Blogging Extra Credit 1

Hey everyone,

I thoroughly enjoyed our English classes this week!

In particular, I thought that the class discussions that we had on Philadelphia were really engaging. By examining the different appeals of the film (logos, pathos, and ethos), I thought that are class uncovered the hidden messages enveloped in the film.  I also thought that most students were engaged in the conversations.  Instead of reading monotonous passages from different novels (sorry, Carolyn!), everyone got to watch a very interesting movie.  Thus, they actually wanted to comment and contribute to the class discussion.

Overall, I really enjoyed our classes this week, and I hope to have great English classes in the future!

-Mark

"Philadelphia" Scene

After watching the movie Philadelphia for my second time, I realized that one moment really sticks out to me. In particular, it is the scene where Denzel Washington (black lawyer) places the face mask upon Tom Hank's (protagonist with AIDS) face. This scene really sticks out to me because it exemplifies Washington's character's maturation at the end of the movie.

In the beginning of the movie, Washington is afraid to be near let alone touch Tom Hank's due to the stigma of AIDS during the 1980s. Throughout the course of the movie though, Washington's character realizes that as long as he does not have "intimate" contact with Hanks, he cannot possibly contract the vile disease. This realization prompts Washington to become closer to Hanks, and lets him see past the medical and social stigma of AIDS. During the face mask scene, Washington shows that he completely dropped his bias against gays and his fear of AIDS by coming into contact with Hanks. Washington is no longer afraid of touching Hanks due to his understanding that Hanks is a person and that he cannot contract AIDS through touch, and that Hanks needed a relaible friend at the end of his life.

This scene is filled with pathos. It is suppose to evoke sorrow in the audience. It is also suppose to relieve the audience of their fear against contracting AIDS though touch, and the bias that homosexaual deserve to die of AIDS (plays into the whole movie). I, for one, found it a very touching scene, and that is why it stuck out to me so much.

Blogging Prompt 4: Experience and Other Evidence Final Topic Choices

After much thought, I have officially decided to base my research for the “Experience and Other Evidence” paper on the topic of overweight/obesity.  I ultimately chose this topic because I have been exposed to overweight people my entire life. 

Besides the millions of Americans who suffer from being overweight, my family also shares this disease.  Most of my relatives on my father’s side can easily be considered overweight if not some obese.  One of my uncles on my father’s side, who shall be nameless for now, is extremely overweight.  As a consequence, he has been admitted to the hospital at least a dozen times over the past five years due to back problems, heart problems, and the like.  Specifically, when I was a junior in high school (I would like to say March or May of 2009), my uncle was admitted to the hospital for heart surgery.  The procedure entailed the use of stents in his coronary arteries to provide a larger amount of blood supply to flow to the heart.  Due to the anesthesia and severity of the operation, my uncle lied in the hospital bed looking very ill and in massive amounts of pain for days.  I remember thinking that I would possibly lose my uncle to obesity; however, he healed from the operation and is still around today. 

The possible stasis questions that I wish to analyze originate from the Definition and Cause/Effect sections.  From the Definition section, I wish to possibly answer “What the definition of obesity is?”.  From the Cause/Effect section, I wish to analyze “What causes obesity to occur in most Americans?”, and “What are the effects of obesity?”. 

My uncle’s close call to death due to his weight made me realize how dangerous obesity can be, and I want dedicate my paper to answering the stasis questions based on the above experience. 

The Experience and Other Evidence Memo

1.       Asthma

The first topic that I want to address is asthma.  Ever since I started engaging in physical activities such as sports (around 6 or 7 years old), I have always felt a tightening in my chest.  After the initial tightening in my chest, I experience another phenomenon; shortness of breath.  As the physicians later told my parents, these symptoms that I chronically experience have been linked to asthma. 

A question related to asthma is “why does asthma occur in some individuals and not others?” or maybe “Should athletes feel shame if they suffer from symptoms of asthma?”

My intended audience for this specific subject would be members of the asthma community, active and non-active, and doctors who wish to eradicate asthma indefinitely.

2.       Overweight/Obesity

The second topic that I wish to direct my research on pertains to overweight/obesity.  On my father’s side of the family, many of my relatives (uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents) suffer from being overweight.  Though they are not rotund enough to be considered obese, they have suffered many health related problems that are linked to obesity such as heat problems, kidney problems, and other ailments.  To further expand my claim, I think there are statistics stating that at least half of the American population is overweight, and maybe a quarter of the population can be considered obese. 

A question that I would like to pose is “How can we prevent US citizens from becoming overweight/obese?” or “How to handle the US citizens who are already overweight/obese?”

My intended audience should be every US citizen overweight or obese, a person who has an overweight/obese relative and the doctors who wish for their bigger patients to become healthier.

3.       Cancer

The last topic that I wish to mention is cancer.  Though this may sound like a cliché, I am willing to generalize that everyone knows somebody that has been diagnosed with some form of cancer.  For example, the other day my grandmother had surgery to remove a tumor that appeared in her breast.  Though she will recover well from her cancer due to early detection and surgery, not everyone is always as lucky. 

A question that I wish to pose for cancer is “Why has cancer become more prevalent over the past couple of decades?” or “Is there any other preventative measures to stop cancer from forming other than screenings (i.e. foods that one can eat to prevent cancer from forming)?”

My intended audience should be patients whom have been diagnosed with cancer, people who had cancer and won their battle, the family members of patients who had cancer, and the doctors who devote their lives to eradicating the awful disease. 

Thoughts on Sontag's "Illness/AIDS as a Metaphor"

Susan Sontag’s novels Illness as a Metaphor (IAAM) and AIDS as a Metaphor (AAAM) illustrated her disposition towards certain lethal diseases.  In Sontag’s piece Illness as a Metaphor, she represented her view towards cancer.  Comparing it to tuberculosis, a lethal disease more common in the early 1900s, Sontag pointed out that having cancer alienated patients from everyone else.  The common view of people with cancer during the 1970s was that they were contagious, and that these people were sure to die.  Even doctors stigmatized these unfortunate patients by refusing to tell them that they were inflicted with cancer.  Basically, it was seen as the patient’s fault if they had cancer due to an ill-omen or unhealthy habits (again, this is during the 1970s). 

                In Sontag’s piece Aids as a Metaphor, written ten years after her first piece, she first analyzed IAAM by outlining the history of metaphors and the origins of science and disease, and then finally mentions AIDS.  She introduced AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) by describing how the disease affects the body.  Later, she compared AIDS to cancer; while cancer is a proliferation of mutated cells that adversely affect the body, AIDS breaks down the immune system, consequently destroying cells.  Though the two diseases are comparably different, Sontag noted that the response to the two diseases were very similar.  In both cases, people believed that the diseases were linked to certain groups of people (AIDS for homosexual men; Cancer for unhealthy people). Thus, she concludes that AIDS in the 1980s attracted the same malevolent attention as cancer did in the 1970s. 

                For the most part, I understood what Sontag wished to portray in her two pieces.  In her first piece IAAM, Sontag related that cancer patients in the 1970s were treated poorly by doctors and other members of society.  In AAAM, Sontag studied AIDS in the 1980s, and related its bad publicity to that of cancer in the 1970s.  The only thing that I did not understand was why Sontag found it beneficial to analyze IAAM in the first chapter of AAAM, written ten years later.  Personally, I think she should have written a follow up to her first piece instead of trying to incorporate it into her second.

                On the other hand, I liked how Sontag orchestrated her novels.  I found it very clever of Sonntag to relate a plethora of metaphors to illness in the beginning of AAAM.  For example, her allusions to the arts and the military were brilliant, and really added to her argument later on about the stigmatization of people with diseases such as AIDS or cancer.  I agreed with just about every metaphor she chose to use. Though I enjoyed her use of metaphors, I think that she could have curtailed this section, or at least made it a bit more interesting to read (most kids would find this section extremely boring) through simpler language or other forms of rhetoric. 

On Confessions-Blog 2

Confession, by definition, is “a formal statement admitting that one is guilty of a crime” (Oxford Dictionaries 1).  Thus, confession requires a person to spill out their darkest secrets and confide these thoughts into another individual.  As seen in medical pieces such as “Bless Me Reader For I have Sinned” and “The Final Cut”, the authors, Wear & Jones and Gawande, divulged to their audience the dark side of the medical profession.  By doing so, these authors engaged the reader’s attention and also expressed forms of confessional literature.

                An important distinction to create is the difference between confession and apology.  As defined by Jones, “an apology is an expression of regret – “I am sorry” - but a confession is an admission of fault – “I am sorry because I did something wrong. I sinned” (224).  Based off of this definition, confession is a stronger form of an apology because in confessing, one admits that they did something wrong and is truly remorseful about the sin they committed.

                Confession can be very useful in writing, assuming that an author knows when to appropriately use it.  An appropriate time to use confession in writing is when one is trying to spread a point across (i.e. call attention to certain problems) to their audience.  For example, Gawande confesses in his piece that doctors do not perform enough autopsies and that only autopsies can uncover what actually killed a patient in certain situations.  By doing so, he stresses the point that doctors are becoming lazy and ignorant of many types of unknown diseases.  Another critical time for confession in literature is when an author accounts for a sin so others do not make the same mistake.  In many pieces written by doctors, the doctors admit that they may have not read a test result correctly or downplayed the severity of a patient’s disease.  After the patient suffers a debilitating injury or dies due to the physician’s carelessness, the doctors experience a period of self-reflection, where they acknowledge their fault and tell others about it so the same mistake is not made again.  These two examples are the most appropriate forms in confession in medical literature.

                Confession is not always appropriate in writing though.  It is not really acceptable for an author to confess a mistake that he or she made just so they can feel better about an incident that happened.  For example, it is pointless for a writer to reminisce back to their childhood and describe a time when they might have ate a cookie when their parents told them not to.  In this case, the author is not trying to teach an audience a lesson, or call attention to a problem.  The author is just simply imploring the readers for forgiveness for a trivial incident.  Thus, authors should only use confessional literature for matters that might benefit others and prevent similar mistakes from being repeated or made. 

Works Cited

“Confession." Def. 1. Oxforddictoinaries.com. Web. 5 Feb. 2011. <http://oxforddictionaries.com/search?searchType=dictionary&isWritersAndEditors=true&searchUri=All&q=confession&contentVersion=US>.

Wear, Delese, and Therese Jones. "Bless Me Reader for I HAve Sinned." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 53.2 (2010): 215-30. Print.