TOW #11- Visual Text- Road Safety

This campaign for proper road safety is done by Securite Routiere, which is a French institute for Road Safety. In this particular advertisement, it portrays a young girl whose head has been dented and scraped. She is illustrated as though she is made of plastic. This uses pathos on the viewer, and gives a mood of grief. The viewer would think of his/her own family, and the children he/she knows, and would not want them to get hurt. The use of the little girl also helps to attract an audience of adults, since they are the ones who drive the most and would likely have children of their own. The campaign puts a bit of information in the bottom left corner, in order to make their point. This is the use of logos, and explains how a change in speed can seriously impact the amount of time it takes to stop a car. This fact matches the use of a little girl as the visual, since children may wander into the street when playing outside. This encourages the audience to slow down and take into consideration their speed the next time they drive. It finishes with a slogan "Car accidents don't just happen to cars", to emphasize how critically a car accident can hurt someone, and how the consequence of the injury to the passenger is much more severe than that to a car. This is all for the purpose of expressing how important road safety and awareness is, and how detrimental is can be to not take proper precautions.

TOW #10- "On Being an Only Child" by Geoff Dyer

My TOW for this week is a memoir essay by Geoff Dyer. This essay is about Dyer's life as an only child, and how it has impacted him. He discussed how as a child, he was often spoiled. He was an only child, and so he got all of his parents and relative's attention. However, his parents were obsessed with saving money, because they had grown up in the Depression, and that's what they were used to. Everything was done to save money and cut down on spending. Most possessions were hand-made, they took longer routes on trips to avoid tolls, and didn't spend much on holidays or birthdays. One example is, "I remember wishing that we could be in a hurry, just once. Being in a hurry looked like fun. It wasn’t just driving; everything we did was done slowly. I was always waiting. My parents kept telling me that patience was a virtue. I have, as a consequence, turned into a raging inferno of impatience"(Dyer para 6). Dyer was so used to a slow-paced life that he longer for something faster, believing it would make his life more interesting. He mentions how this affected him later in life, he became a person who liked a bit of a fast-paced lifestyle, he became a splurger, and lacked patience. But, it also allowed him to be more adaptable, since Dyer was often used to living off of necessity rather than want. He used a structure of cause and effect, retelling events of his childhood, and then connecting them to how he became who he is today. His purpose was to explain the effect a person's childhood can have on their life. He very successfully fulfilled this purpose by providing several examples from his own life. Dyer connected his childhood experiences to the way he lives his life now, fulfilling the purpose of emphasizing the significance a childhood has on a person later in life.

IRB #2 Into- "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell

My IRB for this section is the "Power of Myth", by Joseph Campbell. This book is a conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell about mythology, and the power and impact mythology has. Joseph Campbell is well as a mythologist, writer, and lecturer. He has graduated from Columbia University, and has studied at the University of Paris and the University of Munich. He is best known for studying comparative religion and mythology. He has many theories on the function and evolution of myth. I chose this book because I have always been very interested in mythology, and reading this book would help me get to understand more about mythology and its importance.

IRB Post #8- "A Long Walk to Freedom"-Nelson Mandela

For my IRB/TOW post for this week, I finished the book "A Long Walk to Freedom", by Nelson Mandela. Mandela officiates the divorce with his wife, Winnie. Also, tensions in South Africa were peaking, people were desperate for their freedom and tired of waiting. They were tired of talks and negotiations and wanted to take their freedom by force through weapons. Several Mass shootings were occurring, spreading fear and horror. A colleague of Mandela's, Chris Hani, was assassinated. Hani was well-known as a figure in the ANC, and many feared that his assassination would set off a racial war. Manela's close friend Oliver also died, which was a significant blow on Mandela's personal life. Mandela won the 1993 Nobel Peace Price jointly with Mr. de Klerk. On April 27, 1994, for the first time, black people would be allowed to vote for their leaders. The ANC got 62.6% of the majority vote, which allowed them 252 of the 400 seats in the national assembly. On May 10, Mr. de Klerk became second deputy president and Thabo Mbeki became the first. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa. Mandela concludes by explaining why he took up this journey to freedom, saying "Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me"(Mandela 624). Mandela finishes by saying that while they have taken large steps toward freedom, the fight is long from over. Mandela did an incredible job in writing this autobiography, and while it was long, it was interesting and brilliant description of a long journey and the fight for freedom and justice. The messages Mandela spreads throughout this book are very inspiring, and encourage people not to lose hope and to always stand for what it right.