Chapter One: pg 3-15 & pg 16-31

Notes

• Rhetoric is the purposeful use of language or images.
• Basically rhetoric is all around us, almost everything has a rhetorical meaning.
• As Aristotle said, "Rhetoric is the faculty of observing in any given situation the avaiable means of persuasion". This bascially means (1) Observe a situation (2) Communicate message in appropiate way (3) Persudae your audience.
• Exigence is call for change; in a rhetorical exigence, only discourse, or language, can solve the problem at hand.
• In rhetorical situations you ahve rhetorical audiences. This group is "hand-picked", it is a group that will most likely respond and bring about change.
• Similarily, a rhetorical purpose is to infulence your audience.

Writing Responses

Judy Brady's "I want a Wife" is a sad look into the expected roles that women have had to assume over the years, as wives. The essay is written from the perseption of an overworked wife, kind of assuming a male persona and mocking him for it. The roles of a wife, range from fulfilling the children's needs to fulfilling husabnd's wants. The way woman, more specificly, wives, are portrayed seem more like slaves than spoues. I belive this essay is a cry for help, and highlights the stress on modern woman nowadays, how they are oftentimes overworked and severely under appericated.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s exert from "Letter From Birmngham Jail" striked me as odd. I have always thought of MLK as a strong leader for equal rights, but unfortunatley in his writings, although I did find some powerful quotes, I felt that he somewhat succmbed to the "clergymen". Specifically near the end when Dr. King asks for forgiveness, "If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me". My mom has always said "kill your enemies with kindness", so I guess his mother like engraved that into his head. I understand that some of the things he writes is to turn the tables and make the clergymen think, but i feel it was excessive.