IRB Intro #3

I have chosen to read a collection of essays written by David Foster Wallace titled A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.  I chose to read this because I appreciated Wallace's style and insight in his essay "This Is Water".  I am looking forward to reading these essays because of the different reading experience they will allow me as opposed to the narrative nonfiction style I enjoyed during Eat, Pray, Love.

TOW #16 - Eat, Pray, Love: Second half

The character development in Eat, Pray, Love is one of the greatest and most satisfying elements to the entire book.  On the final page of Elizabeth Gilbert's journey, literally and figuratively, she closes with one final word.  This word, "attraversiamo", was Gilbert's favorite word during her time in Italy.  It means, quite literally, "let's cross over", as if to signal a desire to cross over to the other side of the street.  However, the repetition of this word becomes very symbolic as it begins to signify the crossing over Gilbert does from her dark, depressed, and post-divorced state into a mindset of happiness, independence, and new-found love.  It was the perfect way to end this inspiring and mind-blowing tale of one woman's journey to find herself, and I truly believe that through her journey the reader is able to find a peace within themselves as well.  Gilbert tells her story in order to present the way that her year off from "real life", and her journey from Italy to India to Indonesia, was able to shape who she became and was able to save her from the darkness that she left behind in her old life.  Gilbert is effective through her use of detailed and relatable language, such as humor and inner thoughts.  When telling of the wife of the medicine man she befriends in Bali she writes, "She was blatantly suspicious of me at first-Who is this flamingo traipsing through my house every day?" These inner thoughts allow Gilbert to express her personality through her writing, and bring an even more personal touch to the story.  Gilbert is also relatable because of her past.  She is a writer from New York who had a husband, a big house, and a job.  She was someone who knew that all of these things were exactly what she was supposed to want, however, she just couldn't find her happiness within the generic mold of American womanhood.  The want of something more is very relatable, and makes Gilbert's adventure all the more desirable and believably realistic.  In addition, Gilbert was effective through the educational portion of her writing.  In each place she lived, she would take the time to write out many of the religious, cultural and culinary elements of that area.  Through this, the reader is better able to understand the places Gilbert discusses, even though they may or may not have ever travelled there.  Overall, I loved Eat, Pray, Love, and I would (and already have) recommend it to others.  In some small way, Gilbert has changed my outlook on life, and allowed me to have a better understanding of what exactly is important, how to prioritize, and how to bring a little more peace into my everyday.

TOW #15 - Why Curing Cancer is Not a 'Moonshot'

Just this past week, President Barack Obama gave the final State of the Union address of his presidency.  In this speech, Obama called for America to be the country that finally, and completely, eradicates cancer.  This statement comes after Vice President Joe Biden lost a son to cancer this past year, bringing the goal of finding a cure to the forefront of the president's mind.  In Jeffrey Kluger's article, he makes the argument that finding a cure for cancer, although the prospect exciting, is an unrealistically worded argument that is nearly impossible to comprehend.  The room certainly exploded with applause when Obama proclaimed this challenge to the country, but when taken a closer look at, the difficulties begin to arise.  Through analogies with past events, Kluger is able to portray the argument that curing cancer is actually a much bigger and more threatening challenge than most people would believe.  The title, "Why Curing Cancer is Not a 'Moonshot'" compares the challenge to the actual 'moonshot' of placing a human being on the moon, one of the biggest challenges, and successes, of the 20th century.  However, when comparing curing cancer to a 'moonshot', Kluger makes the argument that "there will be perhaps 1.6 million Americans diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. alone this year, and each of those cases will be in some ways unique."  In this way, comparing a 'moonshot' to curing cancer is the same as having to put a man on the moon more than 1.6 million times (in a year), and having to do it in more than 1.6 million ways.  In no way are these two challenges comparable.  Even a closer comparison, such as that of eradicating Polio once and for all, doesn't begin to cover the complexity of cancer as a whole.  Therefore, although a positive and optimistic goal, Kluger finishes his essay by stating the difficulty that focusing on such a large and nearly impossible goal has.  By only focusing on the biggest goal/success of curing capital-c-Cancer, it "will only make us fail to notice the smaller, more incremental ones [successes] when they come."

TOW #14 - Video: Love Has No Labels

Set to the tune of Macklemore's "Same Love", this video explores the boundaries society has learned to set with love.  In front of a crowd of people on Valentines Day in 2015, the "Love Has No Labels" campaign set up a screen in the middle of a crowded street and had various couples, families, and friends stand behind the screen.  Only visible at first were the skeletons of these people, showing love in its most basic and human form.  After a few seconds the pair or threesome would step from behind the screen and reveal their identities.  First, a lesbian couple.  Then one after the other came various religions, disabilities, ages and genders, proving that in fact, love has no labels.  The video has over fifty-six million views, and the campaign is expanding greatly.  The purpose of the video is to juxtapose our assumptions of who will step out verses who will actually step out from behind the screen.   The video is effective because of its use of reversal in tricking the audience into making a stereotypical inference, and then being completely surprised. Once the first pair steps out from behind the screen, the rest of the video is spent tugging at our heartstrings, and forcing an understanding of the video's overall message.  The real-life love shown by the pairs behind the screen completes the campaign's message, and is truly and undeniably real.  The campaign is effective because of how it plays off of the stereotypes that we have about love.  In this day and age, the steps being taken towards legalizing all kinds of love have been great, but it is the change in culture that comes next.  Seeing these various kinds of love from all walks of life shows the strength in a future of acceptance and trust.  The crowd's reaction was one of bursting affection and understanding.  People were cheering, clapping, hugging each other, waving, and smiling from ear to ear.  The participants on stage could be seen completely relieved at the crowd's reaction, and this relief proved the adversity that these people have gone through to prove their love is just as legitimate and real as anyone else's.  The "Love Has No Labels" campaign was one-hundred percent effective in their purpose, and likely got an even greater reaction than they had originally hoped for.