“[AIDS] is not a distant threat. It is a present danger.” It is important to recognize, focus and take immediate action in regards to AIDS to create a safer and more positive future. On August 19, during the 1992 Republican National Convention Address, Mary Fisher, the author of “A Whisper of AIDS,” stood in front of a huge crowd of audience, delivered an influential speech to raise awareness for the treacherous transmittable disease known as AIDS, and called America to take action. She first starts her speech with a request for the audience’s attention and respect. She then explains her and the nation’s situation: how she is HIV positive even though she’s a “healthy” human being, how there are millions of people infected with AIDS virus, and how the epidemic is still a serious problem despite everything done to prevent it. Fisher affirms that AIDS can happen to anyone, regardless the political and environmental factors, race, religion, age, or sex. She insists that this disease is a threat that should not be ignored. Even when it seems safe, it is still dangerous. It is important to act and speak eloquently about this …show more content…
She states that, “AIDS is the third leading killer of young adult Americans today,” and “two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying,” which illustrates the heart-throbbing truth of this disastrous disease. Also, she specifies that “unlike other diseases, [AIDS] travels,” and “the rate of infection is increasing fastest among women and children,” which encourages people to take precautions and seek safety for their children immediately. These pieces of logic and statistics show the audience that AIDS is a major problem that needs to be dealt with, thereby raising awareness for the disease and supporting the authors main
I found his response to the plague to be quite noteworthy and I think he truly made a great use out of his ability to be poignant. Especially when it comes to historical disasters, we often see numbers and minor details with the main focus on the statistics and results involved. Being able to evoke empathy as he did is important, however we all know that the ability to evoke such emotions is a rhetorical device used to be persuasive, so it is safe to say he was perhaps overly dramatic or simply a great writer. According to Boccaccio, during the Black Plague owners often fled their private homes, leaving the city and entering the country while others simply avoided coming near those who had become infected by the plague or wore protective
In her speech, Elizabeth Glaser convinces people and leaders in America that they need to acknowledge and respect the real dangers of AIDS and the victims that have it. Glaser effectively uses ethos, repetition, and tone to convey this message to the audience. Elizabeth Glaser, the woman who brought awareness of AIDS, takes a stance based on her own experience with AIDS. In order to help the audience to believe her, at the beginning of her speech, Glaser tells the audience that she “Had unknowingly passed it to [her] daughter, Ariel, through [her] breast milk, and [her] son, Jake, in utero”. In order to build Elizabeth Glaser’s ethos, Glaser talks about how she and her children aren’t the “typical” or “expected” people to contract AIDS.
In her speech, Mary Fisher uses specific diction choice to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic as well as words that are meant to heighten the fear much of the public had about AIDS at that time. Fisher addresses her primary audience to be the general public of America as well as those who have AIDS. Her purpose seems to be to make the audience more aware by scaring them into believing what she says. When she states, "It does not care where you are Democrat or Republican; it does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old," Mary shows that she is talking to everyone. She is successful in making her audience more aware of inflicting fear and saying that AIDS can affect anyone.
In “A Teachable Good Book: Of Mice and Men,” Thomas Scarseth focuses on the simple, but the tragic complexity of the novella, Of Mice and Men. Scarseth addresses the reality of the work, how it is true to the time period and the environment the characters are set in but also reveals the tragedy. The characters are all good people trying to achieve their dreams, but bad things happen on the way. He also points out that the world the characters live in is limited, as well as their abilities. The physical limitations of the world are the real tragedy that kills the possibility of their dreams coming true.
For many who had HIV or AIDs, they were rejected from society. Fisher appeals to the audience using the President Bush Sr. and his family to persuade the audience. By naming the president and his family and stating what they have done for Fisher, “In the place of judgement, they have shown affection,” Fisher shows that President and his family are not treating her any different. She shows that instead of stunning and treating a person that is HIV positive cruelly, “they have embraced me...” By using him first family in her speech, Fisher uses reasoning to drive one of her main points to the American society for the change of treatment for those with AIDS.
Throughout Fisher’s speech she consistently informs us of the risks and to take a public stand and break the silence and stereotypes on this issue. She says HIV/AIDS affects everyone in the nation, whether you have the virus or your family member or friend has it. She says, “My call to the nation is a plea for awareness. If you believe you are safe, you are in danger. Because I was not hemophiliac, I was not at risk.
In the reading by Peter Redman, he raises the argument that the ‘AIDS carrier” becomes the central representation of the HIV epidemic and how the representations of HIV cannot be narrowed down to one cause. In addition, the ‘AIDS carrier’ is represented as monster and the carrier spreads HIV from the deviant subpopulations to the mainstream. Also, AIDS has been connected to social and moral issues and singles out groups like gay men, black people, and young single women. These groups are then viewed as diseased subpopulations and that causes others to feel disgust and panic. The heterosexual men are then afraid to have physical or emotional contact with men in general and that’s why boundaries of heterosexual masculinity were produced.
“Honey, you are changing that boy’s life.” A friend of Leigh Anne’s exclaimed. Leigh Anne grinned and said, “No, he’s changing mine.” This exchange of words comes from the film trailer of an award-winning film, The Blind Side, directed by John Lee Hancock, released on November 20th, 2009. This film puts emphasis on a homeless, black teen, Michael Oher, who has had no stability or support in his life thus far.
In the passage from The Great Influenza, John M. Barry uses rhetorical strategies like: antithetical ideas, extended metaphors, and diction to characterize scientific research. In the first paragraph, Barry uses a parallel sentence structure of an antithetical idea when discussing Certainty versus Uncertainty, he uses Certainty versus Uncertainty to intensify the words in the next paragraph. " Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to lean.
Award winning writer, George Orwell, in his dystopian novel, 1984, Winston and O’Brien debate the nature of reality. Winston and O’Brien’s purpose is to persuade each other to believe their own beliefs of truth and reality. They adopt an aggressive tone in order to convey their beliefs about what is real is true. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston and O’Brien use a variety of different rhetorical strategies and appeals such as parallel structure, pathos, and logos in order to persuade each other about the validity of memories and doublethink; however, each character’s argument contains flaw in logic. Winston debates with O’Brien that truth and reality are individual and connected to our memories.
In the essay, “The Death of the Moth”, Virginia Woolf uses metaphor to convey that the relationship between life and death is one that is strange and fragile. Woolf tells the story of the life and death of a moth, one that is petite and insignificant. The moth is full of life, and lives life as if merry days and warm summers are the only things the moth knows. However, as the moth enters it’s last moments, it realizes that death is stronger than any other force. As the moth knew life seconds before, it has now deteriorated into death.
In this passage, Charlotte Perkins Gilman highlights the theme that women must use their intellect or go mad through the use of literary qualities and writing styles. Gilman also uses the use of capital letters to portray the decline in the narrators’ sanity. This shows the decline in the sanity of a person because the words in all-caps is shown as abrupt, loud remarks. Gilman uses this method multiple times in her short story and this method was used twice in this passage. When the narrator wrote, “LOOKING AT THE PAPER!”, the major decline in her mental health was shown.
Fisher uses powerful diction and word choice to bring the secretive disease into the light. Through her speech, “A Whisper of AIDS”, Fisher uses fear inducing logistics and powerful emotional images to sway her audience. She showed the world that the HIV virus does not strictly target homosexual men. People of all backgrounds are effected. Her speech brought about funding and increased
Since she does not fall into the category of people that was originally thought of as the only ones affected by the HIV virus, her audience is able to see that there are more people at risk. She even brings this to the audience's’ attention when she states, “it does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old.” Fisher strongly establishes ethos through being a white/married
Epstein’s explanation for the increasing HIV rates in Africa is called “the concurrency theory”, which is “an epidemiological model based on the idea that long-term overlapping heterosexual relationships are not uncommon in Africa” (“A review of Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the fight again AIDS” pg.103). In concurrent relationships, an individual is likely to contract the virus due to being highly infectious after becoming HIV-positive. The beginning stages of the virus are called the “acute phase”, where an individual may not know the severity of the virus due to having common cold symptoms.