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.