“Driving west from Fargo on I–94, the freeway that cuts through the state of North Dakota, you’ll encounter a road so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves in places that it will feel like one 5 long-held pedal steel guitar note” (Marquart, 1-5). In the passage from The Horizontal World, Debra Marquart reveals her love for the upper Midwest region of North Dakota. Countless people who visit this region do not enjoy the site due to the location. Numerous visitors would describe the Midwest region to be boring and vacant. With the use of impressive diction and detailed allusions Marquart can show the audience that the region has outstanding characteristics and value.
Marquart exploits impressive diction to label the region first seen by
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Marquart refers to Major Stephen Long, a man who has visited the region before. Long states, that the region is known to be useless “a dreary plain, wholly unfit for 40 cultivation” (Long, 39-41). Through Marquarts reference, she reveals the views of judgemental people who have issues with the region. Marquart uses this technique to compare their opinions to her own opinions of the overall region. While Long expresses the disadvantages of the region, Marquart refutes this with her own statements and feelings defending a different perspective. Marquart confirms to the audience that the Midwest region has quality and feature behind it. Her statements justify that the region is known as a place where history is made. The audience can also see the use of impressive diction when Marquart initiates a story about her grandparents who felt “anticipation” while anxiously waiting to accept their land (Marquart, 70-74). In this statement, Marquart allows the audience to make the inquiry that her grandparents wouldn’t have known the development of the world, but they would have felt it. By comparing the negative aspects of the land to her
In 102 Minutes, Chapter 7, authors Dwyer and Flynn use ethos, logos, and pathos to appeal to the readers’ consciences, minds and hearts regarding what happened to the people inside the Twin Towers on 9/11. Of particular interest are the following uses of the three appeals.
“The Onion’s” mock press release on the MagnaSoles satirical article effectively attacks the rhetorical devices, ethos and logos, used by companies to demonstrate how far advertisers will go to convince people to buy their products. It does this by using manipulative, “scientific-sounding" terminology, comparisons, fabrication, and hyperboles.
Billy affectionately described his homeland (the key component of “peoplehood” i.e., the Nisqually watershed on South Puget Sound of the Nisqually River, creeks (Muck Creek), rolling prairie and forestland as well as the foothills of the Cascades Mountains and Mt Rainier) as “a magical place” where his family “never wished for anything: fish from the water¬shed, vegetables up on the prairie, medicines, shellfish, and huckleberries…clean water, clean air.” He describes the arrival of L...
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
“People who had incurred the displeasure of the party simply disappeared and were never heard of again.
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
“He say Mr. Parris must be kill! Mr. Parris no goodly man, Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle man and he bid me rise out of bed and cut your throat!” (Miller 47).
20 were executed” (Blumberg). The Crucible setting is based on The Salem Witch trials, but the plot is based on The Red Scare. The author employs strict tone and rhetorical questions to convey power. This connects to the purpose of how a occurring can devastate a whole community and the people in it. Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, employs empowerment by expressing the challenges within each character and their influence on the trial through the characters John Proctor, Abigail, and Danforth.
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
Alluding to comedians and their descriptions of the upper Midwest as the spawning points of tornadoes and Republicans to TV news anchors in small towns as depicted in movies gives a sense of realism to the imagery that seemed so fantasty a moment ago. While it does give into some stereotypes, it is not to be taken literally as Marquart uses those two specific examples to establish mindsets already known to people and to place them within the image themselves. Mentioning Sylvia Griffith’s poem “Earthlings”, she uses the excerpt from the poem, “We are the folks presidents talk to when times require,” to convey the image of the farming and working people of the days gone by. A region maybe known for an out of place murder by wood chipper scene in Fargo or a Radio show displaying the quintessential American prairie, Marquart uses the imagery and dresses it up. In effect elevating the imager previously described through those very allusions, allowing the reader to not only connect to what Marquart is painting but to see it more clearly and creating a lucid dream that almost seems like a flashback
All in all, the treatment of the American Indian during the expansion westward was cruel and harsh. Thus, A Century of Dishonor conveys the truth about the frontier more so than the frontier thesis. Additionally, the common beliefs about the old west are founded in lies and deception. The despair that comes with knowing that people will continue to believe in these false ideas is epitomized by Terrell’s statement, “Perhaps nothing will ever penetrate the haze of puerile romance with which writers unfaithful to their profession and to themselves have surrounded the westerner who made a living in the saddle” (Terrell 182).
The Western portion of the United States includes thirteen states that are home to around 80,000,000 Americans, yet it remains one of the most sparsely settled regions in the country (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). In a sense, the American West is the closest thing left to a “frontier” in the modernized United States. One can travel to Montana and become immersed in a world not dissimilar to that of their forefathers, just as easily as one could travel to California, widely considered to be the epicenter of growth and modernization in the States. With Silicon Valley and Yellowstone all in one region, there is a unique sense of space presented within the West that is unattainable from the American North, East, or South. For instance, a trip to New York City may be fairly comparable to a trip to Pittsburgh, but a trip to San Francisco as opposed to Rapid City provides an entirely different cultural experience. If the West was just a replica of the American East, Kerouac’s On the Road would have never come to be. The wide disparity among spaces in the New West is a main reason behind the effectiveness of Coupland’s Generation X. Without the spaces of the American West the comedic genius of Portlandia would be nonexistent!
Marquart approaches those who do not have a special relationship with the Midwest region. Marquart wants to convince those who are not familiar with the Midwest to think of it differently instead of negatively thinking the region is just plain land that is “lonely” (L.3). Marquart uses visual imagery to provide a description of what her
Scientists are constantly forced to test their work and beliefs. Thus they need the ability to embrace the uncertainty that science is based on. This is a point John M. Barry uses throughout the passage to characterize scientific research, and by using rhetorical devices such as, comparison, specific diction, and contrast he is able show the way he views and characterizes scientific research.