As we step away from Sarah Burns and The Central Park Five, we move from a gritty and dark story about wrongfully convicted youths of color, to a rather sporadic novel about Nick Flynn’s life. In terms of the class and what we are learning, we are moving from arrangement and invention, the two forms of judicial rhetoric, to style, a form of deliberative rhetoric.

We have not begun watching the film that is planning to correspond with The Ticking is the Bomb nor have we delved deeply into a lot of rhetorical keywords that we will learn about in the near future. Thus, I will try and focus on an analysis of the first chapter/section of Flynn’s novel as well as continue discourse upon the one we had in Tuesday’s (2/25) class. 

We briefly went over the core/key aspects of deliberative rhetoric, which was in part about calling to the future. The point of deliberative rhetoric is to sway an audience depending on the particular situation, requiring a varying sense of decorum that fits with your audience. So far, in the first 20 pages or so of this novel I am thrown through a bombardment of feelings, emotions, past experiences, anxieties, awards, death, and the list goes on. Because of this, although there have been hints in the novel of a major plot point or theme, I cannot, with any form of certainty decipher a major plot point or theme. 

One thing that was brought up at the very end of class was the cover of the book, and what that might mean for the book itself. A fellow student of mine brought up the fact that the ticking of the bomb is the bomb itself. It was an eye-opening observation with only 20 pages of loose writing in her arsenal. What she meant was that in political and/or military rhetoric we are constantly hearing of the enemy and how they are an imminent threat to freedom, democracy, etc. but that fear-inducing rhetoric could be the bigger bomb than an actual ‘bomb’ that a terrorist might blow up. Being a sociology major, this is something that is prevalent in a lot of social studies regarding legislation and the fear of public safety among the public. Basically, our fear can not only be used, but manipulated in order to garner support for certain legislations that are not good ones with a clear mind, but in the midst of panic, can be passed with the rhetoric of protection and safety. 

I am also extremely curious to hear more about Flynn’s parents. He keeps going back to his father in particular, but gives multiple accounts regarding both. It seems as though his family has had a lot of problems and these problems, Flynn feels have been passed down to him. Flynn does mention that he gave up drinking because of his father, but the way he writes, specifically about the way he is hesitant about loving his unborn daughter shows his at least subconscious remembering of his parents and grandparent’s issues 

With this in mind I cannot wait to continue reading with the hope of Flynn exploring his family history and background more, along with where he takes us in regards to torture and responses to terrorism. These first 20 pages have been a confusing, but enticing introduction to Flynn’s writing. His stream-of-consciousness style makes the reader curious as to what he can come up with next.

David Rascoe

Art of Rhetoric

2/6/2020

This week’s blog post will revolve around this week’s class viewing of the Central Park 5 documentary film. In this week’s viewing we were re-introduced to the kids being interrogated by police. In the film, it is noted that the kids were held at the precinct for interrogation for 14-30 hours. Although I find this disgusting, it is almost expected behavior of police in New York City at that time. It was a culmination of so much beforehand that of course young black people were going to be brought in as suspects, but this time they weren’t young black men, they were young black boys/children (and one puerto rican boy). 

I appreciated how in depth Sarah Burns about the situation by revolving the context of the situation with the perspective at the time of the police department, the city, news journalists, celebrities, and even the mayor. There were so many examples of racist and dehumanizing framing regarding “the suspects”, the 14-16 year old boys calling them a wolf pack and including in the boys charges against them, rioting. How can 5 boys incite a riot? It is sad that even the mayor noticed a sad point about the pristineness of Central Park. he says that if it would have happened anywhere other than Central Park, it would have been bad, but not that bad. Central Park was seen as a sanctuary that not even criminals dared to venture into and commit nefarious acts, but this was changed with the Central Park 5 case. 

People were looking to point fingers, even discussions surrounding the death penalty were brought back into everyday discussion purely because of the commotion this case caused. I simply found it disgusting how these boys were treated from the beginning to where we are now in the film. The boys are told to tell fabricated stories, which we saw in the film, none of the boy’s stories matched so I don’t know how they were all still in trouble. Secondly, to hold teenage boys for up to, if not more than an entire day, questioning them with no food, very little drink, what did they think was going to happen? The boys were scared and they thought that was their way out so they took it. It was a shameful display of interrogating and policing in general. Then, when they did the video interrogations after they were forced to fabricate a story, for a lot of the boys they had their original precinct interrogator in the room with them, adding pressure on the boy to retell the fabricated story. This was an utterly sickening display of policing, torture against innocent children, and NYC’s humanity at the time (or lack thereof).

In conclusion, there were so many holes in the case regarding the boys that I don’t know how the police department, or anyone weren’t more critical of these boys being the perpetrators. I think it goes to show how quickly American society is ready to cast black and hispanic people out and consider them criminals with no real evidence and with the fact in mind that they were less than 17 years old. It is saddening, but frankly, expected.

David Rascoe

Art of Rhetoric

2/6/2020

This week’s blog post will revolve around this week’s class viewing of the Central Park 5 documentary film. In this week’s viewing we were re-introduced to the kids being interrogated by police. In the film, it is noted that the kids were held at the precinct for interrogation for 14-30 hours. Although I find this disgusting, it is almost expected behavior of police in New York City at that time. It was a culmination of so much beforehand that of course young black people were going to be brought in as suspects, but this time they weren’t young black men, they were young black boys/children (and one puerto rican boy). 

I appreciated how in depth Sarah Burns about the situation by revolving the context of the situation with the perspective at the time of the police department, the city, news journalists, celebrities, and even the mayor. There were so many examples of racist and dehumanizing framing regarding “the suspects”, the 14-16 year old boys calling them a wolf pack and including in the boys charges against them, rioting. How can 5 boys incite a riot? It is sad that even the mayor noticed a sad point about the pristineness of Central Park. he says that if it would have happened anywhere other than Central Park, it would have been bad, but not that bad. Central Park was seen as a sanctuary that not even criminals dared to venture into and commit nefarious acts, but this was changed with the Central Park 5 case. 

People were looking to point fingers, even discussions surrounding the death penalty were brought back into everyday discussion purely because of the commotion this case caused. I simply found it disgusting how these boys were treated from the beginning to where we are now in the film. The boys are told to tell fabricated stories, which we saw in the film, none of the boy’s stories matched so I don’t know how they were all still in trouble. Secondly, to hold teenage boys for up to, if not more than an entire day, questioning them with no food, very little drink, what did they think was going to happen? The boys were scared and they thought that was their way out so they took it. It was a shameful display of interrogating and policing in general. Then, when they did the video interrogations after they were forced to fabricate a story, for a lot of the boys they had their original precinct interrogator in the room with them, adding pressure on the boy to retell the fabricated story. This was an utterly sickening display of policing, torture against innocent children, and NYC’s humanity at the time (or lack thereof).

In conclusion, there were so many holes in the case regarding the boys that I don’t know how the police department, or anyone weren’t more critical of these boys being the perpetrators. I think it goes to show how quickly American society is ready to cast black and hispanic people out and consider them criminals with no real evidence and with the fact in mind that they were less than 17 years old. It is saddening, but frankly, expected.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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