The Border Patrol State Chapter 1 Summary

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I will start by saying I fully enjoyed this excerpt and was totally enthralled by Silko’s writing. Silko managed to beautifully blend together hard testimonies and statistics along with descriptive imagery and a touch of philosophical whimsy. With that out of the way, I will spend the rest of this discussion post on random observations since this thread does not seem to have a firm purpose like the Chapter 1 thread. 1. First of all, I am a huge fan of the testimonies and examples Silko uses in this text. Besides her own personal story, she also includes stories from the news, anecdotes from personal friends, and a respected university’s study. One personal issue I had with Silent Spring was that we did not get to hear of a specific example while Carson built her pathos. In The Border Patrol State, Silko used vivid, real life examples to make me feel suspense and empathy towards an issue I was rather ambivalent about before. 2. …show more content…

As many other people have mentioned, the bits of writing about the dog were particularly interesting. I believe this is because of the heavy implication that Silko is hinting at, without ever directly stating it. I see this bit of the story as implying that, in that moment, the dog was morally superior to the human Border Patrolmen that controlled it. The language Silko uses (like referring to the dog as a “her”) and the heavy personification of the dog forces the reader to identify closer to an animal who is supposedly intellectually inferior to mankind. And once Silko has convinced you that these Border Patrolmen are lower than dogs, it is even easier for her to villainize the entire Border Patrol system and dredge up more and more sympathy for the victims of that

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