The Impending Danger of Corn

           To talk about the possibility of America crumbing under the threat of a starch seems rather humorous. However, the great extent and possible danger of America’s reliance on corn is exactly what Michael Pollan’s essay progressively reveals. The extremes to which corn and corn-related products are embedded into people’s daily lives are chronologically incorporated, starting off small with the expansive and inconspicuous stock in grocery stores all the way to corn products incorporation into biological warfare. This process of progressive revelation slowly develops the readers trepidation of the impending doom, however he reassuringly concludes with a solution, leaving the reader feeling as though they have just followed a map of cause and effect that leads to a plausible and comforting solution.  

              Michael Pollan’s essay creates a pathway of escalating extremes, starting off small and relatable, and then growing to terrifying truths. This process rationalizes for the reader the manner in which a simple food such as corn can grow into a national crisis. Pollan opens up his essay with a short history of the Mayans and the heavy reliance on corn, to the extent of their being named “the corn people”.  He then proceeds to talk about the expansive use of corn products and how deeply integrated they are into the nation’s system of life. Before long, the Mayan’s simple use of ready food supply eventually developed into to such destructive weapons that the wife of the chemist who created this weapon, “sickened by her husband’s contributions…used his army pistol to kill herself” (Cohen 303). The organization strategy, as well as the incorporation of phrases such as, “it has been less then a century… yet already it has changed the earth’s ecology” (305), ushers in a sense of urgency. Pollan suggests a pattern of escalating danger that leaves the reader feeling as though if they do not do something, the problem in their society, though it may not be currently effecting their daily lives, may very well escalate to detrimental consequences in America.

              His effective organization aside, a fault in Pollan’s essay would lie in his extensive use of scientific information that may not be readily understandable to the average reader. What is otherwise a very motivating and effective essay, is riddled with the names of elements and gasses and compounds and processes that not every reader of Smithsonian magazine is able to comprehend. While this “official” wording gives a sense of factual backing, one cannot necessarily be sure of what exactly is being factually supported. Pollan’s paper, in some aspects, seems to be half an engaging and articulate essay and half an advanced biology textbook. The language he implements is not accessible to the masses, and sometimes masks his main message.  

              Nevertheless, What’s Eating America takes an extremely effective approach to sparking a movement of change in the American people against this impending national danger of corn. Silly though it may seem, Pollan presents a very strong, although a little scientifically confusing, argument as to why immediate action needs to be taken. He effectively closes his article by presenting a solution. He builds up a fear, presents facts, but does not leave his reader hopeless or facing the struggle of discovering the answer independently; he leaves the answer right in front of his readers. His essay is a clearly mapped out trail of escalating cause and effect, wrapped up with a clean bow of positive possibilities.

“The Immigrant” vs. “The Exile”:

            In “Two Ways to Belong in America”, Bharati Mukherjee focuses on the varying reactions to America and the American lifestyle by immigrants. Mukherjee, an Indian immigrant herself, uses the views of her immigrant sister Mira and herself to show the two different approaches to living in America an immigrant can have. Mukherjee establishes in her title “Two Ways to Belong in America” (280), that there are two ways to approach American culture, however, she emphasizes why she believes her approach, the approach of adapting the American culture, works better than the approach of living as just an “expatriate Indian” (283). Through techniques such as metaphors, comparison, and contrast, Mukherjee effectively presents the different sides of an immigrant experience while further detailing her own experiences.

            Throughout the essay, Mukherjee uses the similarities and differences between her sister and herself to accent the divide between immigrants on how to adapt to America. Using the experiences of two sisters is especially effective as it establishes how differing immigration experiences can instill different views of the country for even two people who started out with identical beliefs. Mukherjee explains how initially both her sister and her dreams were almost identical as they both planned to “endure our two years in America, secure our degrees, then return to India to marry the grooms of our father’s choosing” (280). She then concentrates how their paths began to differ as she explains, “we probably pitied one another. She, for the lack of structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness…I for the narrowness of her perspective”(281). By first establishing the sisters’ similar dreams and then contrasting their future ideals, Mukherjee shows how drastically immigrant beliefs and attitudes towards America can change due to differing experiences.   

            Mukherjee brings in a metaphor to further describe the two different ways to exist as an immigrant in America. Mukherjee first uses the literal example of either marrying or not marrying ones country as she speaks of her own marriage to an American citizen and her sister’s marriage to an Indian. She then compares her immigrant experience of completely adapting the American culture to a loving marriage as she says, “America spoke to me—I married it—I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody” (282). On the other hand, Mukherjee compares her sister’s immigrant experience to a “long-enduring comfortable yet loveless marriage” (282) to show that her sister never accepted American. By using this metaphor of a “loveless marriage”, Mukherjee is able to emphasis her point that immigrants cannot expect to be “loved”, or accepted into a country if they themselves do not “love”, or accept the country.  

            Mukherjee’s use of comparison and contrast is effectively tied into every single part of the essay contributing to a tone of severe divide over this topic of adaption of immigrants to the American culture. Additionally, the use of metaphor comparing marriage to adaption to American culture is effective as most readers can either fully identify to the idea of either a loving marriage or a loveless marriage. Through these techniques, Mukherjee fully establishes the two different ways an immigrant can exist in America: as a transformed citizen or as a reluctant exile.

Why Don't You Stop Complaining?

An eloquent, convincing writer is supposed to incite feelings of passion, pity and respect in his readers. Conversely, William F. Buckley Jr., in his essay “Why Don’t We Complain,” manages to evoke annoyance, exasperation and disgust through his self-pitying soliloquy on the subject of American “passive compliance.” Buckley undermines his own potentially effective argument by adapting a tone of overwhelming self-admiration, and by attempting to support his ideas with thoroughly unconvincing evidence. 

            William Buckley has an arrogant and distinctly unappealing view of himself as the savior of the modern American public, the courageous soul who will rescue citizens from complacency and discomfort. All other Americans are hopelessly accepting, scared into silence, a “supine breed” who “submit to… irrational vexations.” Buckley portrays himself as the contrast to this national epidemic, claiming that he can “summon the courage to complain,” as if this willingness to whine about trivial matters make him somehow stronger or more insightful. This inflated sense of self harms Buckley’s reliability as a narrator because his Platonic conception leads him to view his own actions through a skewed, heroic lens. Instead of establishing his authority on the subject of modern complacency, Buckley belittles the general population and presents an indulgently flattering portrayal of himself, in the process alienating himself from the reader.

            Although Buckley thinks of himself as superior to the majority of the public, he often adheres to the cultural norm, and yet he still attempts to utilize these instances to strengthen his argument. For example, instead of admitting culpability for his reluctance to report an unfocused movie screen, he places blame on his fellow movie goers who were “expecting someone else to take the initiative in going back to speak to the manager.” Meanwhile, Buckley himself refused to address the issue because he was sitting towards the front and assumed that someone else more conveniently situated would complain, consequently aligning himself with the general mindset of the public. Furthermore, the events he cites as “irrational vexations” are so trivial that they seem comical; an overly warm train car; a “just out of focus” movie screen; a tardy glass of milk; and other similarly ridiculous complaints. Buckley renders his argument ineffectual by his flimsy evidentiary support, as well as his admission that he is not especially different from the rest of the American society that he disparages so thoroughly.

            Buckley’s assessment of the general public may be entirely valid. Maybe Americans have become lazy and content, shying away from uncomfortable encounters instead of addressing nuisances, because we have become accustomed to instant gratification and small amounts of work for a large reward. Maybe the American spirit of hard work and ingenuity is dead, and maybe the American public has killed it. Regardless, Buckley’s frustratingly smug delivery of his opinions, coupled with the ridiculous evidence given to support his claims, create an argument that is at once obnoxious and questionable: ultimately, an argument that is ineffective.  

Freedom for All: The Great American Lie

The Fourth of July, intended as holiday full of freedom, representing the American’s escape from the oppression of autocratic England, was nothing more than travesty of a celebration to writer Audre Lorde, a woman of mixed races. The summer after eighth grade, the summer she was supposed to mature from a child into an adult, Audre Lorde was changed by the experience of segregation on a scorching day, inside a Breyer’s ice cream and soda fountain. Audre Lorde’s transition from child to adult, demonstrated through her shift in tone throughout the story, is effective in conveying the lack of equality geared towards people of color in a supposedly egalitarian society.

            Recounting her experiences as an adolescent, Lorde begins her story with short and abrupt sentences, speaking in a childlike, hurried and excited manner describing all the food she filled herself with on the train ride to Washington D.C. Her shift from excited and hurried, to serious and heated begins after asking her mother to let her eat at the dining cart. Though her mother’s excuse for not letting her go was the cost of dining cart food, Lorde later found out that in 1947 black people were not allowed in railroad dining carts when heading south. Because Lorde was not privileged to the information of the “no blacks allowed on the dining car”, the sting to her ego is shown through her satirical description of her mother as a woman who chose to ignore that which she did not like, and then adding that “perhaps [the problem] would go away deprived of her attention”(240), depicting her mother as somewhat ignorant. This sardonic tone is suppressed and shifted to one of anger once Lorde begins to talk about her shielded life of American racism. A resentment toward her parents is clearly shown when mentioning that she was told to “never trust white people, but why was never explained…like so many other vital pieces of information in [her] childhood” that were missing. This resentment subdued once the story shifts to Washington D.C., seeming as though more calm but slightly bothered by the heat and sun. Then, through her father’s idea to get ice cream, Audre Lorde realizes the realities of discrimination and segregation. Denied seats inside the Breyer’s, the Lorde family got up and walked away without argument, causing her deep-rooted resentment to turn to anger, not only for her parents, who blamed themselves for not avoiding the situation, but the false freedom her country supposedly stood for. This change in tone throughout Lorde’s story demonstrates the shift from being a child, ignorant to the deep-rooted problems of segregation, to an adult, angered by the “anti-American” (242) feelings towards blacks.

            From that fateful day at the nation’s capital, in a Breyer’s ice cream and soda fountain, Audre Lorde experienced the most shocking of realizations not just about herself, but about her family and about our nation’s society. Through her shift in tone, Lorde effectively shows her anger towards the lack of equality for all in an allegedly egalitarian society, consequently demonstrating her change from child to adult.

The Irrelevant Inferiority

            Women have been considered less intelligent than men due to Paul Broca’s scientific discovery of their inferior brain size. Stephen Jay Gould, the author of “Women’s Brains,” disputed this claim and engaged in his own research to support his counter theory. Gould effectively argued that biological labeling is “irrelevant and highly injurious” (Gould 190) when imposed on a set group, such as one of a certain sex. Through his scientific research, his knowledge on discoveries of the brain size, and his opinions and questions on the topic, he is able to contradict Paul Broca’s discoveries that “women, like it or not, had smaller brains than men, and therefore, could not equal them in intelligence” (185).

            In order for Gould to discuss the idea that women are not superior due to their smaller brain mass, he must present his knowledge on the topic. He does so through professors and reformers that disputed and agreed with his claims. Paul Broca, who Gould explains is a “professor of clinical surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris” (185), studied the difference in craniometry for so long that he “exerted great influence and [even] won high esteem as a jewel of the nineteenth century science” (185). In his essay, Gould, who “reject[s] the inferiority of women” (185), includes excerpts by George Eliot and L. Manouvrier to support his own beliefs. Gould shows readers that although Broca was held in high standards due to his discoveries, only support from other researchers along with the right calculations truly establishes one’s credentials in society.

            In “Women’s Brains,” Gould does not just affirm his authority on the research of brain size, he also performs his own experiments out of his great disagreement with Broca’s claims. He often questions Broca’s work and whether he “measured with the most scrupulous care and accuracy” (185). Gould’s questions are not just literary devices, but they are also an expression of his emotions. Even though women “were opposed by numbers [of scientific calculations]” (185), he strongly believed that Broca’s data and “his interpretation [was] ill-founded” (187). He even went to the extent of performing his own experiments on the brain. He concluded that Broca’s research was lazy and imprecise because he did not take into consideration that “brain weight increases with height” (Broca used taller men), that “brain weight decreases with age” (he used older women), and that “degenerative disease often entails a substantial diminution of brain size” (188). Gould even uses his own opinions to explain that “the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups [is] irrelevant” and suppresses “women of extraordinary talent” (190). By his opinions and questions, Gould expresses his emotion and his logic on brain size. He also shows his passion on how much he wants to save women so “they may dream” (190) and not be constrained under false scientific discoveries.

            Without proper measurements and calculations, science should not be used to determine the inferiority or superiority of anything, including races and sexes. Perhaps without biological labeling, groups of society will be able to “apply [more of their extraordinary talent]” (190) in the world.

Diamonds in the Rough: Evidence Built Through Detail in “On Compassion”

      In Barbara Lazear Aschler’s  “On Compassion,” Aschler allows readers to imagine the perspectives of two sides of modern society – the poor and the average working man or woman. Through specific detail of city life, Aschler demands the empathy of her reader by recreating common moments of experience, engaging her reader through her evocative writing style.  Aschler’s genius lies in her careful building of evidence through eloquently detailed examples, yet she falls short as a writer in her failure to drive her argument home by connecting these examples to her conclusions concerning compassion. 

            In “On Compassion,” flowing prose create specific, intimate examples that add dimension to the evidence Aschler uses to support her argument. She captures the attention and emotions of her audience in details like the homeless man’s dreadlocks that are “carefully plaited…(and) speak of a time long ago,” contending that he is “held in place by gravity rather than plans” (46). The undertones of Aschler’s writing – the complexities of poverty, the stories of the individual – are explicated in these specific details, making it easier for the audience to understand the nuances Aschler is trying to portray throughout the essay.  

           Over and over throughout the essay, specific detail is also used as a valuable asset that creates a specific environment that requires an answer, namely Aschler’s thesis. For example, a mother with an infant standing on a street corner sees a homeless man approaching and “her hands close tighter on the stroller’s handles” (47). This specific hint that the mother might be afraid of the homeless man rather than actually compassionate towards him stands at the root of Aschler’s argument that humanity is actually more terrified by the consequences of not giving then concerned with the act of giving itself.  

            Occasionally, Aschler uses the meaning of individual words to contribute to the meaning of the essay as a whole – words no longer simply stand as tools to help construct ideas, but the ideas themselves lie in the words. At one point, Aschler describes a mother “bearing the dollar like a cross” (47). Although multiple comparisons would have effectively relayed this image, Aschler specifically chooses a religious contrast to draw faith and its attitude toward compassion to the reader’s mind.  Additionally, instead of “money” or “a homeless man” Aschler uses the words “green” and “black hand,” (47) purposefully displaying to her audience the impersonal nature of compassion in modern society, just as these adjectives are also impersonal.

            The weak point within the essay is the confusing jump in style from expressive, detailed prose to broad, generalizing statements concerning huge ideas such as human nature and the source of all compassion. While Aschler’s potential evidence for these claims is established well earlier in the essay through her evocative detail, Aschler fails to perfectly line up and connect these examples with her thesis, and thus fails to truly argue her proposals on the nature of compassion.