2011년 3월 21일 월요일

Literary Devices found in "I Have a Dream"

Alliteration
page1. capital to cash a check
page2. dark and desolate
sweltering summer
marvelous militancy
page3. sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together
color of their skin but by the content of their character

Anaphora.
page 1. "one hundred years later" four times
page 2. "Now is the time" four times
"We cannot" two times
page 3. "We can not be satisfied" five times
"Go back to ~"six times
page 3-4. "I have a dream" nine times
page 4. "With this faith" three times
"Let freedom ring" ten times

Metaphor.
"America has given the Negro people a bad check ~ security of justice" :
check = freedom, humanity.

"This sweltering summer ~ justice emerges"
summer=Negro's legitimate discontent, autumn=freedom, equality
whirwinds=revolt, bright day = justice

"we will be able to transfomr~knowing that we will be free one day"
jangling discords=discrimination against Blacks
beautiful sympphony of brotherhood=equality

Ethos
"Five score years ago" - Emancipation Proclamation
"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence"
"Nineteen sixty-three"
"justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream"-Bible

Pathos
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day ~ by the content of their character"
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last"
(not just the content itself but the tone and the mood are appealing to the audience's emotions)
"But one hundred years later, ~ And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition."
"The marvelous new militancy ~ inextricably bound to our freedom."

Alliteration, Anaphora, Ethos, Pathos

Alliteration
Definition: repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of word / phrases
Examples
1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
2. Dewdrops Dancing Down Daisies

Anaphora
Definition: a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses
Examples
1. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. – Holden Caulfield
2. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. –Winston Churchill

Ethos
Definition: persuasive appeal based on the character or projected character of the speaker / writer
Examples
1. "If, in my low moments, in word, deed or attitude, through some error of temper, taste, or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain, or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self. If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart. My head--so limited in its finitude; my heart, which is boundless in its love for the human family. I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds."
(Jesse Jackson, Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, 1984)

2. My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."...Since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable in terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in."...I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

Pathos
Definition: means of persuasion that appeals to the audience’s emotions
Examples
1. For me, commentary on war zones at home and abroad begins and ends with personal reflections. A few years ago, while watching the news in Chicago, a local news story made a personal connection with me. The report concerned a teenager who had been shot because he had angered a group of his male peers. This act of violence caused me to recapture a memory from my own adolescence because of an instructive parallel in my own life with this boy who had been shot. When I was a teenager some thirty-five years ago in the New York metropolitan area, I wrote a regular column for my high school newspaper. One week, I wrote a colunm in which I made fun of the fraternities in my high school. As a result, I elicited the anger of some of the most aggressive teenagers in my high school. A couple of nights later, a car pulled up in front of my house, and the angry teenagers in the car dumped garbage on the lawn of my house as an act of revenge and intimidation.
James Garbarino "Children in a Violent World: A Metaphysical Perspective"

2. "Hillary Clinton used a moment of brilliantly staged emotion to win the New Hampshire Democratic primary . . .. As she answered questions in a diner on the morning before the election, Mrs. Clinton's voice began to waver and crack when she said: 'It's not easy. . . . This is very personal for me.'

2011년 3월 6일 일요일

Self-Introduction

My face was reddened and was almost turning into white. The flood of words whirled inside me, but I could not pop anyone of them from my own mouth. The more English threatened me, the more I antagonized students who studied abroad. For me, English was a ‘passive’ language because I could read, listen, and understand but this language did not let me to express myself of my own ideas. I abhorred the blank silence after the English teacher asked me a question. One day, the teacher allured me to the answer by almost enforcing me to repeat his words step by step. Yet, as a young child, I behaved in a giddy way in front of my parents by just saying that I talked with a teacher in English. I was thrilled since teachers, parents, and friends seemed to praise me for making a right answer. That absurd event affected me as a turning point and I studied English for the thrill of satisfaction. Not only for English but for everything else throughout my whole life, challenge and passion have been the source of my power. I still fear to try so many things but now I know that I have to face the fear inside myself and have to break it. Just like I overcame the fear against English with my passion, I hope to do so to make my dreams be true.

Knowledge vs Wisdom

The article ‘Does more information mean we know less?’ argues that nowadays, people are swamped with too much information that we lost the ability to utilize it wisely. Yes, it is true that people are provided with a lot of information more than ever. Yet, does having more information mean equal to a lack of wisdom?
Wisdom is a deep understanding of things and an ability to choose right. To understand and to make decisions, we should first gain knowledge and then develop it into a higher level. As Immanuel Kant said, all our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. To acquire sagacity, knowledge should be gained first. Separating those two, just like the author of the reading did, is nothing more than mere black-and-white logic.
To understand and tolerate others, we should know more. If our knowledge is constricted to a certain aspect – a world around us, we will never be able to entertain various view points. For instance, Indians worship cows because they are Hindus. Western countries, whose values are concentrated on efficiency, criticize their tradition because worship of cows results in extreme traffic jam and extravagance of grains. But in reality, India needs more than 120 million cows because their major industry – agriculture is run by cows’ labor and cows are also used for transportation in India. Without enough information, there is no understanding and there is no tolerance.
To make right decisions, again, we should know. We learn history to learn from the past – to analyze between similar current and past situations, to understand why and how certain events are happening nowadays, and not to commit the same mistakes as our ancestors did. We also read newspapers about the whole world even though we will not go and fly from US to France and to Libya the very next day. Reading newspapers allows us to be alarmed how the world is changing day-to-day and we broaden our viewpoints by adding diverse and analytic perspectives.
Simply saying that we have to choose between the two – wisdom and knowledge is such an ‘unwise’ thought. Maybe that is because the writer of the article limited himself to a small amount of information just like he believed in to be a wise man.

Knowledge itself has no power. But wisdom stands on knowledge.
No knowledge, no wisdom.

Ode to Chocolate

She was wrapped in gold in a voluptuous figure

I closely touched her dress to configure

She was mesmerizing me with a luscious aroma

And seeping a dark sweet breathe I fell in a coma


As I licked her smooth skin with the tip of my tongue

I became full of euphoria and there rung the gloria

The kiss was a moment I could not miss

Her existence is such a bliss


Oh Rome and Juliet are you still looking for your mate

I have already found my fate