Ferguson Essay
Below is a link to a Ferguson Essay I completed as my first essay in the 2089 class. Feel free to read the whole essay contained in the link below. I will, however, highlight a couple specific things below that I will analyze in depth.
ferguson_individual_essay-michael_fitzgerald.docx | |
File Size: | 125 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Firstly, one of the difficulties in writing this essay was focusing in on a few concrete things about the whole entire Ferguson situation. For those who might not know, this Ferguson situation is referring to the recent shooting of a black teen, Michael Brown, by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in a town just outside of St. Louis, Missouri called Ferguson. Because this issue has been at the forefront of media for the past few months and is a very sensitive subject with our nations history, there have been millions of texts and rhetors surrounding it. My process focused in on unexpected rhetors and how their approach, background, and experience helped make their message more or less powerful within the overall discourse community. As a writer, it was interesting to relate two unexpected background and rhetor views to how they may have been perceived. Below is an example of how I drew out that unexpected quality in one of the rhetors. It shows a small portion of my goal to draw out the deeper experience that might have lead to the authors views.
"Engelbreit is a white mother of two boys and has resided in St. Louis for the majority of her career. Another thing that adds to her background and authority within her cartoon is that she also lost a son at a young age. Her son Evan died of a gunshot wound at the age of 19 in 2000 (Peterson). It is very easy then to see where her exigence in creating the cartoon comes from. At the first glance, her cartoon “In The USA” seems to be a deviation from her normal happy, Hallmark type work. It takes a more subtle side of the argument, but is easily identified as being on the side of the Brown family."
This excerpt shows how I relate Engelbreit to the situation and show her deeper motivation behind the piece she creates. Engelbreit is a mother/cartoonist whose cartoon sympathized with the Brown family's plight. I think within the essay as a whole, I found a lot of success tying pieces of the two rhetors lives to their overall opinions on the Michael Brown shooting.
One things I did not have as much success with was transitioning between thoughts. A great example is below.
End of paragraph "This interesting lack of fitting the mold is a guiding light in both rhetorical pieces."
Beginning of next: "Besides the approaches and sides that each rhetor takes, their choice of expression determines their personal level of inclusion with their pieces."
There is no apparent smooth transition between the two ideas. I just hopped from idea to idea, thus creating a less flowing paper and a lack of possible clarity in connecting arguments. This created a possibility for my audience to have a disconnect and lose the overall desired impact I had of informing them of the connectivity between these unexpected rhetors.
"Engelbreit is a white mother of two boys and has resided in St. Louis for the majority of her career. Another thing that adds to her background and authority within her cartoon is that she also lost a son at a young age. Her son Evan died of a gunshot wound at the age of 19 in 2000 (Peterson). It is very easy then to see where her exigence in creating the cartoon comes from. At the first glance, her cartoon “In The USA” seems to be a deviation from her normal happy, Hallmark type work. It takes a more subtle side of the argument, but is easily identified as being on the side of the Brown family."
This excerpt shows how I relate Engelbreit to the situation and show her deeper motivation behind the piece she creates. Engelbreit is a mother/cartoonist whose cartoon sympathized with the Brown family's plight. I think within the essay as a whole, I found a lot of success tying pieces of the two rhetors lives to their overall opinions on the Michael Brown shooting.
One things I did not have as much success with was transitioning between thoughts. A great example is below.
End of paragraph "This interesting lack of fitting the mold is a guiding light in both rhetorical pieces."
Beginning of next: "Besides the approaches and sides that each rhetor takes, their choice of expression determines their personal level of inclusion with their pieces."
There is no apparent smooth transition between the two ideas. I just hopped from idea to idea, thus creating a less flowing paper and a lack of possible clarity in connecting arguments. This created a possibility for my audience to have a disconnect and lose the overall desired impact I had of informing them of the connectivity between these unexpected rhetors.