TOW #18: Man on the Tracks by Erika Anderson

In this brief, yet poignant and deeply emotional narrative of Anderson's experiences one afternoon on a New York City subway train, the author makes use of several rhetorical devices to achieve her purpose of conveying her feelings in that moment to the reader. She conveys these feelings of shock, fear, and confusion even at the time of writing through repetition, and a poetic examination of the days and weeks following the incident.

"When you watch a man on the tracks before an oncoming train, that’s exactly what you do: watch.
     You can shout at him.
     You can yell, “Train!”
     You can grip your New Yorker and suck in your breath.
     You can exhale when the Brooklyn-bound A stops twenty feet short.
     You can widen your eyes when the man stumbles in your direction, toward the platform"

This is how the essay begins, and the use of repetition empowers the text by conveying the frenetic atmosphere of the moment. This serves the text well because its main purpose is simply to convey the authors emotion. This sort of rhetorical repetition can be seen again at the essay's conclusion, when the author writes 
    "They say, “Wow.”
     They say, “Are you okay?”
     They say, “That’s horrible.”
     They say, “New York moment.”
     They say, “Survival of the fittest.”
     They say, “The train hit him and then what?”
     They change the subject.
     They say something else."

In this sense, the repetition is just as effective as it is in the introduction, as it conveys the disappointing nature of the reactions of the authors colleagues. The repetition is effective here and before because it manages to convey the entire emotional context of the incident; the shock and initial confusion, and the melancholy disappointment that follows in the days and weeks after the incident. The concluding lines of the essay also serve to encompass the entirety of the second rhetorical tool that Anderson makes use of. 

The examination of the disappointing reactions of those around her to the bizarre subway incident serve to showcase the nature of incidents like these. At the end, all she is left with is a number of unusual tidbits like the races of those who helped the man off the platform, and a feeling of lingering confusion.

Overall, the authors rhetorical strategies are well chosen and they support the intention of the piece quite nicely. the use of repetition frames the incident nicely and conveys the same sense of confusion and uncertainty surrounding the event, and the essay's conclusion helps to frame the way in which the author's feelings lingered following the event. 

IRB #3 Intro: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

For my third IRB of the school year, I have chosen to read David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell. This book comes highly recommended from my father, and APELC seems like the perfect environment through which to understand the book at it's deepest levels. David and Goliath is a series of essays, ranging from such diverse topics as the impact of population decline on public views concerning elementary class size to early leukemia treatments in Chicago hospitals. Each essay is tied together by a progressive analysis of how the main character or characters in each essay overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve their ends. What is unique about this book, and about Gladwell, is his ability to extract a network of meaning and symbolism from seemingly disjointed events across time and space. This can be seen in the title text, which bills itself first as an examination and critique of how it was that, in the famous biblical epoch, David managed to defeat Goliath, and is expanded upon in each progressive text, until a complete picture of how the David's of the world beat the Goliath's of the world is achieved. I look forward to reading David and Goliath, and hopefully gaining more knowledge about the world as Gladwell observes it.