On Compassion Analysis Essay

The author gives humanistic reasons on why people are compassionate. For example, a poor man was in the way of a mother and her baby so the mother scrambled around her purse to find change to give him. After the money was given to him, he stood there not knowing that taking the money and saying thank you was the end of that situation so he just stares at the baby, until the mother gets impatient and scrolls away. “Was it fear or compassion that motivated the gift?” In the passage she explains to the audience of a fresh bread shop and an old man. Entering

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss (...) These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen” (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross). Compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern make mankind beautiful, but it also makes it defenseless . When one has concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, he takes sacrifices, risks, and lives with uncertainty. When man is compassionate, he lives a vulnerable life. Love and compassion bring out the beauty in mankind, but they can also bring out its weaknesses. Because of man’s compassion, he

Compassion is a feeling that humans portray towards others, but you also have to act in some way to aid them and to decrease their suffering. Barbara Lazear Ascher's purpose “On Compassion” of her essay was to distinguish emotions that people feel towards homeless people. She posed the question of whether or not people feel compassion or pity towards homeless people. The thesis

People tend to brush off something or ignore something that we do not understand or like. Many Americans do this. So if most of America does this, then what gets done with that problem? Nothing! Barbara Lazear Ascher’s ‘On Compassion’ shows this to a new level. She shows us how the homeless is struggling and everyone turns their heads about it even though it is a big problem in New York City. Ascher’s use of good logos, pathos, and ethos comes together to show people what we are all guilty of at some point in our life. She shows us how the person 's reaction of a homeless person is to how the homeless person reacts to them.

Albert Schweitzer once said, "The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others". Barbara Lazear Ascher writes about fear versus compassion in her article "On Compassion". She addresses whether humans act off of the feeling of fear, or sheer compassion for others. Ascher takes advantage of rhetorical strategies, such as ethos, pathos, imagery, details, and point of views, to effectively express his personal experiences that invoke the difference between fear and compassion.

Are people born with a complete quandary when it comes to compassion or is it something that has always been there? Barbara Lazear Ascher, born in 1946, writes, “On Compassion.” Having lived in New York City, Ascher is able to take first hand examples from the city to show the affection people have towards each other. Ascher is able to illustrate that compassion is something that has to be taught because of the adversity at people’s heels by including tone, persuasive appeals, and the mode of comparing and contrast in her essay, “On Compassion.”

“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal”. This quote by Steve Maraboli may be hard to understand, but the Holocaust texts: Night by Elie Wiesel, “A Three Year Old Saves His Mother” by Peter Gorog and “Jakob's Story” by Jakob Blankitny are great examples of where compassion is necessary to fight the despair in heartbreaking situations. In each work, compassion shows up from unexpected sources, helps motivate people to survive, and creates greater unification.

Ascher’s essay describes the ways she has seen compassion showed, through voluntary donations, food, shelter. She openly questions what drives humans to be compassionate to each other. As a successful author who

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 mother removes her purse from her shoulder and rummages through its contents: lipstick, a lace handkerchief, an address book. She finds what she’s looking for and passes a folded dollar over her child’s head to the man who stands and stares even though the light has changed and traffic navigates around his hips… He does not know his part. He does not know that acceptance of the gift and gratitude are what makes this transaction complete… The mother grows impatient and pushes the stroller before her, bearing the dollar like a cross. Finally, a black hand rises and closes around green” (paragraphs 3-5).

Compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering (Dictionary.com). In the Annex you can see that many people are very compassionate towards each other. One example of this is when Peter’s cat gets lost and cannot be found. You’d expect for him to get told to suck it up and that it’s just a cat, and they’ve more important things to worry about. Instead of this you see that they try to find his cat and calm him down, which I think is very compassionate of them to think of Peter and how much he loves his cat instead of telling him to suck it up.

The definition of compassion in the oxford dictionary is ''sympathetic pity and concern for the suffering or misfortunes of others''. Oxford dictionary (2013) However senior lecturer Penny Harrison says there is no accurate definition for compassion as it is a word that can be understood in different ways. Harrison, P. (2009)

Ascher believes observing the adversity of homelessness is a necessity in learning compassion because “Compassion is not a character trait. . .It must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our windows” (Cohen 42). Ascher believes we can learn and grow from others' adverse experiences without being a part of it. Although Ascher would have us believe we can learn compassion simply through observing adversity at our windows (homelessness), Eighner would likely disagree because he has struggled in adversity and learned the importance of true sentiment first hand, not through observation. Eighner writes of the importance of having an intimate connection with adversity in his own homelessness, “Once I was the sort of person who invests material objects with sentimental value. Now I no longer have those things, but I have the sentiments yet. . . .The things I find in dumpsters, the love letters and ragdolls of so many lives, remind me of this lesson” (Cohen 157, 158). Eighner has grown and holds sentiment in those lessons because he had those experiences, not because he has simply observed others. Ascher gives us a lesson in learning from adversity but does so from an outsiders' point of view while Eighner's personal experience contrasts to shows us that much can be learn from experiencing adversity more intimately.

Compassion has little to no boundries. In almost every great story there is a specific character or a group of characters that help the protagonist because they feel bad for them. Compassion is the most important aspect of a functioning society; therefore, Elie Wiesel’s Night, 12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose, and the generosity of spirit shown by the average citizen after the recent shooting in Las Vegas are all perfect examples.

“Compassionate people are geniuses in the art of living, more necessary to the dignity, security, and joy of humanity than the discoveries of knowledge.” -- Albert Einstein