TOW #14: "I Want a Wife" (Written)

                Before the 21^st century, women have always been given gender roles from birth, activities and duties they are expected to serve throughout their lives. In her essay, I Want a Wife, Judy Brady criticizes one of the stages in a woman’s life: marriage. Her essay uses anaphora and personal pronouns to characterize as absurd the gender roles women are put into as wives.

                Brady uses anaphora very often throughout the entire essay to show the vast scale of duties women are expected to accomplish as wives. She introduces each duty or point with the phrase, “I want a wife,” a phrase which is repeated more than twenty times throughout the essay. She states that, “I want a wife who will keep the house clean” (par. 4), “I want a wife who will plan the menus, do the necessary grocery shopping, prepare the meals, serve them pleasantly, and then do the cleaning up while I do my studying” (par. 4). Along with the scale of duties the repetition shows, each duty is presented in a sarcastic way, showing a pleasant tone but a harsh undertone. Overall, the repetition of the phrases and the sarcastic tone go a long way to characterizing the gender roles women are put in as absurd.

                Along with anaphora, Brady weaves in personal pronouns like “I” and “my” to further characterize the opposite nature of the duties wives and their consorts have to accomplish. For example, in paragraph five of her essay, Brady states, “But I want a wife who will listen to me when I feel the need to explain a rather difficult point I have come across in my course of studies. And I want a wife who will type the papers for me when I have written them.” Brady’s use of the pronoun “I” shows the selfish nature the wife’s consort can possess, while the wife has to put up with the work around the house as well as their consort’s unhappiness. By first showing, with anaphora, the scale of the duties performed by wives, and then weaving the personal pronouns into these phrases, which show the extent to which wives must put up with all the work necessary, Brady is able to build up a characterization of the gender roles wives are put into.

                I Want a Wife was written in the early 1970’s, at a time when these gender roles were still very prevalent in America. However, in the 21^st entury, the stereotype has begun to wither away. Recent studies show that women in America are the breadwinners in a majority of households. Clearly a great step from the gender roles of yesteryear. It seems that Brady’s final sentence, “My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?” can’t really be said with a straight face anymore.

TOW #13: "InternetFactChecking.com" (Written)

                We’ve all heard the expression, “Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.” InternetFactChecking.com, a satirical essay published in the New Yorker, targeted that specific expression head on by using humor to encourage to citizens to take that expression to heart. The essay uses exemplification and a Q/A organization to convey the absurdity of some things on the Internet, and therefore encourage people to be cautious when using it.

                The author, Calvin Trillin’s use of exemplification shows the reader the dubious nature of some information on the Internet. For example, Trillin includes an example about how a single person used techniques to corner the world’s gluten supply. Trillin states that since many groceries were now gluten-free, he read on the Internet that, “someone has been buying up gluten (at bargain-basement prices) and storing it in caves in Utah” (par. 3). Readers recognize the apparent absurdity in this remark, which Trillin claims to have read on cashgab.com. By showing this remark of dubious veracity, Trillin is able to convey that the Internet is sometimes not a trustworthy area for correct information.

                Trillin also uses the Q/A organization throughout his essay to show the plight of someone that might actually believe ridiculous claims on the Internet. This organization is laid out like a letter, with Trillin posing as an alias asking Internet sites about various claims that other sites make. Trillin writes after discussing the Koch brothers’ relations to a mayor that, “Whoever told you that you can’t believe everything on the Internet is a deeply cynical and untrustworthy person” (par. 2). This satirical remark uses irony to show the absurdity of claims on the Internet. By portraying people as untrustworthy, Trillin uses irony to show that the Internet, which is untrustworthy, should be a well-known, accepted fact. This process is repeated throughout the essay which increases the strength of Trillin’s claim of fact.

                Overall, Triilin did a great job merging fact and humor throughout InternetFactChecking.com. The absurd examples used and the organization of the essay show readers that the Internet is in fact untrustworthy, and should be accepted as that. Triilin therefore subtly makes a claim of policy in his essay, which is able to effectively convince his audience of the Internet’s trustworthiness, or lack thereof.

TOW #12: "Freakonomics" (IRB)

                A few years ago, I stumbled upon Outliers, a book by Malcolm Gladwell, where he discussed the seemingly impossible ways someone could become successful. When I picked up Freakonomics, I expected something similar, and I was glad to find out that it was indeed similar. Freakonomics explains many of the behind-the-scenes events that go on in various situations, some of which readers like me could have never imagined. The author’s Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, on an economist and one a writer, did a great job revealing the secrets of commonplace events. Throughout the book, the authors use narrative and astounding statistics to encourage readers to seek out the hidden side of every scenario they find themselves in.

                Early in their story, the authors discuss a small business owner who started selling bagels to see how honest his customers were. This seemed quite odd, but the authors of the book went further discussing how he eventually would be bringing, “fifteen dozen bagels a week. In order to recoup his costs, he set out an openbasket and a sign with the suggested price” (41). This is intriguing to the readers of the book because the oddity of the owner’s actions left them wanting to know more about what he set out to do. Later, this narrative is combined with statistics to show how the owner gauged his customers. The author’s restate the owner’s findings, showing that, “smaller offices are more honestthan big ones. An office with a few dozen employees generally outpays by 3 to 5 percent” (44). The use of the statistic after the narrative shows some rather confounding results, because the authors explain the paradox the statistics in this case create. Overall, the narrative is used to engage the audience and show them what can occur in various situations and the statistic is used to reinforce that and reveal the hidden side to that claim.

                Events as commonplace as bringing in bagels to work are used quite often throughout the story, and these help the reader relate to the scenarios better and understand the inner workings of the occurrences around them. The book is so far every entertaining, and there is still more confounding results to report.