Reflection of Personal Narrative (My Experience in Haiti)

Writing a paper for the first time for a college class was overall pretty easy. Haven taken two college English classes in high school, I had an idea of what it was going to be like. I think this first paper, obviously, is meant to ease us into the process. That being said, writing this paper came naturally without apprehension. The topic of the paper made it especially easy to write. Since it was from personal experience, not analyzing or comparing rhetoric, it did not require much heavy thought. Obviously it required organization of thought as it applied to the prompt but as for content and the story itself, it flowed out of me pretty well. I feel like the story I wrote was pretty good. I feel like it was in a way unique. My guess was that most people would write about seeing oppression in the world. However, I wrote about seeing privilege. I suppose those two go somewhat hand in had, but in my story I believe it was right to come at it from the privileged point of view.
For me, the most helpful thing we learned in class was probably the rhetoric appeals and the triangle of communication between writer and audience. After writing my first paper, keeping the appeals and triangle in mind, I believe I have a better understanding of rhetoric. I will say, coming into the class I had no idea what it meant but now I believe I have somewhat of a grasp on it. To me, it is the writer, myself, using different writing techniques to get a certain reaction from the audience, whether that be agreement, a certain emotion, or reflection. For me, using I had never but much thought into using the rhetoric appeals because it seemed natural. If you want someone to feel a certain way, write in the tone or use words to evoke that feeling. If you want to make someone agree with you about a trend or a specific issue, using facts and statistics and credited evidence always helps. However, now that I know they are actually tools in writing, I will be able to better use them in future writing. 
As always, I feel like I could use some work on my conclusions. In middle school and most of high school I was taught to rewrite what you've already said and restate your thesis in the conclusion. My senior year, and I'm assuming in college, the conclusion is designed for critical thinking which is definitely a big change. With the right amount of practice though I know I will become better at writing my conclusions.

Rhetorical Triangle and Appeals in Political Cartoon of Palin

The message of this political cartoon is how stupid Sarah Palin is. Or, more politely, how she has no idea what she is talking about. The author of this message is the illustrator of the cartoon while the audience is the people who read this cartoon. The context is during the presidential election race when Palin was running for election. During the election, Palin made some questioning comments about different things. After making these comments, the Republican party, represented by the elephant, knows they wont win is she elected in the primaries. The cartoon, then, is poking fun at Palin and her comments, including the fact her own party knows she isn't the brightest. The author of this cartoon uses the text inside the quote made by Palin, although fake, to evoke laughter and understanding from the audience. The emotional appeal, pathos, derives from the fact the audience understands how wrong she is when she says the things she does in the quote, its comical. However, to first find it funny the audience must have an understanding and brief knowledge about the history of the world. The audience also needs to have a little information about Palin's past in order to understand why this sort of thing would be coming out of her mouth. In this way, the author uses the text to appeal the audiences understanding of the earth and Palin which then appeals to their emotions making them laugh at the cartoon. From this we can see the goal of the rhetoric, or cartoon, was to make the audience chuckle at the ridiculousness of the statement made by Palin and also the fact the party knows she's not smart.

Rhetorical Appeals in "The Joy of Reading and Writing" by Sherman Alexie

In "The Joy of Reading and Writing" the author, Sherman Alexie, uses many rhetorical appeals throughout the story. When reading the article, I noticed in particular the author using the emotional appeal of kairos, the opportune moment. Specifically, I noticed its appearance when Alexie wrote how often he would read. There is a good 14 lined paragraph in the story listing and describing all the things we read. To me, this portrays he as a child took any moment he could to read, learn, discover new worlds in literature and words even if the text he was reading all together was very boring. For example, he starts off by describing how he would read books and later on in the paragraph writes he would end up reading junk mail too. This shows how strong his love of reading was as a child and how he would take any moment he could to read.  Another appeal I noticed was pathos, or an emotional appeal. The use of this appeal is evident when Alexie describes how he refused to fail. He says he was smart, arrogant, and lucky. This pulls at the readers' emotional side because we empathize with him. We understand his drive to not fail knowing he feels he is smart and arrogant. This part of the story could also be seen as logos, or appeal to logical. Logically, if someone is arrogant and knows they are smart, they probably wouldn't want to fail. As a reader, that makes sense because we would more than likely do the same thing if we were in the same position. 

The use of the appeals in the story help connect the author with the reader, or audience. By appealing to logic, opportune moments, and emotions, the reader has a better understanding for the point of view the author has regarding the issue being written about. Based on how I felt about the reading, I feel the author used the appeals effectively. We witnessed and understand his story and how he became a writer and teacher. The audience has a greater acceptance or understanding for people like him too, or that grew up similarly to him. These appeals also opens the audience's eyes, at least hopefully, to the way he had to grow up. This story doesn't really attack the learning system on Indiana reservations, but it challenges people to think how we value all children in education. Are they really all encouraged to learn and be the best? According to the author, no. Some might argue against him but through the use of his appeals the audience has an understanding and even acceptance of what his life was like. 

If I were the author writing this story, I would not have done anything differently. I think he used the correct appeals in the write places to get his message across. I will say his technique opened my eyes to our education system and opened my heart for awe and respect for him and his work.