Virginia Woolf: A.K.A. The Author Who Made A Speech As Interesting As Your Favorite Novel

 

I personally love Virginia Woolf. She writes about depression so eloquently and people actually understand what she's talking about. It's not pretentious. It's not trying to gain sympathy. It's understandable. She was a brilliant writer and any commentary on her would simply not do her justice, but I'm going to give my best shot at it. 

Her rhetorical strategies in this essay not only prove her point, but interest her audience. She personifies everything to make it more understandable. She talks about her herself in the third person, which not only makes her involved in the story she is creating, she makes it easier to identify with her and her fight against the Angel of the House, which is also conveniently personified as the, Victorian-era doting wife. Thus she sets the scene for her feminist battle in which she kills the gender role she was assigned to and if she did not kill it, it would have killed her. 

Everything about her argument was subtle. It was clear but it wasn't grand and flashy and trying really hard to be an argument. She wanted to paint a picture and that's exactly what she did. I pictured the ghost that she describes as depression. From my own personal experiences, I can say that I took to this very realistically because it is exactly that. It is a ghost. She does not present things in a grand way but rather as they really are by calling them something else. 

Cannibalism???

Okay so "A Modest Proposal" was the most disturbing thing I've ever read but, condescendingly it had valid points and the argument was well done.

The appeal to ethos was that Jonathan Swift claimed that he has spoken with different people whom are well knowledgeable and have experience with the "baby-eating" and child poverty that faces their countries.

Pathos was a little strange. Its hard to sympathize with someone who talks about eating children to save the rest of society but, Jonathan Swift sure did try to get his readers to do that. It is my personal opinion that Swift is mocking society by praising families who eat and sell their children to be eaten. He wants people to wake up and realize that instead of worrying about money they should be focusing on feeding the poor children. Anyone would question the consumption of babies. Swift makes the reader think: "Why would we want to kill and eat them, we should be trying to take care of them... (hey wait a second)?" By being crazily absurd and sarcastic, hopefully, Swift's modest proposal was meant to be a slap in the face to the way society thinks and acts.

And at last, we come to logos. I never thought that I would see someone come up with a logical conclusion to eat babies and make a whole market scheme out of this industry, even taking account supply and demand and various health benefits. but hey, its been done. Swift uses all different kinds of factual data like the costs to provide for a poor family and the profit that could be potentially made. This makes his argument all the more reasonable.

Okay so I know that people nowadays, or hopefully previously, don't eat babies. However infant genocide is actually a problem in some parts of the world. In countries like China and India, female children are considered unwanted and are killed at birth, a process that is still shockingly, socially acceptable. More info on that can be found here.

I'm not exactly sure where I stand on the whole issue of abortion, though this is primarily because it does not apply to me. However, I do think that it is wrong to abort a child simply because they are not the desired sex. This practice is actually legal and ongoing in the US since abortion is legal no matter what the desire is and is primarily done by immigrants from countries where it is socially acceptable. Even though some parents may not want to have daughters in this majority anti-feminist world, we cannot just abort them to save them the trouble since this only sets the feminism movement back.

Eloquence

"We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire" - Henry David Thoreau

I firmly disagree with Thoreau. His sentences themselves are eloquent. Thoreau explains things in a way that are overly expressive and yet while reading this, I couldn't help but think that it sounded pretty. He himself was wrong in his opinions and he used eloquence to make others think that he sounded smart, but, he did sound pretty.

I love eloquence. Even simple ideas or sentences can make you feel something. For example, one of my favorite songs Bravado by Lorde is really eloquent but it really makes me feel empowered and strong even when I'm feeling down. Here's some of the lyrics:


All my lifeI've been fighting a warI can't talk to you or your friendsIt's not only youMy heart jumps around when I'm alluded toThis will not do
'Cause I was raised upTo be admired to be noticedBut when you're withdrawn it's the closest thingTo assault when all eyes are on youThis will not do
I'm faking gloryLick my lips toss my hairAnd turn the smile onAnd the story's brand-newBut I can take it from hereI'll find my own bravado 

It's poetic. It sounds pretty. If the lyrics were just "be strong" or "everything will be okay", the message wouldn't be effective as much. Eloquence does inspire heroism and no I don't just like it because it sounds pretty. It allows me give a voice to the feelings that I've felt before but could never quite state it in a way that made it sound greater than what it actually was. 

Old School Feminism

 

Personally as a male, any time that I talk about feminism I think I sound like the cover of this magazine right here. It's a touchy subject to most people and a lot of people don't like talking about it but, being a guy, I think it can be tricky especially since most people believe that men can't be feminists. Yet, here I am, ready to talk about it because, that's right everyone, feminism is about men too (just like almost everything else unfortunately).

Today in class we read The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and The Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton from the Seneca Falls Convention. Stylistically the feminist one was much easier to read. The original Declaration had a lot of pretentious diction and flowery writing. Although it was specific by pointing out a list of grievances, it sounded like it was trying too hard to be formal, almost as if they knew that they weren't going to be taken seriously. Wow. Wouldn't that be awful.

Speaking of that, the whole purpose of the Seneca Falls Convention was so that women would finally start being taken seriously. More on the background of the convention can be found here. This was the main event that sparked the women's rights movement, This was the birth of feminism in the United States. Women and men (Men were allowed to attend only the second day of the convention) finally were not going to sit around and take this injustice in silence. They read their list of grievances because no one was taking them seriously. It will take years, and years, until this movement will finally catch fire and yet still, there is so much more farther that we have to go. Not everyone today takes feminism seriously.

Both of these works have a single purpose. To list their injustices that they feel that current conditions have placed upon them. The original document was written by a group of old white men, who could care less about other peoples' (women, African Americans, the poor, pretty much everyone else who wasn't them, etc.) opinions. However, the feminist Bible that was written by Stanton serves as the basis of the feminist movement that still is in effect today. She has expanded upon the original ideals of Jefferson and has made them right, or I should say, "more inclusive". Men and women are entitled to certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if they are not guaranteed these rights they can and should do something about it. So feminists, keep doing something about it, because it is going to all of us, even men, to make things better for everyone.

John Adams Has Had Enough Of Your Vanity

Well, the good news is that we got to read something historical in class today. (I love history.) The bad news, is that I had no clue how to interpret it because the diction was so outdated. The quote below is from John Adams' letter to his wife Abigail. The message itself can be connected to today, however here in 2016, I doubt the average person is aware of their unruly love of "pomp and dress".

"Whenever Vanity, and Gaiety, a Love of Pomp and Dress, Furniture, Equipage, Buildings, great Company, expensive Diversions, and elegant Entertainments get the better of the Principles and Judgments of Men or Women there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us." - John Adams

Now that sounded pretty but what does it actually mean?

Allow to me clarify. What Adams is trying to say is that people want material possessions, for example, "furniture, equipage,... expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments", to make themselves look good, People surround themselves with "great company", they have a lot of "pomp", (defined as a vain display of dignity or importance), they wear the best "dress". But what is the outcome? Often times, this changes people into fake wannabees that are consistently trying to outdo one another.

Does this still happen in 2016?  ----  Of course.

 

The picture above is consistently re-posted on social media. People today, much like back then, want each other to be true to themselves. They don't want their friends being exact copies of them, they want people who have different interests and ideals. The diversity among us is what makes life interesting. So when people try outdoing each other, this leads to a whole mess of things like pettiness, envy, and animosity towards each other. No one needs that in their life. John Adams certainty did not want it either.  

This chaos is not only in small social circles but also more wide-spread. When people are constantly trying to get the next best thing and keep up with everyone else, they lose track of their role as a citizen and more importantly, as a human. Now John Adams was not saying self-driven interests are bad. However, they can get out of hand when people become so overwhelmed with vanity that they don't care about the welfare of anyone else. We should be building each other up, not trying to tear each other down. We have to start becoming more aware of this since nothing has apparently changed since 1776. Why can't people just be friendly and get along? 

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The article we read in class, Me Talk Pretty One Day, had some valid points about language. Even though it took place in France, the story rings true here in America. Not being able to talk "proper" English is often discrimatory here. People can obviously understand what they want to say but the language gaps of immigrants inhibit them from looking as smart as the rest of the population. This causes them to be seen as lesser. 

As a society we need to stop seeing language as a barrier but rather a cultural difference that we must learn to appreciate. We need to give people credit for at least trying to learn a language. Most people native to America only speak English, yet we think that all immigrants need to conform to our ways and our society. This is unfair to say the least. 

The School System 2.0

Today in class we read an article on how the school system in America needs to change. Although I do agree with this statement, the changes presented in the article did not seem appropriate. The article called for high school starting at 7th grade and graduation at 16 years old. The article basically puts high school with the same principles as college today, freely elected courses based on student interest.

There are major flaws with this system. If students can pick the classes they want, then wouldn't it be more likely for students to pick classes that were easy and didn't require much effort? Another problem is that if students are selecting certain classes for fields they want to go into, they can't change their mind when they're done because they don't meet the requirement to go into that certain field.

 

I think that all students should be required to take certain courses but their own version of those courses, much like college. Let's say I have to take three years of lab sciences. I should be able to pick between chemistry, biology, physics, forensics, anatomy, medicine, and still get the same amount of credits for someone who took different sciences than myself. In this way, we would still be getting the same basic knowledge while being able to explore different interests. Basic knowledge should also focus on real world skills that aren't taught in schools now, like filing taxes, and understanding politics. Then, college should focus on just the fields of study that I want to go into and I wouldn't have to take general education classes except if I wanted to switch fields.

  

The education system definitely needs an update. The problem is that the world is constantly updating and we have yet to change the school system to match that. We should make school a place where kids should want to go to every day, because in reality a majority of kids hate school but love learning. We need to look the ones in power straight in the eyes and demand change and refuse anything else and then all that we have to do is follow through with the changes and the school system will improve.