Narrative

The event that I will be writing about is the death of my high school classmate Petros, who died in a car accident November of our junior year. I want to write about Petros and the dangers of speeding because he is not the only friend that I have lost to a car accident.  I hope by writing this paper I can show all teens  that they are not invincible and that the dangers of speeding and street racing are very real.

First Assignment Question #1

 I think that Burke looks at this piece from a rhetorical perspective because he wants to create internal questions in the reader. Instead of simply bashing Hitler, Burke wants people to think about how they might have reacted if they had been German citizens at the time. It’s easy to say now that you wouldn’t have gone along with the Third Reich and their policies, but when you think about how terribly convincing Hitler was, you may have to rethink whether or not you would have been a follower. Burke does a great job of conveying his disapproval for Hitler, but at the same time still leaving an opening for people to interpret the writings in their own way.

Hitler responds to the exigence that is the Jewish race by creating propaganda about them and spreading it to the German people. He is able to do this so effectively because he talks about how evil and disgusting the Jews are and then he says that the solution to this problem is the German people. He says that the Aryan race is able to “hate the Jewish hate” because they are “vessels of love”. By almost putting a positive spin on it, Hitler is more effective in persuading people to follow his message. He puts down the opposition while increasing the positive feelings toward the Germans.

Some appeals that Hitler makes to his audience, which is the German people, are the descriptions of the Aryan race. He describes them as superior to all other races and compliments them numerous times throughout the excerpt. Also, he talks negatively about the Jews throughout the paper, calling them dirty, sinners, and inferior.

First Assignment Question #2

         I don't care for many of the news shows that are on TV today. They are hardly about the news or politics anymore and they have become stages for old men to argue and fight. They are made up of low blows and propaganda against the opposing party, and it seems that they forget what politics is all about which is helping this country. No one on these shows is concerned about who is the most qualified candidate for the job; they shamelessly promote their parties candidate and trash talk the others in the process.
         While I dislike these shows, there are still many millions of people that watch them daily. I think that these shows are still able to hold an audience because, while the shows might not be conveying the news like they are supposed to, they are still creating good television by arguing. However, more and more people are becoming as fed up with these shows as I am and have stopped watching because of how ridiculous they have become. Hopefully sometime in the near future a change will be made to these shows to make them respected places to find real news.
          The exigence for these shows is all of the political happenings in the world each day. While exigence is supposed to be a problem, many of these shows hound their opponents for things that shouldn't be considered wrong, they just need a reason to talk trash.
         The audience for these shows depends on what channel you watch. Fox News, for instance, would be focused mainly towards right wing followers. MSNBC would try to appeal to the left wing. While it is smart to appeal to an audience and to tell them what they want to hear, slandering the other party is not the way to do it in my opinion. Giving them intelligent information to tell their friends would be more effective than giving them gossip.