Okonkwo Analysis

Okonkwo is introduced in the story as a very powerful and strong willed character. We can see in the story that he is a brave person, he values a lot of important things in his life and he represents the kind of maturity that one would expect from a leader and a top figure of his town. Okonkwo does have a solid personality and he is a brave person but his fear of failing and weak gets the better of him as the story continues, he experiences misfortune as he accidentally shoots his wife, kills Ezeudu's son at his own funeral by mistake and is forced to kill Ikemefuna. Okonkwo is portrayed as a tragic hero as at the beginning of the story, he was portrayed as the person who had everything and then by the end of the story Okonkwo took away his life. The story encapsulates Okonkwo's rise and fall with his own bad luck and doubts which therefore cast him as a tragic hero.

Achebe chose to have a tragic hero in the play as a way to portray the struggles in an African environment and city. Achebe used him as a tragic hero in a way to show that no matter how privileged Okonkwo was in an African place, his status and his life will never be safe in an African place especially in one set in a colonization period.

I think Okonkwo is portrayed as an example of an African person, whose life turned for the worse due to the invasion of Western nations that came to colonize African places. Okonkwo is used to show how colonization really impacted Africans in such a horrible way and the fact that he hung himself in the end really showed that the colonization impact took Africans to highly drastic measures. Okonkwo's fall also sets a function to show how the rest of the characters in the story have fallen victim to the colonization but Okonkwo's decline standing out the most in the story. 

Chinua Achebe Discussion

Last week, we had an in class discussion about an interview with author of Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe. In the interview, Achebe spoke about his book and most notably his African culture. A key moment from our in class discussion was discussing about the Western world's perception of Africa, how they are biased and how one must look at the situation in Africa from 2 different perspectives.

When looking at the situation from the British perspective, the British can sense a lot of superiority and power over them and it brings them a good feeling in their hearts. Their goals of colonizing more countries around the world is getting fulfilled. Looking at it from an African perspective, we can see the misery they must feel as they are forced to change their entire culture and go through a brutal change in their lifestyle. This discussion made it more clear to be able to look at colonization from 2 different sides and see a clear difference on the impacts of colonization. I could also takeaway how when we perceive luxurious things in Africa, we still picture the poverty and the abandoned land as opposed to the Western countries, where we envision actual luxury and wealth.

Paper 1 - Speech Analysis

The given extract here is a speech by Winston Churchill called "We shall fight on the beaches". The speech was delivered to the House of Commons to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This text analysis will explore how Winston Churchill uses literary techniques/rhetoric devices to warn the parliament of Great Britain of a possible attack from Nazi Germany and how they must be prepared for it if the worst case scenario comes true. This speech was delivered in 1940 during world war 2.

From the line "At any rate, that is what we are trying to do. That is resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of the parliament of our nation". This is able to make us understand who the target audience of the speech is more clearly, the target audience is shown here through this line to be the entire nation of Great Britain but more specifically the Parliament as his speech is being delivered to the Parliament and he says that is the will of the parliament of our nation. “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.The overall purpose is shown through both of the statements already quoted in this paragraph. In the latest statement from Churchill, he states that even though many other nations have fallen badly in Europe and been destroyed (especially to Nazi Germany), his nation of Britain will not succumb to any one in Europe and they will stay strong and stable. The line also discreetly shows that Churchill is empowering his nation that they will stay strong and telling them about the other nations falling in Europe as a warning to his audience that if they don't organize themselves together then they will fall hard just like those nations. “I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.This line is the opening of Churchill's speech and it further more makes the purpose a lot more clear as he says that if the best decisions are made then Britain should be able to defend their nation successfully and outlive the carnage in the war. The overall purpose is to empower his nation of Great Britain to take action against possible attacks that could be targeted towards them in the future by other nations and in the process warn his people about the worst case scenario of being attacked.

In this speech, Churchill continues on to elaborate on how Britain must take action as fast as possible in order to be successful. Churchill brings up on how other nations have fallen too and that Britain doesn't want to be like that and therefore they must take action, in order to stay intact as a powerful nation. He starts by stating if they do take the right action, he believes Britain will be successful. He then installs a little bit of fear into the parliament "Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the"grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail." The fear shown through this quote being that if Britain doesn't make the right decisions or take the incorrect action, then they will falter badly like the large nations of Europe who fell to the superior nations. The very last 11 lines of Churchill's short speech encapsulates what Britain overall needs to do. The last 11 lines show what Britain must do as they must fight in any place at any time in any location no matter the circumstances. Churchill in the last 11 lines installs empowerment into the people as he tells his nation and his country's army to fight extremely hard no matter what and fight till the end as that is what they need to do. A recurring theme of fight is constantly displayed throughout the speech as Churchill is encouraging his country's army in particular to find and he letting the parliament in the House of Commons know about it.

Churchill speaks in a very inspirational tone with a lot of optimism and belief in what he is saying. Churchill's optimistic tone is displayed in the very first passage of the speech as he clearly displays confidence and faith in his country by saying "I have,myself, full of confidence". He has belief that his country will survive everything and stay strong, that is IF they take the right actions and right steps. Churchill continues on with most of the speech, speaking in a very motivating and inspirational tone. His motivational tone is highly illustrated in the last 2 passages as he is motivating them to take the right action, he is telling the entire nation of Great Britain on what exactly they are going to be doing and he believes that what they are going to do will eventually guarantee them success in the war. Churchill's tone creates a rather upbeat mood as the entire speech is to motivated and inspire the parliament, the army and the entire nation of Great Britain. His words are used to help the British people lift their heads up. The last 2 passages are able to represent the mood as well as Churchill's powerful words are used to empower and motivate everyone around him.

Several rhetorical devices are used in this speech as ways to motivate, inspire and empower in this speech.“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone". This is the first passage of the speech and the underlined portion highlights the use of parallelism, using parallelism helps Churchill describe what Britain's goals are and what Britain needs to do. The bold is the usage of an expletive, the expletive helps the speech be more direct as the expletives helps the clarity of speech and explains more on the situation.  The last passage of the speech uses anaphora as Churchill constantly repeats "We shall". The assonance helps the motivation of Churchill's words greatly as he uses we shall to let Great Britain know what they must do and they will have to do in order to get through the war safely and remain a powerful country. " all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule", "we shall not flag or fail". This is the 2nd last part of the speech before the final large passage, here Churchill uses assonance in the underlined portion of the statement. The assonance is used to insult but at the same time recognize how dominant Nazi Germany has been and how Great Britain should never fall beneath them. The bold is alliteration as Churchill encourages his country that they will not falter and that they will accomplish their goals and it helps add to the motivation component of the speech.

Overall the speech is very well structured and Churchill has been able to use several rhetorical devices in speech in order to make himself easier to understand and have a more clear speech. The rhetorical devices also help add the motivational part of his speech and it helps the inspiration component greatly as many of the inspirational parts of the speech contain a rhetorical device.
http://www.presentationmagazine.com/winston-churchill-speech-we-shall-fight-them-on-the-beaches-8003.htm

Sample IOC

https://soundcloud.com/george-batra/practice-ioc-1

Lines 265-322, Act 2 Scene 1

Takeaways from the discussion on How to Tame a Wild Tongue

How to Tame a Wild Tongue is a chapter from a book called Borderlands. The chapter is about the author Gloria Anzaldua describing her upbringing in 2 separate, different cultures. Her mother tongue is Chicano Spanish which is a language that is considered to be inferior in society and is oppressed and subaltern. Growing up in the United States, the author herself had to learn English and conform to the language as in school she was forced to speak English while she was being pulled away a certain distance from her native Chicano Spanish, which was a discriminated language.

From my class discussion, one key quote that I can takeaway from the text which had a lot of meaning was "Because we speak a language of fire, we are culturally crucified". The key from this quote was to really analyze the meaning of "language of fire" and since the quote refers to her native Chicano Spanish, it can be identified that it's an oppressed language. Language of fire means a language of a culture that has been discriminated and/or colonized which indicates that it's a language that it losing it's speakers and declining. Language of fire also relates to a language "being burned in fire" as people who speak a language of fire are forced to leave their language, conform to a new culture and learn a new language since their language is inferior in the social class and doesn't hold any power.In this case, Chicano Spanish in the story is a language of culture since people like the author herself are forced to stray away from their native tongue.Culturally crucified means a subaltern culture that is discriminated and therefore a possibly abandoned. In the text, being culturally crucified refers to Anzaldua herself having to move away from her own culture and conform to another one (American in this case). In this case of being culturally crucified, killing your own culture and leaving it can most likely be beneficial for the person him/her self as it reduces their chances of being victims of racism and being discriminated. Crucifying a culture means killing it and burning a culture into ashes since the culture is not a culture that seen in a bright light and is generally respected in society and with that the language itself follows and will also be burned as it holds a big part of what the culture exactly is.

The story and the quote itself relates to language and power because when looking at just languages in the world, we are able to recognize the most spoken languages (English, Spanish, Arabic etc) and we can see what power they hold and what great positions those languages are since they are spoken in multiple countries other than their origins. From this story we can now see the other end of the spectrum as looking at Chicano Spanish, you can identify with a language that serves as more of a disadvantage than advantage and is considered to be inferior and a language that can possibly lose its speakers and overall its heart. I can also relate this to real life as back in Sydney, I had a Thai-Australian friend who didn't want to learn Thai since he felt that the language serves more as a disadvantage and that only speaking English was better for him than speaking both English and his mother tongue and he pretty much felt in a similar situation to the author.

Where do we see evidence of linguistic imperialism in the Anglophone world?

In today's world, English is continuing to dominate all over the world in several aspects and it continues it's stronghold as being the world's leading language. One major reason why English continues to take over the world is because the language represents a fine and a prestigious level of education in which no other non-English speaking country can match. In my opinion, I feel that education is the main reason that English is becoming more widespread all over the world. The top 10 universities in the world are all in either the United States or United Kingdom in which both countries hold English as their main language.

Studying at a high quality university can definitely boost your chances in the future to live a high quality life after graduating. A great education opens up the doors for people as they have a much higher chance at finding jobs (than people who have an average or below average education) and with further chances of finding employment, the better the chance you have for making money which you can then use for many great things. Universities in United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada (4 of the best countries in the world to study) all want their students to know their native language English to a certain level and a certain degree. Therefore, if you want to get into a good education, the first step is to have a good fluency level of the English language. Education has made  the English language a barrier for people to cross over if they want education at it's best, in order to get into universities in English speaking countries, you must take the IELTS or TOEFL (if you hold passport of a non English speaking country) which are tests to see the level of one's proficiency at the language. If a person let's say doesn't know much English at all but he can find cures for diseases or has the thinking and logic to that of the levels of Albert Einstein! he still will need to take tests and needs to have a good fluency of the language in order to get into the university despite the fact that he is presumably very intelligent.

The majority of the 200 highest rated universities in the world are situated in an English speaking country and therefore English is needed as without a good level of English, you will struggle to survive in living in places like Australia or UK and also all the studies and teaching are in English so basically the knowledge needs to be transmitted in the English language. One can study in their own language but the quality of what they learn in whatever their own main language may be will be nothing compared to what they would learn in English. The countries in which the best universities are located in tend to be the most developed and wealthier nations in the world so therefore after graduating, English will be very helpful as you can get a good quality job in a developed nation which will boost your earnings. The upside of English is that it can get you always a step ahead at getting a great education and future but the downside is that if one learns English and forgets his own culture, then a culture and language both are dying in this world.

Paper 1 Commentary - Text 2

The given text is an article on the internet written by Oxfam International educating us on the food crisis that countries in West and Central Africa are likely to face. This article explains the different ways that Oxfam is trying to help out and solve the likely issue in Africa by reaching out to as many people as they can. The article tries more to publicize Oxfam itself more and show how it is dealing with the issue at hand.

There isn't a certain type of person or a group of people that this article aims at but it could mostly be aimed at people who are rich because since they have a lot of money, it can be easy for them to contribute to a problem like this or people who are have been following the food crises in Africa (as it has happened many times in the past) so that they can also catch their eye and convince them to help out. The purpose of this article is to let Oxfam organization themselves show what they are doing to help out on the issue while also trying to convince and persuade people to take action for this cause and donate since Oxfam is a company that takes in donations. The article is aiming to get very active with whoever they have in mind with their target audience.

This text is about Oxfam talking about the actions that they are taking to make a change with the food crisis that is happening in the Sahel region in West and Central Africa and also trying to convince us people to contribute as in the article they explain what they are doing to take action while also hoping that more people can help out on the situation. Oxfam is trying to convey their messages by bringing up the different ways how the people in Africa are suffering by bringing up the poverty there, how people are starving and all the problems of the supply of food.

The tone in this article is very serious and the article is really trying to play with our emotions here and make us feel very sad about what is going on in Africa currently. They use statistics to make this article very serious e.g. 35% of people in Niger are vulnerable to food insecurity. As this article is explaining about how bad things are in Africa, they are trying to show a very compassionate tone as well by using very dramatic words such as vulnerable or crisis. The mood as well is very sad and sorrowful as we continue to know more about a situation where people are constantly suffering every day but it can also light us up a little bit as Oxfam is showing the contributions they are making to this cause and how they are trying to change the entire landscape of the situation and also make us feel good that someone is taking action towards it and an impact is being made.

The ad uses logos as they are using statistics to let give the readers a more clear insight on the situation. The ad uses pathos as they are trying to appeal to our emotions by telling us how they are suffering and all the negatives that are ongoing and they use ethos as they are trying to tell their audience to contribute to this as it is the right thing to do although I feel the ethos is a little bit hidden in the text but it is certainly transmitted as Oxfam is showing what they are doing so it makes us feel like we should join them and take action.

The paragraph is structure with a title and then a quote in large writing saying "The humanitarian response must tackle the underlying causes of crises like this to prevent them recurring". The article gives a bit of an introduction about how it is a big issue currently and then a little sub heading "The situation in Sahel" where it explains what is going on there and then another sub heading "What Oxfam is doing" and they explain what action they are taking to solve the problem. The structure is like 1. Why we are doing this, 2. What is happening with the situation and 3. What action we are taking towards it. The article uses average size font except for it's major quote at the very start of the article. The article also has a picture of the region just to show us what the Sahel Region of Africa looks like. I feel it is a very well structured article.

I feel like overall this is an article that is trying to show how Oxfam themselves are helping out to the cause and also giving us the feeling that we should help out to the cause as well and not just Oxfam should. I feel this is an excellent article and it can lure in the reader effectively and at the end of the article make them feel like contributing to the cause and it persuades people very well. I feel like Oxfam would probably have been boosted in some way or another after posting this article because it is great at being persuasive.