The Essay “Why Don’t We Complain” written by William F. Buckley Jr. is about convincing Americans that it’s time to speak their minds and start complaining. Today’s society, Americans would rather accept inconveniences than speak their voice and create a better life for oneself. Americans should say something to someone with a higher power to change the problem they are having an issue with, so he or she can benefit from the change. An example from the essay, Buckley and his wife went to the movie theaters and the movie was out of focus. He explained to his wife that it was out of focus, and he wanted to complain, but she ignored him. Hoping for others in the theater to complain, but no one complained. This lead him to write about other situations …show more content…
In the past ten years, he said, the volume of mail has noticeable decreased, even though the circulation of his magazine has risen.” This means that many people do not say what they believe is true and give their own opinion towards something believe needs to be fixed. This is similar to the essay “The Boston Photographs” because the newspaper company who revealed the tragic photos defended the woman, and some people mocked the woman. Another comparison is in “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, on page 381 it states, “Now you, too have the information you need to save a child’s life. How should you judge yourself if you don’t do it? Think again about Bob and his Bugatti. Unlike Dora, Bob did not have to look into the eyes of the child he was sacrificing for his own material comfort.” Both “Why Don’t We Complain” and “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” are similar because it explains how people would rather save their own possessions, causing them to live with guilt for the rest of their
This is an important observation as the main point of the short story goes beyond the use of vernacular and cultural representation. The story's moral is to show children what poverty can look like and to value their
People worldwide have a fear of speaking out about their feelings. In the essay “Why don’t we complain” William Buckley uses his experiences to write an essay about why people fear speaking up and why it is important to get rid of this fear in society. Speaking up about your feelings is important because other people may feel the same but are too afraid to speak up. William Buckley uses examples and describes the tone of himself in these situations to describe his passion for speaking up. The author states that Americans especially need to learn how to speak up.
In his article, The Singer Solution, Peter Singer argues that citizens of affluent nations are failing to do their moral duty, which is to donate far more to charity than they actually do. The article starts by referring to the Brazilian film Central Station where a miserable retired schoolteacher named Dora is faced with a choice. She could pocket an impressive $1000, but she must first convince a homeless 9 year old to follow her to a certain location where she is told he would be adopted. After spending the $1000 on a new TV, Dora learns that the boy would actually be killed and his organs sold. Dora decides to get the boy back, but what if Dora decided to look the other way after learning of the boy’s fate?
Singer is no stranger to writing moral arguments, having written many different books and articles in the past on a wide range of ethical debates. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” originally printed in the New York Times in the fall of 1999 just before Singer began to work at Princeton University, is intended for the common man, a middle-class citizen who makes average wages and reads popular newspapers. As Singer is a professor of ethics, the article is structured around the
Today, money has made many people believe that you need to have a lot of money to live a great, happy life. People in the world, especially the people who don’t have as much money as the ones that do, look up to people like popular idols, because they have money. People think they have a great living life with all the money they have earned during their lives. In the short story “Why You Reckon?” by Langston Hughes, the author uses diction, colloquialism and dialect to express the fact that just because people have the money to go out to eat somewhere expensive or buy the newest clothes, does not mean that a person is happy all the time and expresses how people in the town talks. Money is what makes the world goes round and everyone has come
In this paper, I argue that Singer’s strong principle of sacrifice is flawed due to its over -demandingness. Singer denotes that as affluent individuals, we have a moral obligation to sacrifice up to the point of comparable moral significance to help those in absolute poverty. This essay will argue against Singer’s strong principle as it is psychologically too strong of an argument to be morally obliging. Singer’s argument exhorts us to give based on the controversial principle of comparable moral significance, to donate any income beyond that which is marginally necessary. Singer justifies this based on the knowledge that the suffering of a poor person should be no less significant to that of an affluent one (Singer, 1972).
In fact, he states that he "tried to recreate an oral storytelling voice and craft the story in terms of a performance for a general audience" (King, 22). He does this to not only appeal to all audiences but also to get the reader involved, engaging them personally in the story much like a conversation, with the intent of
People in poverty are generally portrayed as worthless and this is because culture today illustrates a man’s worth from how materially successful they are. Hooks explains how this kind of representation of the poor can mentally and emotionally handicap and entire society of people in poverty. She goes into an example of how a
In this paper I will be arguing against Peter Singer’s views on poverty, which he expresses in his paper “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. Singer argues that all people with wealth surplus to their essential needs are morally obligated to prevent the suffering of those in dire situations. I will argue that you can not hold people morally obligated to prevent the suffering of others, and that people can only be held morally obligated to prevent suffering that they themselves caused. To begin, we will look at Singers beliefs and arguments regarding poverty and the responsibility of people to help those in need. Singer’s first arguments revolves around a girl named Dora, who is a retired schoolteacher, who is barely making a living writing
In the passage “What is poverty?”, the author Jo Goodwin Parker, describes a variety of things that she considers to portray the poverty in which she lives in. She seems to do this through her use of first-person point of view to deliver a view of poverty created by a focused use of rhetorical questions, metaphors, imagery, and repetition to fill her audience with a sense of empathy towards the poor. The author’s use of first person point of view creates the effect of knowing exactly what she is feeling. “The baby and I suffered on. I have to decide every day if I can bear to put my cracked hands into the cold water and strong soap.”
The economy of the United States expanded greatly through the 1920 's reaching its climax in August 1929. By this point, production had already declined and unemployment was at an all-time high, leaving stocks to imitate their real value. During the stock market crash of 1929, better known as Black Tuesday, investors traded vast numbers of shares in a single day, causing billions of dollars to be lost and millions of investors to be eliminated. This "crash" signaled the beginning of a decade long Great Depression that would affect all Western industrialized nations; a crash that would later become known as one of the darkest, longest lasting, economic downturns in American history. People all around the world suffered greatly as personal income,
Lastly, Singer argues that we can actually make a difference without sacrificing a lot. By the end of “Rich and Poor” Singer concludes that we owe it to others to prevent absolute poverty. Throughout this paper there are many problems that I have found to be true. For Singers first argument he uses an
Singer attempts to close this gap with the age old question of ‘why don’t we give the riches’ money to the poor’. The essence of Singer’s argument is obviously end world poverty. Probably the strongest point made in Singer’s argument is the involvement of the whole world. By taking this money from those across the world eliminates the opportunity for indifference. To stand with indifference is to stand with the oppressor.
Singer advises people to not follow Bob’s actions. Singer wants people to redeem themselves like Dora, and donate money as much as they could. Singer believes that if everyone would only spend on necessities then people would have money to save a child’s life. Therefore, Singer’s solution to world’s poverty would be successful by adding that people could donate to their own preference of charitable organization and donate as much as they
Some complaints might be too much and annoying to others but we don’t know why people complain the way they do. The reason is we don’t know what people went through in life. So how we look at things will be different. We all have things we complain about and some decide whether to complain or not. Some may take complaints too far over things that don’t matter.