Michael Burke

If there is one day I dread most upon its arrival, it would be 9/11. Sure there was an immense amount of strength as a nation represented, following the terrorists attacks, but it also brought a great amount of grief and sorrow. I remember watching videos of innocent people jumping from windows in the twin towers hoping to escape the terror. These people believed there was no one to help and no one to help them. They lost hope. In “Remembering a Hero, 15 Years After 9/11” written by Peggy Noonan, published in The Wall Street Journal on September 11th 2016, Alison Crowther—Welles Crowther’s mom—recalls the courageous actions to save the lives of others, made by her son on this horrific day. Noonan utilizes pathos, ethos, asyndeton, and

September 11, 2001 is a day that shook the United States to its core. Millions of Americans felt the pain, the loss, and the anger that came with the attack on their nation. It was a day of mourning, and when it comes to days of mourning it is difficult putting one’s pain into words. However, Leonard Pitts Jr. was able to move past the emotion. He put into his words, not only his own feelings, but the feelings of an entire nation. Pitts conveys the emotion felt after the terror attacks in his essay “Sept. 12, 2001: We’ll go forward from this moment” through his mournful, angry, and righteous tone.

Pathos appeals to the reader’s emotions by using emotional stories and imagery. Pathos strategies are often used to grab and hold the reader’s attention. Emotional or personal stories give the reader an opportunity to emotionally relate to the story, and allows them to be emotionally connected. An emotionally connected reader is more interested in the story that a reader who is not emotionally connected.

To appeal to emotions, he uses necessary information to give them some momentum into making mistakes. According to Gaiman “People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can” (2). The pathos approach is an efficient way of passing the intended message. It draws the audience into the belief that they are capable of doing the extraordinary irrespective of how ordinary they seem. By appealing to their emotions, Gaiman effectively gets them on his side as they receive some daring advice which would lead to success in their career paths. This creates an emotional connection between the speaker and the audience.

Imagery, initially, supports Burke’s use of narrative in his piece. Burke forces the audience to picture the traumatic events that occurred that day and how they felt watching it unfold. Burke uses descriptive words and phrases such as: “bodies charred,” “bodies rained down,” “and they exploded” (4). These words help emphasize the horrible scene that was happening right in front of their eyes. Citizens watched as workers jump out of the towers, choosing to commit suicide instead of being crushed by falling the debris. These short phrases brings them to the images of bodies, dead and destroyed, laying on the street. Additionally, he uses short one sentence lines to show what the first responders sacrificed on 9/11.

The survivors of September 9, 2001 will never be the same. While they may be emotionally scarred from the traumatic event, physical scars will also remain on their body. Bruno Dillinger describes that many evacuators lacked skin and hair, and that many evacuators were severely burnt. Despite all the mayhem and chaos, the people in the stairwell kept their wits with them. They did not panic; they were calm. Bruno Dillinger’s description of the first responders walking up the stairs was heartbreaking. He commented, “They were going up to their death. And I was walking down to live.” Despite the fear the firefighters and other responders felt, they rose to the occasion in order to save the lives of many others. The bravery the firefighters and

Nicholas Carr addresses and adapts to his audience by effectively using pathos, a rhetorical appeal. The author captures his audience by appealing to their emotions. For example, Carr explains on page five,

The beginning of any thought provoking essay will hook its audience using a form of pathos. “Two of his sons returned home from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures a day”-(Rorabacher). The quote generates sympathy within us making us yearn to see a welcoming outcome and leaving the audience hooked. Eli Hager’s article follows a similar route informing us that “The state of Missouri sent Harris to the penitentiary in Boonvilee, 250 miles from his home and baby daughter”-(Hager). Again we sympathize with the loss of a family, but not all of the articles used grievance to hook us. In the “Quiet Alarm” the audience is informed of a vaudeville performer who performed deadly stunts involving hatchets, pins, and guns on himself to generate shockwaves in the audience. From these examples we identify how our emotions lure us into these texts.

The year 2001, September 11th happened to be a disastrous day for New York City in America together with all countries worldwide. The calculated attack by terrorists stirred several reactions that were apparent in varied art forms. Other people mourned those who died using poems and songs while other individuals called for urgent action in form of speeches together with letters. One specific rejoinder was the speech from Rudy Giuliani to the General assembly of the United Nations addressing the inhumane acts of terrorism. His speech embraces specific techniques that seem effective when used in spoken rhetoric in contrast to written rhetoric.

In literary texts, authors best evoke empathy in the audience by using appeals such as ethos, logos, and pathos. When a reader is given appeals they are able to better understand the world around them and how others outside of their own lives feel. Books and speeches such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Statement on the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by Robert F. Kennedy are prime examples of authors evoking empathy from their readers.

On September 11, 2001, the day of the towers fell, Lawrence Wright was an active journalist for the New Yorker. That afternoon he sent a simple request to his boss: "Put me to work." From his home in Austin, Lawrence Wright began interviewing a survivor in Queens, New York. He conducted the interviews long-distance, and put together an account based on the experience of this survivor. From there, Wright stumbled on the story of John O'Neill, the former FBI agent who became chief of security for the World Trade Center. The accounts of O’Neill’s

ii. Topic Sentence – Pathos is referred to as the literature’s emotional appeal to the audience’s senses or imagination.

Many writers use several diverse ways to persuade readers into believing them. Some writers may tell a story, provide facts and information, or other ideas to encourage his or her reader to agree with the argument. Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle describes three diverse appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is based on facts and reasons explaining logical arguments that rely on information and evidence. Logos is built with enough evidence, data, statistics, and reliable information. Another type of appeal is pathos, which attracts the reader’s emotions and feelings into the work. Many writers who use pathos tend to write about their personal experience and by diction and tone. In addition to logos and pathos, ethos corresponds with

While the two other pieces assigned for this class both touched upon certain elements of the attacks that Hara does not discuss, as a fourth-generation New Yorker who experienced the events of September 11th first hand, I was particularly struck with his portrayal of the ways in which the survivors of widespread disasters are often victims themselves. Much of the language used in the piece recalls New York City in the wake of the attacks: constant physical and emotional reminders of death, silent acknowledgment of shared suffering, and a larger desire to rationalize such irrational tragedy. In this course, we have examined many instances of the physical victims of the attacks, yet it is equally as important to consider the hibakusha, the survivors of the attacks whose lives metaphorically ended (or at least fundamentally changed)on that day as well. The tragedy and destruction of the attacks does not exist only in death tolls and collateral damage; it exists in the lives of those who were lucky enough to survive but not lucky enough to be

First and foremost, it was thought that Mr. Burke would never get his his point across. This is what makes his organization so important. Burke drags his thesis out to three-quarter of the article at a point which he switch his focus to the real point at hand. “For weeks ordinary New Yorkers and visitors from out of town attended there hundreds of memorial services across the city and area suburbs… Fifth Avenue-New York's main street-came to a halt” Right after the horrific event people everywhere were mourning the loss of thousands including the lives of first responders. This quote or changing point marks the start of the real point of the article. To this day it should be assumed that they would be honored at ground zero at a memorial yearly to thank them for their sacrifices and thank the families of the ones who made the ultimate sacrifice. But as Burke