In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
From the very beginning of the passage, John M. Barry “sucks” the reader in- similar to the way the Mississippi River would do to anything in its way-through elevated diction. He uses words like “extraordinarily dynamic”, “turbulent”, and “complex.” He goes on to say that studying the river is a science of “chaos.” All of these words transmit Barry’s fascination. He is so perplexed and astonished by how dynamic the river is that he says it is chaos, or having unpredictable and seemingly random behavior. His elevated and well-chosen diction shows that he has actually studied the river and is knowledgeable about the way it works. By doing this, Barry builds his ethos, something he continues doing in the first paragraph by alluding to a renowned physicist, Werner Heisenberg. A physicist would very obviously know about the inner and complex mechanics of a river like the Mississippi, yet the very appropriate expression he is quoted for shows that he is just as surprised as Barry and believes that not even God could explain the mechanics of the river.
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...ed in the first paragraph and that later increased as he and his readers analyzed together the different aspects that make the Mississippi River so complex.
John M. Barry is successful with his use of rhetoric because of his varied forms of the art. He makes the Mississippi River seem not only like a body of brown water in the middle of the continental U.S. but like a whip, a live snake, a living being, and a whirlpool all at the same time. Not only does he build his ethos, he also uses elevated diction, varied forms of sentence structure, or syntax, and different types of figurative language. Because of this, Barry is able to successfully achieve his purpose: communicate his fascination with the complex mechanics of the Mississippi River. The reader ends up being just as fascinated with a river that they may have never seen before but are now just as amazed with.
One of the most effective methods Barry uses throughout the aforementioned passage, is his comparison of scientists to explorers. The first lines of paragraph four set up the comparison, “All real scientists exist on the frontier,” this furthers the point Barry makes that scientific research is about uncertainty and embracing it, only then will the research that is done yield any answers. Barry furthers the point of uncertainty is the very nature of science with this quote, “There they probe in a
Technology's Impact on the Upper Mississippi River. Since the days of Lewis and Clark, men have dreamed of harnessing the "Father of Waters" in the interests of commerce and development. The long struggle which ensued required incredible ingenuity and determination on the part of engineers as well as enormous capital investment. The Mississippi River Commission, established in 1897, was the first federal program designed specifically to meet these requirements, and early systems, instituted by the Army Corps of Engineers, saw much success.
In order to develop the basis for his thesis, Barry opens his passage by educating us about the "extraordinarily dynamic combination
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was one of the most devastating floods in the country. The flood had a major effect on the economy. Because of the flood, thousands of acres of agricultural land and animals were lost, many homes were destroyed, and people were displaced.
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was one of the most destructive in the history of the United States, proving that the levee only policy was a failure and the limits of human control over the river. The beginning of the flood, from the initial crevasse, poured out “468,000 second-feet onto the Delta that triple the volume of a flooding Colorado, more than double a flooding Niagara Falls and the entire upper Mississippi ever carried” (pg 203). The flood of 1927 “shifted perceptions of the role and responsibility of the federal government… shattered the myth of a quasi-feudal bond between Delta blacks and the southern aristocracy...accelerated the great migration of blacks north. And it altered both southern and national politics....” (pg 422). America is a product of the flood of 1927 in shaping the political, social, and economic structure. With each reoccurring disaster, America, in that region, continues to face the same issues regarding social conditions and poor working conditions that failed to be addressed.
... and well-known African Americans. The imagery he uses is a painting of his experiences, and his thoughts and feelings of those experiences. His use of hyperboles is a connection of dot from his experiences and his emotions. Now that we have seen Cleaver’s literary design, we now understand how his experiences affect his life. We also understand the messages that the other authors mentioned in this essay are trying to send. Like Cleaver, they use certain literary methods for certain reasons, whether their literary methods are to express their feelings or to teach us things we may have not known before. Although the other author’s appear to have different reasons for using certain literary methods than those reasons of Cleaver’s, Like Cleaver, their aim is to get a point through to us; therefore, they too, create a successful literary design.
The Civil Rights Movement is usually seen as a social movement primarily throughout the Southern states during the 1950’s and throughout the 1960’s. However, the movement is taught by giving specific points, events, places, and people. The Civil Rights Movement in some regions such as the Mississippi Delta is not credited enough in history. The movement found crucial support inside of the Mississippi Delta due to its population being predominately African American. The Mississippi Delta played a key role not only in the movement, but in its development from encompassing Civil Rights activist, movements, tragic events, and more.
Rodriguez,Richard. “The Fear of Losing a Culture.” in Writing on the River.2nd ed. By English Faculty and Staff of Chattanooga State Community College. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2009. 129-131.Print.
Oliphant, Robert. “Letter to a B Student.” Writing on the River. 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw, 2012. 136-141. Print
Pipher writes of her experience reading Twyla Hansen’s article that “encourages land owners to plant slow-growing shade trees” (439). “After reading Hansen’s article,” Pipher states, “I bought a sycamore” (439). Along with personal experience in the specific example, Pipher uses allegory to convey the effect of writing using a much more corporeal and understandable example. By using allegory, Pipher’s concept of the significance of writing is “dumbed down” to make it quite clear and understandable to even the least educated
McCullough presents a meticulously researched, detailed account of the Johnstown Flood of May 31st 1889, which provides arguments for why the disaster was both “the work of man” and “a visitation of providence”. However, it is apparent that McCullough believes that man was more responsible than nature/god for the extent of the catastrophe. In McCullough’s opinion, the storm that caused the flood was no more than the inevitable stimulus of the disaster, whereas the deferred maintenance and poor repairs on the dam were the primary reason that Johnstown was devastated in 1889. McCullough exposes the failed duties of Benjamin Ruff and other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whilst simultaneously questioning the responsibility of the Johnstown folk who were concerned about the safety of the dam but complacently trusted the wealthy, powerful club members to fulfil their responsibilities. McCullough clearly explains the debate that took place immediately after the flood, on what or whom was to blame for the disaster, by explaining the views of the press, the townspeople and the lawsuits that were filed. McCullough’s view is evident from the sub-title of his book. By placing the word “natural” within quotation marks, McCullough immediately suggests that the flood was unusual to any other, and implies that mankind has displaced its blame onto nature.
Twain describes that as he controlled the steamboat longer and memorized the dynamics of the river, he began to feel as if he had lost something valuable to himself. These attributes included his grace, his poetic voice, and his love for the majestic river (1). Twain tried to ignore this sense of loss and boredom by picturing a sunset he had seen one evening while steamboating. However, this does not cease the ambivalent feelings, and his feelings about the river digress.
Eiseley, Loren “The Flow of the River” from Fifty Great Essays 2nd ed. 2002 Penguin Academics New York.
In comparison to Twain's poetic river, he is able to grasp the hazards of the river through his work on the riverboats. Through his experiences "a day came when [he] began to cease from noting the glories and the charms ... [and] another day [came] when [he] ceased altogether to note them" (1). Unlike the poetic prose stated before, Twain uses harsh images and a common dialect to describe the conditions of the riverfront, "which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights" (1). These comparisons in mind-set allow the reader and Twain to wonder if there is any value to actually learning a trade. If beauty or adventure is taken out of the experience, then why surrender to the trade? In further assessment, Twain questions the medical field by asking, "Does [a doctor] ever see [the] beauty [of the body] at all, or [does] he simply view her professionally?" (1). Seeing that doctors could overlook the beauty of the human body, Twain has "pitied doctors from [his] heart" (1). In this particular excerpt Twain does not answer his questions, but through his images of beauty and peril of the river the reader can assume he prefers "the poetry.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away-trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks-rafts ... and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up.