The Great Gatsby Take Home "Timed-Write"

AP Style Prompt:
The technique of a first-person narrator presents certain problems of objectivity and reliability for the reader. Write a well-organized essay in which you examine the character of Gatsby as Nick perceives him. To what extent is Nick a reliable narrator, and is his evaluation of Gatsby ultimately just? Be certain not to summarize the plot or offer a mere character description.


The Great Gatsby is a book told from the perspective of Nick Carraway, who throughout the book describes the plot and the characters in details that helps the readers understand them better. However, just as most first person narrators in a story, Nick isn't as reliable a source for understanding Gatsby's character. Throughout the book Nick is biased with his descriptions of Gatsby, judging him and sympathizing with him, thus clouding his view of who Gatsby truly is as a person.

At the beginning, Nick mentions how Gatsby was the embodiment of everything he hated in a person, and it's shown throughout the book, making Gatsby appear shady and obsessive, fake even. Nick describes him as someone who pretends to be someone he's not when in reality he was "a penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders," (156). He also used hasty nerve-wracking actions Gatsby performs throughout the book to describe his character, mostly negatively throughout the book. Having him do things like toss a bunch of fancy shirts from England into a messy pile for Daisy to look at or showing her clippings from articles that were about her made him appear obsessive and trying too hard to impress her. Even though that is, in a way, true, the judging and critiquing way he shows it makes Gatsby seem more like a monster or a freak rather than a person.

It wasn't really until later in the book when Gatsby started showing more positive traits about Gatsby, but even then, it was still biased. Nick begins to sympathize with Gatsby is a way where he places him as a victim in the story and throws Daisy and Tom into the villainous roles near the end. Near the end of the story, Gatsby's bad traits begin to be overlooked and instead overshadowed by the newly founded love Nick develops toward him. He described his dream to be with Daisy as pure rather than an obsession like he hinted at in the beginning of the book, and he justified Gatsby's actions when it came to the choices he made to change his social class and his persona that he exploited in order to win over Daisy. It's practically a different character he's describing by the end of the book by abandoning the original character he described at the beginning.

It's true, although, that Nick was detailed in describing Gatsby's backstory to help the readers understand who Gatsby is. However, that was turning point in which Nick abandons his judgmental description of who Gatsby is for the sympathized version of Gatsby. In the beginning of the book, the reader will most likely fell like there is no good character because everyone seems to be terribly flawed (with the exception of the narrator). Near the end, though, the reader begins to pity Gatsby and love him more as a character compared to the others. Why? Because Nick begins to sympathize with Gatsby and pity him too, and as a result, describes him as someone more likable for the reader to pity and care about more as well.

...
......Welp. That's all I got, Mr. Giddings...

Shooting an Elephant Questions

1. George Orwell has a negative attitudes regarding imperialism, the native peoples, and his own position in Burma. He states, "...I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better." He also states, "As for the job I I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear." and uses derogatory terms such as "yellow faces" and "coolies" to describe Asians and Natives. 

2. Orwell views the nature of imperialism as such: The only power white men have is the facade of control they put impose on people when it is actually the other way around. 

3. Orwell mostly felt compelled to shoot the elephant out of peer pressure that arose from his status as a tyrant from a foreign land and the need to be liked. 

4. You want to hear my honest opinion about Orwell? He's a jerk and lower than the scum of the earth in this story. His pride makes me so irritated that he would only shoot a poor creature for the sake of his dignity. If the  younger men believed that the elephant shouldn't have been killed because the man it killed wasn't worth it, then let me just say that Orwell's dignity was definitely not wroth the death of an elephant because he himself is just as lowly as the "coolie." And also, the older men who praised for killing the elephant because it was out of control and needed to be taken care of obviously have no idea how different a freaking dog is from A FREAKING ELEPHANT!!!!......That is all.

5. One of the ideas about human motives that he describes is how in the end, people usually care about themselves and if they have to, they'll do what they can or need to in order to save themselves. He basically says that everyone follows the "Every man for himself" policy, which only true to some people because there are good-hearted people! This idiot who shot the elephant for the sake of protecting his own nonexistent dignity is a perfect example of a horrible human with no soul and motives to save themselves when it comes down to the last straw. However, in my life, I have seen and met genuinely nice people who are there to help you out and support through whatever is going on in my life. It's called selflessness, and I've seen it many times in rare yet memorable people including my friends and family. Orwell can go suck on an egg for all I care. THERE ARE GOOD PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD ORWELL! STOP BEING SO FREAKING NEGATIVE AND CONSERVATIVE!!!

The Destruction of Culture

Music is an artifact that justifies war but destroys culture. Some artists encourage violence through the lyrics they compose. One of the ways they continue carrying on this underlying theme of violence is to mask their songs with a catchy beat that listeners can enjoy, if not completely understand. As this combination of lyrics and music becomes successful and slowly makes its way into mainstream culture, it sets a standard for what upcoming tracks need to sound like in order to become popular and make money, which is ultimately what companies look for in their decision of which music to put out. As a result, we see a cycle of consumers blindly buying meaningless beats for the sake of their own superficial pleasures and producers constantly trying to meet them. 

Like war, music can also be a perversion of human desire. We pursue certain musicians for reasons beyond the sphere of logic and morality to breed more nonsensical music whose justifications have more to do with our individual, selfish desires than the benefit of humanity as a whole.  

High School Confidential Analysis Questions

1. Denby uses opposition like "Everyone is afraid of her; that's why she's popular," and exaggerations such as "a waist as supple as a willow," to describe the female villain of teen movies.

2. Denby's description of the female villain focused on what she said and looked like while his description of the male villain focused briefly on his appearance and mainly on his actions. This difference suggests that looks matter a lot for females along with the things they say, but guys are only accounted on the things they do (on the most part).

3. To me, the change in tone occurs when Denby switches from talking about the movie characters to talking about the people who created those movies. His sentence structure changed along with his diction, which helped established his change in tone.

4. There's a break between paragraphs 3 and 4 because the subject changed from movie characters to the genres of films.

5. By saying directly after the question that the scenes provide emotions within the audience by over-exaggerating scenes that people can relate to.

6. Films. He used a handful of films as examples and made comments on it as support.

7. Denby's main argument is of the common use of stereotypes in high schools and the impact it has on high school students. He also talks about the overuse of these stereotypes in films using examples and finding patterns in all of them.

9. He uses the victim characters in the movies as examples since they're always going through a bunch of crap, especially from the bullies and villains of high school, but they're also talented and smart and stick out in so many ways. They're bound to be successful people and being able to make it through the issues they're having right now helps.

10. He uses the movie Carrie as an example with a girl who was tricked and humiliated and retaliated, something the boys should be able to relate to.

11. Kind of like "breaking stereotypes," these films bring more into the genre and make it more complex. It different from the usual over-usage of stereotypical archetypes which is something that Denby spoke about in this essay.

12. The audience for this essay would most likely be teen high school students. He considers the audience by speaking as if he was their teacher lecturing them, speaking directly to them and in words and phrases they would understand and relate to.

Political Analysis

Film Theory: How Trump is Winning With Reality TV

Speaker/Persona: Matthew Patrick, YouTuber, known for making theories with in-depth evidence
Audience: his subscribers and other people using YouTube, people into politics; just about everyone
Subject: Donald Trump and a theory as to why he's doing so well in the elections
Purpose: assessing the tactics and strategies Trump uses in his campaign

Matthew Patrick created this video on YouTube mostly because he found it interesting how similar Donald Trump's campaign was to Reality TV, and he wanted to inform everyone else about his epiphany. He uses humor throughout his video and includes evidence, both professional articles and things that people can relate to and understand easily to prove his point and make his argument/theory stronger.





Yeah, that's all I got...

Joy: A Subject Schools Lack

The general argument made by Susan Engel in her work, Joy: A Subject Schools Lack, is that joy is treated as an enemy to learning. More specifically, Engel argues that the joy in learning is a necessity in a child's education, not just an option or an obstacle. She writes, “Decades of research have shown that in order to acquire skills and real knowledge in school, kids need to want to learn.” In this passage, Engel is suggesting that students need to be interested in what they're learning in order to take the information given to them and process it. In conclusion, Susan Engel’s belief is that pleasure is needed in order for students to learn.

In my view, Susan Engel is right, because I can relate as a student. More specifically, I believe that finding pleasure in what you're trying to learn has always been an important part of learning, and it needs to be reenforced into the education system. For example, students, from what I've seen, learn more easily when they're more interested in what they're doing.. Although some might object that and say that it's possible for students to learn if they just concentrate and work harder, I maintain that it's easier for me to learn in the classes I have taken interest into, like my chemistry class for example. Therefore, I conclude that pleasure and joy should be a part of the school and education system as a catalyst for students' learning.

Fallacious D

Thesis Statements Activity

1. "Same-sex classrooms are a possibility in public education, but co-ed classes for public schools are a much better choice for the grades of 10 through 12." A counterargument thesis statement will be effective with this prompt so then the writer can look at both sides in their response, making their work more credible and increasing their ethos.
2. "Although betraying the country is an extreme measure that not many would want to take for a "friend", E.M. Forster emphasizes his loyalty to the ones he truly cares about in his quote." This essay is an argumentative essay, so using a counterargument thesis will help you support your side better.
3. "I...I didn't want to take the time to come up with more thesis statements..." Since this essay requires/recommends more than three main points to focus on, using an open statement will make it more effective to talk about multiple points successfully.
4. "Advertising degrades the people that it appeals to since ____, ____, and ____." This essay is one where you take a position and support it, most likely with 2-3 points, so listing out your points in a closed statement will make a strong start for the rest of the essay.
5. "It's a normality for teachers to become upset over plagiarized work, but considering that they have seen the bigger picture and looked from the student's side of the story, they may have a different reaction." In this essay, viewing both sides of the essay will help make your point stronger and more credible. So, using a counterargument thesis is effective.

I hope making thesis statements wasn't a big part of it, but I did put why I did it so I hope that's good enough...

"Staking a Claim" Activity

1. "SUV owners should be required to pay an energy surcharge." Yes, it's arguable.
2. "Charter schools are an alternative to public schools." No, it's too easily verifiable. REVISED: "Charter schools should remain as an alternative to public schools."
3. "Ronald Reagan was the most charismatic president of the twentieth century." Yes?
4. "Requiring students to wear uniforms improves school spirit." No, it's too easily verifiable. REVISED: "Students should be required to wear uniforms."
5. "The terms global warming and climate change describe different perspectives on this complex issue." Yes? I don't know. People argue about anything nowadays.
6. "Students graduating from college today can expect to have more debt than any previous generation." No, too verifiable. REVISED: "Students today struggle more with debt than ever before in the past and should be given help by the government." (does that work?)
7. "People who read novels are more likely to attend sports events and movies than those who do not." Yes.
8. "Print newspapers will not survive another decade." Yes.
9. "The competition among countries to become a site for the Olympic Games is fierce." I don't know. No. REVISED: "The competition among countries to become a site for the Olympic Games more fierce than the games itself."
10. "Plagiarism is a serious problem in today's schools." No, too verifiable. REVISED: "Plagiarism is the worst problem in today's schools since it has become commonly practiced amongst the students in schools today."

Welp. I tried. Bye.

"Why Investing in Fast Food May Be a Good Thing" Activity

Domini was able to demonstrate in her article that the Slow Food Movement have been narrow-minded about fast food by giving details on the improvements they have been bringing about the world today. She states that "Fast food is a way of life" and that it has become "so enormous, even seemingly modest changes can have a big impact". Those modest changes can be something as small as banning the use of trans-fats (a staple of fast food) in restaurants or reduce the overuse of packaging. They're small changes, but it makes a big difference to the world since so many people consume fast food. The fast food business became so influential that the little changes they make for the betterment of the world has a great impact.

This I Believe Essay

Treat Everyone Like a Perfect Angel

Yesterday, Houston Kraft came to our school delivering a message of love and kindness. It was a moving speech; the entire assembly was a rollercoaster of emotions. In all honesty, I feel like I may have been moved a little more than I should have, because I related to a lot of what he said.

The message he was giving, the idea of spreading kindness to everyone, was something I have always believed in. My whole life revolved around making other people’s lives a little better and making them even just a little bit happier than when I had first met them. My philosophy has always been to show kindness to the people I meet, but it wasn’t until later in life that I realized that even the people who don’t seem like they deserve it are the ones that need it the most in life.

A few years ago, a little boy moved into my neighborhood. I welcomed him in when he first moved in, hoping that he’ll be able to be happy here with everyone…but he ended up being a really annoying person and everyone hated him. I swear, he purposely got on everyone’s nerves, then cries because people would retaliate, then repeats the process all over again! Who does that? Like, seriously!

It wasn’t until a few months later that I learned why he was like that. He used to go through foster homes and one of his foster parents didn’t want to deal with him and his tantrums. So, they decided to prescribe him a bunch of drugs and sedatives to make him drowsy and slow so then they wouldn’t have to deal with teaching him how to act properly in front of people or disciplining him into becoming a more mature child. Not only that, he bothered everyone because he was always left alone and left out of things. He didn’t mind getting beaten up or feeling pain from the people he bothered as long as they noticed him and interacted with him in some way.

That boy was my youngest step-brother who my mom worked to get him and his older brothers out of the foster care system into a safe home with their dad, who is now married to my mom.

I don’t want my brother to feel like he’s ever alone in the world. I haven’t known him my whole life, but I know that the stupid things he does could never define him as a person. The little dumb decisions he makes doesn’t explain who he is or what he went through.

I believe that applies to everyone in the world. Everyone has a story as to why they are the way they are. Everyone deserves to treated with love and kindness no matter if they’re “good” or “bad”. Nobody is going to be a perfect angel; we’re too flawed to be perfect. But that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to be treated like one.

The Inheritance of Tools Questions

1. "A week or so later a white scar in the shape of a crescent moon began to show above the cuticle, and month by month it rose across the pink sky of my thumbnail." I just found it engaging for Sander's use of imagery to describe his swollen thumb after slamming a hammer on it.

2. ex 1. "My cobbled-together guitars might have been alien spaceships, my barns might have been models of Aztec temples"

ex 2. "He learns how to swing a hammer from the elbow instead of the wrist, how to lay his thumb beside the blade to guide a saw, how to tap a chisel with a wooden mallet, how to mark a hole with an awl before starting a drill bit."

3. The section about the gerbils was organized in a way similar to a story. Each paragraph was created when a new thought was formed, each kind of...layering one another, overlapping.

4. I'm not really sure if I'm answering this question correctly (mostly because I'm really confused right now) but in the gerbil section, he was able to save his daughter's gerbils from (possible) death. The conclusion that came shortly after started with his father's death. Sanders couldn't do anything to save his father from his death. There was no door he could open, no wall he could tear down to bring his father back. However, all of the lessons he learned from his father as a child, was something that he has to keep his father living through him. So he continued building, just as his did his entire life before passing.

5. To his daughter, the gerbils in the wall is a "calamity", a circumstance in which she's crying for rescue. The radio was giving out worldwide catastrophes where people are crying for rescue, too. If Sanders had to rescue those people from those kinds of situations, he would be afraid of failing, or even just not being able to handle the situation, but the situation he's in right now was something he could handle and could do without fail.

6. Sanders compares his hammer to other classics from history such as the greek vases or "dawn stones". These historic artifacts have a timeless beauty to them; comparing his hammer to them, Sanders insists that his hammer has a timeless beauty to it, too.

7. He's working and living just as his father did before him. Now that his father has passed, he lives on with the lessons and every technique his father taught him. The last sentence was him acting upon some of the many timeless lessons his father taught him when he was young.

Welp. I tried.

Once More on the Lake Questions

1) White's attitude seems reminiscent in a way within his opening paragraphs. He was speaking about his past memories and making it sound like a story he's telling to other children, like a bedtime story.

2) White's selection of details provided imagery for the reader. For example he said, "I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot–the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind." In saying this, he provided the reader with the image of what the lake looked like when he was young along with the image of the lake possibly changing completely.

3) A. "There were cottages sprinkled around the shores" – personification. It provided imagery for the reader so they could visualize the scenery better. 

    B. White also tends to list when describing thing and/or actions that were made. For example, he said, "We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head."

    C. There's also the asyndeton he used to create this poetic effect such as "Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end;"

4) He applies to all of our senses, even touch. He mentioned in the fifth paragraph, "I felt the damp moss covering the worms in the bait can," appealing to our sense of touch, adding to the effect of imagery.

5) He was comparing and contrasting the motors back in the time when he was a child to the time now that he was an adult. He used similes, metaphors, and personification to help him describe to the readers what the motors sounded like.

6) White was reminiscing in his memories again, and the readers get a piece of why the lake was such an important part of his childhood.

7) The sentence seemed unfinished, as if he was purposely leaving us in suspense, leaving space there for the readers to fill(interpretation),  kind of like we're doing now.

8) It was another piece of imagery White used that mostly parents and adults would relate with. He was describing his realization of how old he was getting after watching his son doing things that he used to do when he was a child.

9) Mr. Giddings, I'm not counting the "and"s in this story. That involves numbers and numbers mean math, so no.

With the amount of "and"s he used in this passage gave all of his details a sense of connectedness. "And"s group things up together. Like in lists, they would be used to list a bunch of things that are somehow connected in some way. The "and"s in his story has the same purpose, so that all of the many details he had about the lake could be interconnected.

Hunger of Memory Reading Response

Mr. Giddings, I honestly don't know what to write...

Richard Rodriguez said in his work, Hunger of Memory, "Perhaps because I have always, accidentally, been a classmate to children of rich parents, I long ago came to assume my association with their world" (3). Rodriguez tells that he has always been around rich, privileged people since he was young. The beginning of his story even mentions wealthy places and things like Bel-Air cocktail parties, Belgravia dinner parties, tuxedos, New York, things that aren't common parts of a man's life with a lower social status than the wealthy. Even in his adult life, he is surrounded by rich people. He became "a comic victim of two cultures" (5).

Now, the two cultures he's split between is his Mexican culture that he was born and raised in, and the American culture that he had "assimilated" into. He had always been different from the people around him. In childhood, he's was isolated. Adulthood, he was welcomed. In childhood, he was intensely close with his family, with his Mexican culture. In his adult life, he became more familiar with the American ways and adapted to the culture.

His story seems to be about changing and fitting in, assimilation. The books he stole at the beginning of his story, could they by any chance be the classic volumes of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Lawrence that were later mentioned near the end of the passage? The idea of him "stealing" the American books can in a way represent him stealing a part of American culture. It wasn't his to begin with, but it looked like a really amazing thing to have, so he decided to get it some way, somehow. And by taking in to a new culture, he throws away his original one, which explains why he said that his parents were no longer his parents, but "in a cultural sense" (4).

I'm sorry Mr. Giddings...This is all I can think of...

Emerson's On Education Questions

1. Emerson describes his view of an ideal education to be one where the teacher shouldn't just focus on what they have to say, but allow the students to participate and discuss their thoughts and opinions. They are to be respected for their opinions not only by their fellow classmates, but by the teacher also. He also believed that there should be passion within education, since that passion is what drives the students to learn more and seek more information, more answers.
3. I'm not entirely sure what this quote means in all honesty. What I got from it is that it's better to teach a perfect subject that has no need for reform than an imperfect subject that can be changed into something else years from now. I'm not sure if that was right though...
5. I didn't even know what a bureaucratic institution was. So, these institutions, first of all, do not focus on the descriptions of Emerson's idea of the ideal education. The learning experience doesn't fuel their passion, but drain it. The students are there with a purpose of passing tests and preparing to live in the real world(doing all of the business stuff, just work, no passion or creativity whatsoever). People don't learn much in these institutions besides how to imitate everyone else to survive reality.


1. I think Emerson was saying that thinking things through on our own comes naturally and we "enjoy" it, but imitating everyone else's thoughts instead of creating our own is something that we, by nature, don't like to do.
2. It's a paradoxical statement because in order to become a genius, you have to dive deeper into the topic, collecting and understanding the information thrown at you. You have to dig deeper(like a drill) in order to gain the wisdom and knowledge you need to become the genius you want to be.
3. Emerson used an extended example of an actual person who supports his thesis, since his life reflects Emerson's thoughts and beliefs about education.
5. The natural method that Emerson mentions seems to be the little things that people will take an interest in, a topic that piqued their curiosity, and they learned with passion and determination by masters who were also passionate about the subject at hand.
8. I don't even understand what the quote is saying...I don't know what to say, he feels like it would be useless to change the ways of teaching to a more natural method, because if he did, it would no longer be a natural method, but a systematic one?
9. A person's will, when inside a system similar to the bureaucratic institutions, kind of gets tossed aside. It no longer matters what you want, but what the man in charge wants instead.
10. "Even so, by observing the routine ways of people and the consequences that soon follow after tends to invoke this fear/idea that stopping someone from doing something terrible is worse than just letting it happen."
11. It was a way in speaking directly to us, that way we weren't just reading some kind of essay where someone babbles on about their beliefs, but they actually try to connect with you while doing so as a way to get you to connect with the text a little more(?).
12. Emerson's tone of the essay was pretty formal, professional, as if he were talking to fellow adults, maybe teachers and professors at schools and colleges. Parts of it almost felt like a story where you're reading endless descriptions about a child's life before all of the important action stuff starts happening, but overall, it was a formal piece.

Superman and Me - Exploring the Text Questions

1. He used oxymoron in the quote. The things he listed contradicted each other like hope and fear.
2. His father studied in a Catholic school and was a reader. He always bought books and brought them home. Indians are stereotypically dumb and uneducated, so his father clashes with the stereotype and most definitely proves them wrong.
3. He described grammar and writing with organization in a way that even children would be able to understand. It is deep and effective, but simple and easy to understand at the same time.
4. He most likely spoke about his life as if he was telling a story about another man who went through these amazing struggles or adventures. He placed his past in the past and if he brought up, he spoke about it as if he was talking about someone else other than himself.
6. He organized these different topics that he wanted to talk about into different sections in a way where they could support the previous section and help the reader understand what he was trying to say. It's kinda like building block of information and details, piling up on top of each other until it looks like a tower.
7. Alexie's parallel structure included the word "read" when he was talking about all of the things he read. It was like a laundry list of how much he truly cared about reading. To add to the literary effect, he ended each parallel structure with a sentence similar to "I'm trying to save my life." It was a beautiful part of the essay, showing how important reading and knowledge is to people, and how much he cherished it.

Education Questions (I Know Why The Caged Bird Cant Read)

1. Prose is an award winning critique and a mother of two sons. Those roles combined with her familiarity with a variety of books gives her the credibility she needs in order to be taken seriously in this essay.
2. SKIP
3. Prose finds that it's useless to throw random symbolism and analyzations at students and trying to stuff their brains with them. That way of teaching literature makes the students loathe reading. Students would be able to enjoy reading more if they weren't forced to analyze every metaphor and symbolic allusion and throwing each scene into a juxtaposition to compare and find any motifs in the book. (Honestly, that last part is practically sophomore year in English...)
4. Prose appeals to logos by using examples of literature, analyzing and comparing them to help support her thesis.
5. In a way, it appears she does assume the audience is familiar with some of the novels, especially novels like Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, where she doesn't even explain the plot of the book so much as to give a quote that she wanted to analyze from it. Now, the idea that she assumes that the audience would be familiar with the novels causes her essay to lose its effect. The audience doesn't know what the speaker is talking about and therefore doesn't understand the point she is trying to make.
6. Ew no. I could never agree with that. That is obviously a biased opinion and that's her thought, not mine. She's trashing another woman's work recklessly without a legitimate reason as to why. It's an irritating remark and would've been better left out since that piece of text killed her credibility.
7. Isn't it to get us thinking about everything she was talking about in the essay, to get us processing the information she had just exposed us to in order to understand her stance better and the essay better?
8. I think it would have. Having other people's thoughts and opinions on the matter rather than just stating her own would've made her argument more plausible. At least, it would've been more credible to me since it's not just a biased opinion, but also includes other people's opinions that helps support her thoughts.
9. Can I honestly say same as number three? The teachers tend to be lazy in their teachings and lack in giving the students an appreciation for literature. Not only that, students are taught to value the background rather than the quality of the writing itself. Teachers also have the tendency to characterize dead authors and poets as "perfect" which kind of draws this line between their work and the amount of criticism students are allowed to give. With all of these factors combined, the teachers end up narrowing the students' literary experience and cause them to lose interest in reading and literature.
10. It was more of recommendations rather than solutions. The entirety of her essay consisted of her own thoughts and her own opinions, which weakened her argument drastically in my eyes. It was an interesting read, considering she did not hold her thoughts back, but there were places where she probably should've thought more...cautiously. Credibility can be hard to gain, but easy to lose. Her data consisted of commentary, not facts or statistics.

Analyzing a Visual Text

This ad caught my attention because of the innocence within the scene. Any parent could look at this and reminisce on the days they would find their children playing with something that wasn't meant for them whether it be a mother's heels, a father's shaving cream, or any other adult "toy" the child would find lying around.

Once you look closer, however, you'll notice that this was an advertisement about locking up weapons, and the purity you once saw in the picture disappears as a visual image of the little boy playing with his mother's pads changed into him picking up a gun he found in his father's closet.

To add to their message, they provided text stating, "If they find it, they'll play with it." With the situation above, it just shows the context of the boy finding the pads and tampons and messing around with them, but applying the text with the scene where the boy finds a gun in the closet, the next implied situation would be the boy "playing" with the gun.

Such a powerful statement made with so little words. The connections made between the work, the creator of the work, and the purpose for the work all works together in giving the peers the message the speaker was trying to say.

Questions on Rhetoric and Style

I did this on a piece of paper originally, so I apologize....

1. Orwell's thesis is that the English language has been declined to ruin. It was more implied than it was directly stated.
2. I actually found it effective. It's a relative topic that most people can understand and/or imagine vividly.
3. Paragraph 4-----"tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." I didn't really understand the meaning behind it, so it wasn't entirely effective in my opinion. Paragraph 5 was filled with dying metaphors that effective whatsoever such as "Ring the changes on." Paragraph 12-----"presentable by a sheer humbug." It was kind of effective, considering that it referenced a well-known story, A Christmas Carol. I still didn't understand it as easily though, considering how simple my mind is. [I hope this is enough examples????]
4. For me, the paragraphs lost a lot of important details that could have helped me (and other readers) understand Orwell's thesis better.
5. As far as I know, the footnotes are there to help explain things that might not be well-known, but without getting off-topic.
6. Well, I found his work more credible through the many detailed sources he used and the information he pulled out from each of his sources. The details are what convinced me, not his reputation
7. His essay was very well organized, aside from that one HUGE paragraph made me hate my life. The generic order of the paper was beautiful, however. The essay flowed nicely, too.
8. The answer is similar as the first question: He wanted to inform everyone about the English language and the horrible state it's in. The purpose of the post-World War II historical context----he was practically just using it as an example as to the how low the English language stands.
9. The tone of Orwell's essay was sophisticated and relaxed, almost as if it was a script to a professor's lecture to his english class in college. It never really switched tones unless he was giving examples.
10. 
    

• Dying metaphor: "tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."
• Operators/Verbal False Limbs: "give an air of"
• Pretentious Diction: "scientific impartiality to biased judgments"

Heyman's Essay

Heyman's essay appeared to have a similar shape to the classical model when organizing her information. The majority of it was narration however, giving the audience and idea about what they're talking about in detail. The Myths section did seem to be a huge refutation section, showing the counterargument to emphasize her position. This argument seems to contain mostly facts, meant mostly for informing others and helping them understand her point of view on the topic.
Since it contains mostly facts and description, the most prevailing pattern would be narration with a bit of description.