“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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recent visitors and later by her own ancestors.
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
grandparents feeling of anticipation, allows for the audience to become more aware that this land represented a new beginning for countless Americans. Prior to this statement, Marquart says that this is the Heartland, the place where Jefferson’s idea of a the land grid system found its most perfect confluence of longitude, latitude, and 50 countryside so well behaved that it laid itself down in neat, even squares for the surveyor’s instruments. This reference emphasizes that this region is valuable to a variety of people. Through Marquarts use of impressive diction, she allows the audience to analyze both surveyors views and Marquarts own, while supporting her own opinions with evidence. Marquart utilizes detailed allusions to emphasize the special qualities of the Midwest region. Marquart presents information to the audience when she refers to Sylvia Griffith’s quote “We are the folks presidents talk to when times require” (Griffith, 21-23). Through this statement, Marquart utilizes allusions to describe the region. She described the personalities of her people as being important to America. Marquart projects that presidents themselves find their own opinions to be significant to others. She reminisces over the fact that citizens from this region are essential to the nation. This statement proves that she has respect for the entire nation. Marquart quotes long as saying it was a region “uninhabitable by people depending upon agriculture for subsistence” (Long, 40-41). After comparing the people who were established by this environment it is obvious that this region is something special. By introducing the idea that the region was first known to be “uninhabitable”, she spotlights her clear pride towards those people who develop lifestyles on the region. Marquart emphasizes detailed allusions to confirm that happy lifestyles do occur on this region. Debra Marquart deploys an impressive diction that allows the audience to contemplate both the surveyors perspective and Marquart’s own perspective, while using detailed allusions to gain the audience's attention about the positive qualities of the region. Marquarts response and views were very beneficial to our world because of the outcome it had on the opinions’ of the people. Marquart influenced people to look at the bigger picture and further their imagination. She made people more aware of the history behind the region. As a reader, when author's use more evidence within their passage most people have the tendency to lean towards their side in the end. This passage is important because Marquart exhibits her respect for the people who create a life on what was once known as “unimpressive” land.
“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.
Soon after launch on January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart and shattered the nation. The tragedy was on the hearts and minds of the nation and President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan addressed the county, commemorating the men and woman whose lives were lost and offering hope to Americans and future exploration. Reagan begins his speech by getting on the same level as the audience by showing empathy and attempting to remind us that this was the job of the crew. He proceeds with using his credibility to promise future space travel. Ultimately, his attempt to appeal to the audience’s emotions made his argument much stronger. Reagan effectively addresses the public about the tragedy while comforting, acknowledging, honoring and motivating his audience all in an effort to move the mood from grief to hope for future exploration.
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.
In Part II of A Sand County Almanac, titled "The Quality of Landscape," Leopold takes his reader away from the farm; first into the surrounding Wisconsin countryside and then even farther, on an Illinois bus ride, a visit to the Iowa of his boyhood...
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.
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.
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” .
“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).
...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.”
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that described a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation. Swift hoped to reach not only the people of Ireland who he was calling to action, but the British, who were oppressing the poor. He writes with contempt for those who are oppressing the Irish and also dissatisfaction with the people in Ireland themselves to be oppressed.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
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