Summary Of Magnificent Isolation By Elsa Gabbert

In “Magnificent Desolation,” author Elisa Gabbert seeks to explain how “spectacular mechanical feats beget spectacular mechanical failures,” and how we view them.

Gabbert wrote this essay in the context of how we view life, but more specifically how we view and react to disasters. Gabbert wants to reach an audience of college educated readers and professionals who can examine in depth her ideas. Her purpose in writing this is to inform and entertain the reader with ideas about of how human nature interacts with disasters. While at the same time she’s also putting forth her own view and ideas. She tries to persuade the reader to view her viewpoint as the right way or final word on certain ways humans react to situations. Gabbert uses an array of organizational strategies to get her ideas across. She does this by using a linear chronological order of how she jumped from the Titanic to 9/11. When describing the disaster she uses cause and effect

The author starts with a tone of exhilaration and curiosity being “I suddenly obsessed with the story of the Titanic.” Slowly though she slides into a tone of slack jawed awe and morbid fascination with how “It is awesome that we built them; it is awesome when they fell.” To illustrate this she uses many tools such as facts and figures. Gabbert pulls many of her examples from historic acts of human failure like the Titanic or challenger. To further her point she uses eyewitness accounts and personal experience from these people such the North Tower man who said, “Perhaps I should have continued down that hallway.” The thesis of this essay appears on the last page as “Of course, my rational