We didn't get to discuss Jhumpa Lahiri's "This Blessed House" but don't fret: you'll now get the chance to write about the story on your blog!First, as an aside, that is Jhumpa Lahiri to the left. Think about the image in terms of logos-pathos-ethos. Goal: persuade someone to buy a book. How is that image doing it? Is it the persuasive mode one might expect? (You don't have to write about that. I just want you to think about it as we approach, in two weeks, our segment on Media and the Rhetoric of Marketing.)
FYI: here's a recent Time magazine interview with Lahiri.
For your blog entry, you're free to respond to "This Blessed House" in any way you see fit, but I'd like you to steer yourself towards some of the things we talked about this week in class: namely Culture and the Persuasive Modes. If you're stuck, here are a few prompts, any one of which will suffice for a blog entry:
- While the approaches to Culture I suggested this week -- "relativist" and "fundamentalist" -- are intended to be primarily denotative (and basically neutral in connotation), they are on opposite sides of the spectrum. How is "This Blessed House" interested in A) the idea of "relativism" and "fundamentalism," and B) what happens when the two have to interact?
- What does "This Blessed House" have to say about contemporary American culture? (Think about the different [even divergent] ways Twinkle and Sanjeev navigate their particular cultural/social circumstances and what they get out of it. Which navigational style is more "successful?")
- True/False: A short story is a particularly effective (a.k.a., "persuasive") way to deal with cultural issues. Explain your answer.
- Or whatever you want to write about.
No comments:
Post a Comment