul. This attack became a reminder that the Taliban regime, who the U.S has been trying to topple for the past 10 years, is still capable of carrying out strikes in even the most fortified sections of the capital. This killing very well may keep our troops in Afghanistan even longer.

The Taliban

          With Presient Rabbani dead, the Taliban now has the opportunity to take over the Afghan government and many western leaders do not doubt that this will be the case. Taliban, are students of religious seminaries who have existed in Afghanistan long before modern schools existed. The beginning goals of the Taliban were to disarm the country, end lawlessness and enforce the Islamic law on a united Afghanistan. In June of 2011, the International Crisis Group reported that the Taliban had expanded in the south and southeast to central-eastern provinces. This is just proof that the Taliban is capable of expansion and of being in control of other countries. The Taliban are people who most are afraid of because of how powerful they are and how they are not scared of killing people. Pictured below is of Taliban insurgents in front of a burning German military vehicle in northern Kunduz Province. 

The war between the U.S and Afghanistan has now become a war between the United States and the Taliban. The Taliban is now recruiting non-Afghan soldiers to fight against our American soldiers.Having this Taliban influence in Afghanistan is only causing more pain and trouble for the people of Afghanistan and it's only getting worse. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance. Widespread abuse of power from simple shakedowns to outright collusion with the Taliban will very likely outlive U.S military combat. Also having a reconciliation between the U.S and Afghanistan will be hard to achieve after nine years of war (Cohen 11). As Afghanistan is failing to do any better, Obama tries to shed some light on these problems by proving that the military has done a great job in Afghanistan and that they are ready to be brought home. In my opinion I think that our troops should have been sent home a long time ago and that since we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq we have only made problems worse. It's not our job to be involved in another country's problems when we should be worrying about our own here, like our economy and how it's falling.

Treatment of Soldiers

  This brings me to another problem that not just me but most American's are having with our troops being in Afghanistan and Iraq, the way they are being treated there and when they return home. "In a 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it was found that one-third of US military personnel from the war in Iraq accessed mental health services after they returned home. Among 222,620 Iraq veterans, 31 percent had at least 1 outpatient mental health visit within the first year postdeployment, while the annualized rate of such services was 35 percent.”(Mitchell 2). This statistic stuck out to me because it's clear that soldiers who came back with PTSD did not always receive the treatment they needed. This also shows that many troops are coming back with PTSD and not many of them are getting help. Thinking more about this situation I came across a study of troops returning from Iraq or Afghanistan who have experienced some form of PTSD, whether it be alone or the problems they have had in relationships or parenting since returning. In this study, the participants who have children reported significant concerns about impairments in parenting. These participants then went on to say they would rather go through family therapy instead of therapy alone, in order to deal with the PTSD together (Daniel 49). I enjoyed reading about this study because it showed that troops with families are more willing to get help so they don't ruin relationships between them and their family. As I was thinking to myself about the treatment of these soldiers when they return home I knew I'd have to do research on how they were being treated overseas. I came across an article where a doctor was quoted saying, “Pain needs to be consistently assessed and treated all the way across the continuum of care, from that initial point of injury all the way down the road.", he later went on to say that as of lately the methods of treating and following a patient from the time of injury until they are fully healed has been lacking. If any other person experienced an injury such as tearing your ACL, they would be at the doctor continuously until they were completely healed, so my question is why should it be any different for soldiers? Just because they are coming back from a different country doesn't mean their care should stop once they return to the U.S. 

Continuing War in Afghanistan

       Though the war in Iraq will be coming to an end by December of this year, the war in Afghanistan will still be continuing for the next three years. As I was thinking to myself about how if the troops in Iraq are able to be sent home why can't the troops in Afghanistan be sent home I found a video from May of this year petitioning the end of the war. This video was made after Osama bin Laden's death.

                                                          

I completely agree with these people who are trying to petition the end of the war, I never once thought our troops should even be in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. I never saw the point in reacting to the terrorist attacks in the first place, yes hundreds of people in the U.S died from the attack but what gives us the right to go and kill their people? It makes us look just as bad as them, clearly we are no better than the Iraqis or the people of Afghanistan. When President Bush sent us to Iraq to help "create" a government for their people he was stepping on their territory and that is why they've reacted so negatively towards us, because it's not our place to fix another country's problems. Since being in the war we have spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of U.S citizens and what can we say we've accomplished really? We have attempted to establish a government in another country that isn't our own while our economy here is diminishing. While thinking about how I felt I had to do research on how other people felt and I came across a quote from an article that really stood out to me, "...there is little reason to believe that the continuing commitment of tens of thousands of troops on a sprawling nation-building mission in Afghanistan will make America safer." I agree with this 100%, nothing we are doing over there is making here any safer. We have more important needs at home like high unemployment and the flood of foreclosures while we are spending $10 billion a month in Afghanistan. After everything our country has been through I think it's finally time to get our troops home.

Works Cited

Daniel W. King, et al. "PTSD Symptom Increases In Iraq-Deployed Soldiers: Comparison With

             Nondeployed Soldiers And Associations With Baseline Symptoms, Deployment 

             Experiences, And Postdeployment Stress." Journal Of Traumatic Stress 23.1 (2010):

             41-51. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2011.

COHEN, MICHAEL A. "Afghanistan: What Can We Achieve?." Dissent (00123846) 58.1 

               (2011): 9-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.

Blog #15

Blog Article #1
       The topic I chose was the war in Iraq because I think there is a lot of controversy going on about this topic. The one blog article I found was a blog from The New York Times, the blog talks about how the plain old headache has been a leading cause of attrition in units deployed to Iraq in Afghanistan. The author of this article is, James Dao. The argument made in this article is that the Kevlar helmets the soldiers wear on their head every day weigh about 3 pounds and put pressure on the occipital nerve in the back of the head. Also a study found that neurological illness was among the top three causes of noncombat related evacuations from war zones, and that headaches were the most common neurological complaint for those evacuees (Dao). I think that this blog article has ethos in it, since it is coming from The New York Times it is easy for a person to believe what they are saying because they are a well known credible newspaper. It also has pathos because it appeals to the reader's emotions, when they begin talking about why soldiers come home with headaches that may eventually turn into other things wrong with the brain, people start to listen more because they feel sorry for them. This blog article is different than anything I've read because it really showed an importance on how serious head injuries are to men and women who are in the army.

Blog Article #2
     The second article I found came from the author Curtis Silver, where he talks about Obama and how his administration is trying to have all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of this year. The one quote that stuck out most to me in this article actually came from Obama himself, "The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq" (Silver). This stuck with me to think that there have been troops in Iraq for years now and so many people are still going to be sacrificing their lives for our country when the war is no longer going on. This article is so much different than the other ones that I have read because it is very blunt on the issues at hand. Later into the article it tells us that though troops may be withdrawing from Iraq they will now be going to Afghanistan where there's a lot of conflict right now. 


Blog Article #3
      The next article I found was actually again about Obama and how he is trying to dismiss as many troops as he can. Yet this article goes on to explain that though troops may be leaving, about 49,700 of them are still staying in Iraq and remain on a "advise and assist" base. The author of this blog is Katy Stoddard. This article stood out to me most because even though they are sending some troops home they are still keeping the majority of them there even though there is no more war. This article definitely appeals to the rhetorical appeal pathos, which is the appeal to the emotion of what you are reading. I think this article definitely appeals to the reader's emotions because it makes them sad to think that many of the troops in Iraq really won't be coming home.

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Blog #14

      While reading What We're Doing When We Blog I found two hotspots that were interesting to me. The first one i found interesting was when it said, "The articles' authors are rarely webloggers themselves, which places them in the unenviable position of describing and defining weblogs based on observations, not experience." (Melzer 294). This was interesting to me because someone else is trying to describe a weblog that they did not write just off of an observation which could very well be a wrong observation of what the weblogger is trying to say.
       Another hotspot I found to be interesting was, that in a blog you will always find the most recent information at the top of the page. It's kind of like a newspaper where the most recent and important information will be on the front page. It goes on to explain that they do this because it allows the reader to find the most important information without having to search for it. Also if new content has been added it's easy to see as soon as the page is loaded. By having these things it sets up an expectation that the readers will return to see what else is new since they were last logged on.

Blog #13

Chapter 5 in the Pearson text is mostly about exploratory essays. The text also talks about annotated bibliographies and how they along with exploratory essays serve as an intermediate stage in the research process. While reading I found an important rule to writing exploratory essays, "The essential move for exploratory thinking and writing is to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view". This reminded me of when I had to write my exploratory essay and while writing it I had to search for many solutions to the problem at hand, I couldn't just have one solution because people would get bored with it then. Another important factor I found in writing an exploratory essay is, "The key to effective exploratory writing is to create a tension between alternative views". I found this significant because you can't just have one view towards the issue you are writing about, you have to show people that you are open to changing your opinion on it. It may be easy for a person to write just through their own opinion but it challenges the writer to look more in depth into the issue and allow themselves to maybe change their opinion after doing research.

While reading chapter 9 I found a couple of things that stuck out to me as they were talking about citation. The first thing that stuck out to me was when they were talking about attributive tag method. This is where you place the author's name at the beginning of what you are citing and the page number at the end. I think this is useful because you are citing while not having to follow the real guidelines to citing in a paper. The second thing that stuck out to me was, how to cite when there are 4 or more authors. I didn't know how to do this in the past so when I read about it I finally learned how to properly cite it. When you are citing 4 or more authors you put the first two authors then et al. afterwards.

Blog #11

I found rhetoric in advertising.




-The first picture is to show censorship and how there are things people aren't allowed to say so that's why his mouth is covered.
-The second picture is more of a visual pun with all of the man's body being different fruits and vegetables.

Blog #10

My question for the exploratory essay was: What are the effects of lowering the drinking age to 18 years old?

October 2

Journal Article

Source #1
Wechsler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson. "Will Increasing Alcohol Availability By Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Decrease Drinking and Related Consequences Among Youths?." American Journal of Public Health 100.6 (2010): 986-992. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Oct. 2011.


This article talks about the risks of lowering the drinking age to eighteen years old and if it will increase the amount of alcohol available to youths. They also discuss whether this will decrease the drinking related consequences among youths or will it increase the consequences.


"Since 1984 the national legal drinking age in the United States has been 21 years"



"The lower minimum legal drinking age was followed by increases in the sale and consumption of alcohol and in alcohol-involved traffic fatalities, particularly among young adults aged 18–20 years"



"Approximately three quarters of college students aged 18–20 years drank alcohol in the past year"


The article then goes on to talk about the statistics behind lowering the drinking age. There are some statistics that show that when the drinking age was lowered there were less alcohol related deaths because teens would drink responsibly. Later into the article they talk about college students and how they binge drink, which proves that teens under the age of 21 still drink heavily in the college environment. I believe that this article tries to show you the good and the bad of lowering the drinking age to 18, which is a good thing because people need to see both sides of it.


Source #2
Streeter, Ruth. "The Debate on Lowering the Drinking Age." CBS News 01.Mar.2010. n. pag. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. 


News Article


"When the age was raised to 21 in the mid-1980s, the goal was to reduce highway fatalities. But everyone knows that the 21 age limit hasn't stopped minors from drinking. And now some experts believe it's actually contributing to an increase in extreme drinking."


"Asked what the advantage is to lowering the age to 18, Beckner said, "The overall advantage is we're not trying to enforce a law that's unenforceable. The abuse of alcohol and the over-consumption of alcohol and DUI driving. Those are the areas we've gotta focus our efforts. Not on chasing kids around trying to give 'em a ticket for having a cup of beer in their hand."


This article is mostly about people who are in favor of lowering the drinking age. I agree with the first quote though that teens under the age of 21 drink to an extreme because they are not allowed to drink at the bars so they will get drunk before they go out but they will do it quickly which is extreme drinking. Later into the article they discuss a boy in a fraternity who had died from alcohol poisoning because the fraternity was going through their "hazing" stage of recruitment. The parents of the boy who died said they think that if the drinking age was 18 the boys in the fraternity would have called the police instead of leaving the boy to die on the couch. This article makes very good points on what could be different if the drinking age was lowered.

Blog #9

My topic is the effects of lowering the drinking age to 18. One of the questions I have is, Does lowering the drinking age up the risk of more deaths? Since a lot of 18 year old's are drinking already, would lowering the drinking age just allow even younger teens to have easier access to alcohol?

Blog #8- "First Writing Since"

Suheir Hammad's poem almost made me cry as I was listening to it, i felt that it could have a strong impact on almost anyone who watches it. While listening to her poem, I analyzed it through Aristotle's rhetorical appeals, logos, ethos, and pathos. You can tell very quickly that Suheir Hammad was able to appeal to her audience on the pathos side easily. There were many different ethnic groups there listening to her poem and as you watch the audience you can tell every one of them is affected by her poem. Her poem gives a vivid image of what happened on September 11, 2011, an example of this was when she says, "...sky where once was steal, smoke where once was flesh." (Hammad 0:34). Just listening to that you get an image in your head of where the towers and people inside them once were and now it is no more. Ethos and Logos are also used in her poem as well. An example of this is when she says, "My hand went to my head and my head to the dead Iraqi children, the dead in Nicaragua and Rwanda who vied with fake sport wrestling for America's attention"(Hammad 1:20). She is clearly knowledgeable about this issue and she is caring about that issue trying to prove to others that we need to stop paying attention to just what's happening in America and pay attention to other countries too.
I found her to be very persuasive and I agreed with her argument. I feel that anyone who listens to this will relate to her in some way, even if in the beginning you're convinced you won't be you will end up relating to some form of her poem, just by the way she speaks she captures the audience attention. I think that her argument was that Bin Laden and all the people involved in blowing up the twin towers do not represent her as a person or even her as an Arab. Those people are their own person and she is also her own person and just because they are the same nationality and their skin color is the same doesn't mean they are relate-able at all. I also think she wants Americans to realize this too, and it makes her angry because she has no involvement and lives in America but they just assume she knows things about it because of her nationality which is very ignorant of Americans in general. I think that Suheir Hammad's poem is very persuasive and she makes many points that everyone can relate to.

Taylor Wisnieski Blog #7

As I began reading the first thing I noticed about an exploratory essay is that you have to create a tension between alternative views. When you start out you might not know where your thinking process will end up but when you start using the statement, "I used to think... , but now I think.." your writing becomes a process  of inquiry and discovery. I agree with this because when you begin to think of things in different ways you may completely change your opinion about an issue once you give it more thought from both sides. They later go on to say, "These same dialect thinking habits can be extended to research writing where the researcher's goals are to find alternative points of view on the research question." (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 108), this I can agree with because it forces you to look at all points of view, not just your own. I can also relate to this because when I have had to write a paper that gives both points of view on an issue I have ended up changing my own view on it because it makes you look at it in a whole new way. One of the other hot spots that stood out to me was the evaluative annotation in a bibliography. I like how in an evaluative annotation of a bibliography you can critique the work and include comments on it, which normally help the reader. Annotated bibliographies serve many important functions, one of the most important things is it, "...engages researchers in exploratory thinking by requiring that they read sources rhetorically like experts, entering critically into scholarly conversations" (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 116). They can also be valuable time saving tolls for new researchers in the field. All of this is important because it forces the researcher to think rhetorically about the bibliographies instead of allowing their own view to get in the way.

Blog #6

The first "hot spot" I came across while reading "BROS BEFORE HOS" was that men subscribe to these standards because "..they want to be positively evaluated by other men"(Guy Code 47). This was startling to me because you only think of girls dressing and acting a certain way for other girls not guys subscribing to certain standards for other men. It later goes on to a quote from a man by the name of David Mamet, which happens to also be my second "hot spot". He says, "Women have, in men's minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it's useless to define yourself in terms of a woman."(Mamet 47). This caught my attention right away because he is so demeaning towards women by saying that every man thinks this way and that women aren't worth giving approval, only men matter. I know many men who would ask their wives or girlfriends what they thought of what they were wearing and if the woman didn't approve the man would change because he would then second guess himself about it. After reading further into the paragraph Mamet says, "...women are for possessing, not for emulating"(Mamet 47), I started to get really angry because women are so much more than that and he makes it sound like every man thinks this way which I do not agree with at all.

Blog #5 Taylor Wisnieski

While watching "Doofy Husbands: Target Women" I realized it was very critical of men and their role as husbands. The first "hot spot" I came across was that right off the bat they make men out to be idiots and that, "..you need them around to do three things; barbecue, breed children, and take care of the lawn"(Doofy 2:00). I can't say i agree with this at all, I feel that men are needed for much more than that and the video was very harsh on men. The second "hot spot" i came across was when they started describing men and how good looking and fun they were until they met their wife and got married. If I were to use my parents as an example I'd have to say that they are still fun and like to do things that they did when they were single so I can't say that I'd agree with them when they say men are no longer fun when they get married and have kids.

While watching "Tropes vs. Women", I found the speaker's tone to be quite sarcastic throughout the whole entire video. As she described the Hollywood character type, the "manic pixie dream girl" seemed over exaggerated and she made it out to be that all women characters in movies were like this and that all men characters needed these types of women. I don't agree with this because there are so many different types of women characters in movies and they aren't all this "dumb girl" type that is only there to help the men with their own lives. I completely agree with her though when at the end of the video she said, "we are full and complete human beings with out own troubles, interests, and creative endeavors"(Tropes 5:19). Women are their own people just like men are and we have our own problems to deal with just like they do. I do agree though that women can sometimes help men with their problems a lot easier than any other man could so sometimes we are needed for those things just not all the time.

Tannen and August, Blog #4

Tannen's article is about women being unmarked. One example of this that stood out to me was when Tannen said, "Instead of concentrating on the discussion I found myself looking at the three other women at the table , thinking how each had a different style and how each style was coherent." (Tannen 140). I can relate to what she is saying because there have been times myself where I will even unconsciously judge other women and what they are wearing or what kind of makeup they have on. Where this begins to bother me is when women are judged by their appearance and men really aren't. We have to do our hair and our makeup because if we don't then we are judged as not caring and if we went to interview for a job they would pass us up because it makes you look bad. While men on the other hand can just wash their hair and put on nice clothes and won't be judged any differently. Almost everything Tannen said I agree with but that doesn't mean it's right of people to pass judgement on women more than men. 

When I began reading August's article I realized very quickly that it was anti-male biased. One line that really stuck out to me was when August said, "...who insist that rape is a crime committed only by males in which only females are victims" (August 131). None of my own personal experiences can relate to this but one thing that stuck out to me in society was the woman from Dublin who raped her ten month old son. In this case there was no woman victim there was a male victim which just proves that men can also be victims of rape or assault and that people shouldn't assume that women can be the only ones. One line that I read that I do not agree with is when it says,"When a young man marries, he will be required by law and social custom to support his wife and children" (August 136). This isn't always true because in some cases women are the one in the relationship supporting the family while the men stay home and take care of the children, though this isn't very common it still occurs in some households. In August's reading I agree with some of the things he said but some of them I don't agree with at all and they don't make sense to me. 

Homework #3 Amy Tan- Taylor Wisnieski

As i began reading Amy Tan's story Mother Tongue i discovered that most of her writing throughout the story is an open prose form of writing. She writes her thesis in the beginning and sticks with it the whole way through her story. One of her statements are, "I spend a great deal of time thinking about the power of language-the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth."(Tan 4). I believe that she follows this through the whole story and an example of that would be when her mother is not understood by people in the hospital. This evokes an emotion from both her mother and the people working in the hospital, the people working in the hospital are annoyed because they can't understand her broken English and her mother is upset because she cannot receive her test results. I believe that the audience in this story can be everyone, any person can relate to this whether it be the woman from China who can barely speak English or an English professor who can speak proper English. Everyone can relate because everyone has either heard people speak the way Amy Tan's mother does and may have reacted the way some of the people in her story did, or they do speak the way her mother does.  I don't believe that Amy Tan is conforming to the genre conventions of an essay because her paragraphs at the beginning and end of the story. In the beginning she begins talking about her mother's broken English and she ends with talking about her mother's broken English.

Homework #3

As i was reading part of chapter 3 in Everything's a Text and one of the paragraphs that really stuck out to me was, Personal Experiences Shape our Literacies. I completely agree with what this paragraph has to say because
it all depends on what experiences you've had that made you the type of literate individual you are today. As I look back on my experiences with writing I know I could have written better papers and tried a little harder to make them sound grammatically correct and interesting but when you're a kid all you want to do is just get through your homework and not worry about the way it's going to sound to others who read it. Now that I'm aware of the mistakes I've made in the past while writing papers I believe I will be able to produce well written papers.

Another paragraph that I came across and caught my eye was when they talk about writing about our own lives. I think this is such a good thing to do because it allows you to build confidence as a writer and for you to explore what you really think and feel about the world around you. I always enjoy writing about myself or things I know of well just like most people would, it always makes writing a lot easier. Sometimes my life experiences are very close to what I am required to write about which also helps me write a better paper if I can relate to the situation.

Homework #2

The excerpt from Malcolm X's speech to Harvard Law School was one of the passages that struck me as very interesting because of the different type of voice and style he uses to his audience. Malcolm X uses what linguists call code switching, this is when a speaker moves effectively between different audiences and adjusts their language and delivery (Melzer 13). This excerpt caught my attention because of the way Malcolm X spoke to his audience and how he quoted Shakespeare which showed he was aware of white European cultural traditions. "As long as you sit around suffering the slings and arrows and are afraid to use some slings and arrows yourself, you'll continue to suffer" (Malcolm X 8). I think this quote is what the whole passage is really about and with which i also agree with, because he explains that if you allow people to put you down and you don't stick up for yourself or live your life for yourself then you're always going to suffer.

Another passage that caught my attention was where they discussed literacy mediums and took a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. "The light sprang up again, an there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, and tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned into stone." (Tolkien). Since this is all written and not being shown on the television Tolkien has to rely on vivid and detailed description to get his point across to his audience and create the scene. He does this by describing in great detail Frodo standing as still as stone and how he just appeared out of thin air. This passage was very thought provoking because it really shows you how important language and style are to the composition of this book, without these detailed descriptions you would never be able to imagine what is really happening in the book and that is the key to any book.