Blog 6

I think that the examples the Krakaure uses to compare Chris to other people help the story. I don’t think they are amazing pieces of the book that if taken away would be disastrous. But I do think they add a little something. The examples the I like the most are the stories that shows people who are similar to Chris. As stupid as I think he is when reading those it made me think he was less stupid because other people had done things like that too. An example of this is the story of McCunn and how he left himself to die alone from doing a crazy adventure. “Somehow, though he neglected to arrange for the pilot to fly him back to civilization at summer’s end, and it cost McCunn his life.” He too was ill prepared and didn’t arrange the proper materials to get back home. Just as McCandless was ill prepared and if he would have had a map he would have found a way to get across the river and save his life.

Blog Post 5: Taylor Swift

Yes, I do think that after reading the Taylor Swift article I was influenced on my opinion of her music. It made me take a step back and really think about the content of her songs and her overall image that she is portraying. I found that she has an immature quality about her that I didn’t see before. Especially when the author made the comparison of Taylor Swift to Lady Gaga and how they are close in age but they see decades apart. This article made me step back and see how juvenile all of her songs really are. Each song is about boys. I think especially in today’s generation women don’t need a man to complete their life. Most women are establishing their careers and then finding a man. I do think that the pictures were helpful. This is mainly because the article was so long and having a picture to look at helped keep me engaged in the article. I did think they added to the overall content and helped support the author’s argument. My favorite graphic was the complete works of Taylor Swift symbolic analysis picture. It really showed how simple her music really is.

Blog Post 4: Logos, Pathos, Ethos

In my opinion I think that it is most important to obtain a balance of all three. You need to show your credibility of why someone should be listening to you through ethos. Keep them emotionally invested through pathos, because if they don’t care about what you are saying they are not going to continue reading your essay. Finally you have to have supporting text to back up what you have to say. So the logos part of it is important also. In my Into the Wild essay I tried to have a balance of all three and I think that I was able to achieve this. I tried to portray supporting text and emotionally connect the reader to my words. In my American Literature essay I also attempted to find that balance. I do think that I might have been lacking some ethos but I can work on getting a good balance through the revision process.

Blog Post 3: McCandless Response Essay Opinion Change

When writing my McCandless response essay my opinion was that he was a reckless idiot and not a courageous hero like others might believe. While I was writing my essay I wasn’t thinking at all about his journey across the United States at all, I was strictly thinking about just when he went into Alaska. So it’s hard to relate what we have read to my essay because my examples from my essay don't really fit with the text we just read. An example of this would be that I wrote about how he didn’t have enough materials with him when entering Alaska, but when he started this entire journey he had a car full of stuff. Overall my opinion has not changed since further reading the book. I still think that McCandless is an idiot, but my reasoning in my essay doesn’t match with the last two chapters we just read. I am interested to keep reading and see if at some point in the book my opinion on McCandless will change. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.