When The Levees Broke Rhetorical Analysis Essay On August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the coasts of southeastern Louisiana. Shortly after, New Orleans’ flood protection system failed, causing floodwalls and levees to topple and break. Covering major points in the film, as they broke, the lives, spirits, and thoughts of many Americans were also broken as well. In a documentary released on August 16, 2006, director Spike Lee utilizes rhetorical strategies to produce a profound vision into the city and it’s citizen’s internal devastation, grievance, and recovery of spirit, and our nation’s failure to assist; when the levees broke. The numerous incorporations of the emotional appeal strengthen Spike’s opinion in a unique way. The references and inclusions of the Mardi Gras celebration, political events, and eyewitness accounts and stories from citizens of New Orleans curates an emotional response within the audience - whether it be the imagery of starving men, women, and children - or the irony of the government’s statement of preparedness. These emotions and feelings of desolation and resentment help empower and unite Spike’s views of our country’s failure and dishonesty towards it’s own proactivity. …show more content…
Spike’s decision to interview those from New Orleans and Louisiana offers a much larger quantity of information, and also can introduce the aspects of traditions and civilization of that region that were not completely destroyed by the storm, such as Mardi Gras. To fuel the interest gained from the audience, “authoritative” peers were interviewed to provide more factual and historical information aside from domestic opinion, as well as including media from political meetings, and news
Fink’s Rhetorical Strategies: Facilitating the Consideration of Several Perspectives In Five Days at Memorial, Sheri Fink strikes a convincing balance between persuasion and objectivity. The events that took place during Hurricane Katrina continue to be scrutinized, and this book investigates the potentially unethical decisions made by people in authority. Doctors and nurses were forced to work long hours while suffering from severe emotional trauma, a fact that Fink does not discount in her assessment of their decision-making processes.
Paul Galley an accomplished environmentalist enters the controversial debate about Hydrofracking in New York, with his article “Hydrofracking: A bad Bet for the Environment and the Economy” published in the Huffington Post on January 05, 2012. Galley states “Net-Net, fracking is simply bad bet” fracking poses serious risk to New Yorkers. Galley, president of Hudson Riverkeeper has worked for over twenty-five years to protect the environment and support local communities, as a non-profit, public official and educator. This piece continues his devotion to protection of the Hudson River, and the drinking water supply of New Yorkers. Galley effectively convinces his audience through his use of appeals to pathos and logos that hydrofracking will have negative impacts on New Yorkers.
The problem surrounds the culture, how New Orleans has come to treat the culture that put them on the map in a sense and how the monetization of art has decimated the fountain of “cultural oil” that New Orleans was spewing
In Geoffrey Baym and Colby Gottert’s article, “30 Days: Social Engagement,” Baym and Gottert explore how reality shows like “30 Days” can provide “individual people’s feelings and experiences” on screen and a “function of civic education,” the latter being adopted from John Grierson’s idea of documentary. In the illegal immigration episode of “30 Days,” an anti-illegal immigration activist Frank Jorge spends 30 days with a family of illegal immigrants as an experiment, and this allows the audience to explore the relationships between Frank and the family, like in general reality shows, especially between Frank and Armida, one of the daughters in the family. This also teaches the audience regarding the debate of national immigration in the United
Hurricane Matthew began to form itself from a tropical wave off the coast of Africa in late September. It has been calculated that 26 citizens have died as a result of Hurricane Matthew’s flooding. Robert Ray, the author of the CNN News article, ‘‘Hurricane Matthew: Days of disaster unfold under a cloudless sky,’’ wrote this to inform his audience of the monstrous damage that the hurricane has done from Florida to North Carolina, after it hit Haiti and other Caribbean countries. His audience is the family and love ones of the citizens that experienced the hurricane hit and those that are concerned of the terror the people went through and want to find more information in how to help. Ray’s use of appeal to pathos helps him effectively be able
Two Days in October is a documentary that covers the multidimensional story of the battle of Ong Thanh in Vietnam and the student protests at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This film shows examples of different techniques used that assist journalists when telling the story of October, 1967. The way they tell the story of the of the student protest at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the front line of the Vietnam War exposes some of the nuances and demonstrates that the topic was not as simplistic as people viewed it at the time. While using similar techniques to what was used in the documentary “Two Days in October”, Journalists of today can also demonstrate the complexity of multidimensional stories. These are stories that are not black and white, but that look at everyone’s perspective and ideals.
“The Atchafalaya” is an article by John McPhee, concerning the flow of the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya region. McPhee interviews several people who have jobs related to the river and the maintenance of the Atchafalaya’s water flow. The location of the Mississippi River is crucial because if it moves, it could potentially destroy all of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and, subsequently, their status as major shipping channels. Reading this article, I gained more insight on the importance of the river for the state of Louisiana and New Orleans. A quote in the article summarizes the reoccurring theme of society versus Mother Nature: “Man against nature.
Ward’s intention for creating such a book to not only explain the significance of the Laveau’s in New Orleans Voodoo History but to also educate the mainstream American audience about the alternative narrative regarding this religion. Because of the author’s personal admiration for the city of New Orleans, by way of the Laveau’s biographies, she is able to convey the rich culture that has been built on and around creole culture. In the introduction specifically, Ward explains she has been confronted with questions by her peers that discuss voodoo in a negative light, such as: “Isn’t Voodoo dangerous? What happens to you if you tell its secrets?” Ward accomplished her goal demystifying the religion by explaining the significance behind its rituals and traditions that have often been misinterpreted by popular culture and used to demonize voodoo as a whole.
Wallace, David Foster "This is Water" Kenyon College Commencement Speech 2005 The general argument by David Foster Wallace in his work "This is Water" is that sometimes the most obvious realities are the hardest to comprehend. More specifically, he argues that thinking negatively is not a choice but a natural setting and we need to start thinking cognitively and outside the box. Wallace performs this speech for a group of graduating college students to prepare them for the future life they are about to embark on. He includes the grocery store example so that the reader's can connect to the story because they have gone through that situation themselves; he is trying to connect to the audience.
During an outburst of frustration about the fate of Orleans, he exclaims “I don’t know! I don’t know! This city was supposed to be dead.” (Smith, 2013,
The Irony of “Born in the U.S.A.” As the fireworks explode in the night sky to celebrate Independence Day, “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen plays loudly for the audience to hear. As the men, women, and children bellow out the chorus proudly, they never seem to grasp its intended meaning. By studying the appeals and irony used in Springsteen’s lyrics, it is easy to see how Springsteen’s message of the poor treatment of Vietnam War veterans is misconstrued by millions of listeners into American pride. Springsteen’s intended audience is a group made up of mainly white, blue collar Americans-
Critical Thinking: 1) Is there a clear position/thesis statement? - Yes a. What is it? “Zombies are a reflection of their own narcissistic personality with poor education and lack of awareness of their own society/culture” b. How does it address the question asked.
Djèlí Clark uses the contrast between the colorful and diverse depiction of New Orleans architecture and the broken depiction of the Dead City in
The article for my current event essay is an online news article from CNN written from Ray Sanchez and Greg Botelho on Oct 23,2015. This article seems to be mostly written for the purpose of informing and warning the public of the dangers of the hurricane. "About 15,000 foreign and domestic tourists were moved to shelters in the state of Jalisco, said Jose Maria Tapia, director general of the National Disaster Prevention Center. " That quote proved to show that it was in a way recommended to evacuate.
“The only thing that we can do is control what we do next. How we live our lives. What we consume. How we get involved. And how we use our vote to to tell our leaders that we know the truth about climate change”, says Leonardo Dicaprio.