Annie Dillard's Style.

Humidity! There is no a better way to describe the Ecuadorian coast more than humid. The drops of your own sweat are confused with the minuscule drops of water, that are evaporating every minute at a higher rate. Clothes seem to weigh double that they actually are. Breathing becomes uncomfortable, every breath is a mixture of water and hot air that almost hearth you nose. There is no point on taking a shower because there is no way to be dry again.

The biggest irony is that in this hot and humid weather allows thousands of endemic species to grow. A small change on the humidity percentage and a large quantity of animal species But when a human enters this environment, the lost of liquids is alarming, and can cause death.

Casey Property & O Brien

Mainly the relevance that the O’Brien’s “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” has is the ethics to approach the environment. That should be the essence of the English Department when building something into the Casey Property; respecting the place, and make an effort to cause the least impact on it. Another fundamental concept from O’Brien that can be implemented, is the pursue of a natural state of the land. This last concept would be especially useful to create a project in the corn field, planting harmless species and try to create a safe space for animal species.

Roosevelt Response

Roosevelt structures his speech trying to create a connection between his audience –Arizona citizens- enhancing his appreciation for the people , stating the honor that he has, when he is in their presence and using a rhetoric that call to an alliance between the people and him. Then he talks beauty of the place and; this is the base to his main claim, which is to preserve the natural state of the Grand canyon and preserve the forest in benefit of the community.

Momaday Response

In “ A First American Views His Land” Momaday tries to reach a general public interested in the environment. His purpose is to expose the moral relationship that Native Americans had with the earth and the natural world. Momaday structures his essay in such way that the reader can understand the difference between the “occidental” way of relate to the environment and the Native American approach. He introduces the “occidental” way by describing the hunting scenario, and then making the contrast between the opposing perspectives that each vision of the nature presents. He exposes the Native-American way of hunting as a much more sophisticated way of get from the earth, contrasting it with the less sophisticated Paleo-Indian way to hunt to the extinction. He continues to describe the Native American form of society, the moral approach to the nature and finally the importance of this type of approach to “shape our efforts to the earth and natural life within it.” A very important characteristic of the structure of this essay , are the poems that contribute to change ideas between paragraphs and summarize in the form of a poem each talking point. But most important they repeat ideas that have a resonance in the whole essay.

Having Faith

Sandra Steingraber uses mixture of two styles that fuse together, to make a very effective claim about the importance of the discussion about the dioxin molecule on breast feeding. She first begins with “relaxed” style using informal language to provide a personal background; she introduces her audience to her interest of science, more specifically about food chains and then mention her studies. Then she switches to a much more technical language, utilizing statistical evidence to support the claim that the dioxin molecule is a real problem, which has to be considered. But the most effective use of this fusion of styles is made towards the conclusion, when she appeals to the emotional side of the audience identifying herself as a mother, and continue to explain the “dioxin paradox”. She construct the ethos with her own personal experiences and her logos with a more scholarly writing style.

Edward Abbey Response.

Abbey’s audience is people willing to preserve the wilderness of Natural parks in the United States. Abbey approaches his audience by creating a At the beginning of the story, Abbey construct the pathos and ethos trough a very informal narrative and language. He describes himself as a worker of the national park; his narrative describes in a very detailed fashion several specific experiences that he is going trough as a National Park worker. This is how he build credibility and authority. Then he makes the audience sympathize with the feelings and the positive emotions of the wilderness experience. Once he has build ethos and pathos trough his personal experience he states the problem of the Industrial tourism. He switches to a much more formal tone to explain the potential harm of the industrial tourism and the necessity of our society for “wilderness”.

Thoreau and McCandless Comparison

Thoreau and McCandless (as presented in the movie), share a lot of their fundamental motivations to escape and rebel society. The idea of the individual opposed to the community, and the discovery of the true self. But even though, in essence the motivations are the same they approach them from different ways. McCandless shows stronger feelings towards his fusion with the wilderness, and his critique to society is much more political, while Thoreau demonstrates a higher priority to the creation of a self space” in which one is the creator, and then the fusion with nature.

Spring Break

During Spring Break I visited Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. It was an interesting experience in several ways; but it mainly reinforced the interest for the American environmentalist thematic. From the architecture, I could tell that the city was built mostly in the 80’s and 90’s; it is an enormous touristic urban area, with great concrete structures. Because of the season the whole place was unoccupied, there were almost none in the gigantic hotels; and there was this sense of emptiness and absurdity in the environment. The city was imposed to the nature and landscape, and the great structures were only unanimated witnesses of the silence. The experience made me identify myself with a common theme of the American environmentalist, for one moment I felt the need of strongly reject the society, and isolate myself in nature.

Casey Property Experience

The Casey property experience was interesting in a lot of different ways, but for my perspective as a foreigner, the landscape was particularly impressive . Since I’ve been in Iowa, that was the first time that I had the opportunity to visit a non urban area. And it changed my perspective of Iowa and the US.

Wendell Berry Response

I think that this poem was great in a lot of ways, but the part of it that moved me the most the call of rebellion against the dominant system. It is a new notion of rebellion for me, and a very original way to deliver it. The type of rebellion that Wendell Berry talks about is not the rebellion by the means of violence or some type of activism to restructure the dominant system; it is a call to do the unexpected, to come back to being humans. Stop being effective to produce for a system that takes advantage of you to become effective to enjoy nature and simple things.

Jhon Miur

John Miur's a Thounsand Mile Walk to the Gulf is mainly focused to criticize the judeo-christian perspective of nature. Because of this characteristic it is aimed to a broad spectrum of audieces, even though one can infer that it is essentially aimed to American Christians. His authority is built around his own negative experience with an alligator, that puts him in a reasonable position to speak of alligators and nature. This negative experience overlaps with pathos, because the audience can identify the sense of losing something precious and loved as a dog and creates anger towards the alligators. From this two points the author builds his logic describing the antipathies and explaining the root of this antipathies on the "wrong" assumptions that the judeo -christian faith has.

Class activity

Because of the reflective nature of the text and its rhetoric, the intended audience is western hemisphere people and developed countries population.

The purpose is to reflect on the abuses of the human kind to nature.

He uses the contrast between American Indians and western abuses.

Snap Shot

I had the oportunity to assist to two of the events on the symposium, from them the one that had the bigest impact on me was the reading of the short stories performed by Rick Bass. He red two short stories, both had as a subject food, and more clearly the abuse of it, and the relation of this abuse with the enviroment. Out of this two stories the one that I think is more effective was the second one; he really made a very interesting fusion of several complex topics. His childhood and inocence oposed to the ambition and greed of the "Titans" (very rich people), and the relationship of the greed and glutony with the extintion.

MAN OF THE TV SAY (Reading like a Writer)

MAN OF THE TV SAY
“ Man of the TV say “ is a very powerful poem that describes the emotions and feelings that New Orleans habitants had when receiving the cold warnings of the media about the Katrina hurricane. The poem is structured mainly in four effective paragraphs; each one has a rhetorical function and determined purpose. The first paragraph acts as an opening, it lets the reader now the topic and introduce the sensation a first sensation of anger in the poem; the second paragraph gives the poem a racial and social context to the poem which makes even deeper the negative feelings against the “ MAN OF THE TV ” ; The third paragraph is a reaction towards the repeated order of going, and it exposes the humanity and indignation of the moment. And finally the fourth paragraph expresses the resignation of leaving home of leaving paradise.
There is a remarkable harmony between paragraphs and I think the poem as a whole is a reflection of this harmony. The voice and tone, as well as the vocabulary helps the audience to understand the social context of the author. The use of descriptions , in the first and second paragraph are not very sensorial descriptions, instead the use of small details build a entire ideas of what is happening. And the use of irony in the third and fourth paragraphs makes the sensation of anger and indignation complete.

Map Assigment

The map has a very detailed description of the geographical orientation of the main streets in Quito’s Down Town; it is reach in images of the churches and historical monuments. I think probably the biggest strength of this map is not just showing the street names, but the neighborhoods, which are very important to the local people, because of the symbolic content of each place. Nevertheless there are several aspects that are left out. For example if I were to make my own map, I would include the crazy man yelling at people at the San Francisco Plaza, or the homeless guy in the Chile and Guayaquil corner, that always has a smile on his face, the delicious “dulce de higo” outside the Santo Domingo Cathedral, and the spot in which one can have the most amazing conversations with old guys in “La Independencia” Plaza. I would include every crazy detail that one can find every day, every single place in which you can contact real people and experiment the humanity of the place. Probably this places are not included because most of people doesn’t care about this type of beauty, but in my point of view those kind of details are the ones that make the Down Town really special.

Question for Reading like a writer

What specific details stay in your mind ? Why ? How do these small details lead to larger ideas?

The specific detail that has remained in my mind (and I think has marked me), is the reflection of Alice Walker when she thinks about her innocence as individual, but then this statement is contradicted by recognition that “Just as human beings perceive all trees as one (didn’t a U.S official say recently that “when you’ve seen tree you’ve seen them all”?) All human beings to the trees are one. And this is the key inflection point where the author got me. I felt every single criticism that was made to the human life style. And each sensory element since that point had a different context, I really could feel a little bit of hate for being part and actively participate in this system.

The tragedy rests in the black sand of the coast. The cloudless and emotionless morning sky, the first witness of the fatal event. The oil has covered the beautiful feathers that once helped the death bird fly, its unanimated body lies twisted above the ground. The polluted sand has no trace of activity, not a single footprint in that vast extension of its space and the peaceful ocean that can only produce a shy little wave is now painted black. The only thing that these dark waters can reflect is the vague contour of the nearest dock.