Persuasive Essay

Overcoming adversity has been one of my major themes throughout both essays. Building upon positive strengths and positive assess creates a path to optimism and resilience. One poem that comes to mind, entitled The Rose by Tupac Shakur symbolizes this journey.

Throughout the literary works of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, different characters deal with adversity differently. In The Glass Castle the characters must overcome family hardships. Likewise, Spiegelman writes about his father’s struggle during the Holocaust. Lastly, in “Mother to Son” the speaker informs her son about her own hardships she had to face. Challenges that characters face can impact them both negatively and positively. Characters from all three literary works deal with adversity by having courage, being resilient, and making poor choices.

Adversity and the struggles that we go through day to day are the moments that build us into the people that we become. Nobel Laureate Dennis Gabor wrote, “Humans are wonderful in adversity, weak in comfort, affluence and security.” Being weak in comfort, affluence, and security clearly points to people’s ability to remain stable. However, Gabor notes that the strength humans have is due to the ability to handle adversity. A well-used strength allows for these weaknesses to not be the downfall of the race. Adversity can be confused with neglect in rough family situations. Jeannette Walls is an author that can represent adversity and explains them through her memoir The Glass Castle in several passages and even references the boundaries of

The conflicts in Speak and “The Art of Resilience” display the theme overcoming difficulties. In both texts, the challenge is the characters are going through a tough time. When they acted as if nothing bothered them, the issue became increasingly worse. Eventually, the main characters stood up to their problems and overcame them. At the end of Speak, Melinda, the main character of the novel explains, “ IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It was my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not

The theme of this novel is that even though you have experienced awful things in your life and has been screwed inside and out, you can still overcome the obstacles that stand in your way of success.

“The human capacity for Burden is like BamBoo- Far more flexiBle than you’d ever Believe at first glance.” ( Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper) In this essay it will show how Brian in the Book used resilience to get through all of the hardships in his story. In addition it will tell aBout a claim on what resilience is in life and in Brians WInter. Finally it will tell aBout a counterclaim in place of one claim.

In this week’s reading, Anna Harrington uses a quote from Victor Frankel: “The last of human freedoms… is the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances. What a great way of restating, “Your response is your responsibility.” (Eggerichs, 2014). She communicates some ideas about resiliency she calls elements: emotional, spiritual, social, family, and physical. (Harrington, 2012).

The stories Defending Jacob, “The Art of Resilience”, and “The Third and Final Continent” all contain the theme hardships constantly occur; however, regardless of misfortune it is essential to persevere. Within in the text of each literature piece reveals the importance of finding the light that will give meaning to continue forward. Each writing develops its own perspective on whether what happens to those who continue to fight through calamity, as well as those who become enveloped in the grief of their past and what's to come. Everyone has seen adversity, no matter how big or small. People cope with various forms of conflict in a numerous amount of ways; however, it is shared through these particularly insightful passages that having others

When we fall down, it takes resilience to get back up, because without resilience, what reason do we have to rise again? It was on March 14th, my 19th birthday, that I began making my way through Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté’s The Resilience Factor. As a college freshman living away from home for the first time, I can use some advice on how to respond to adversity. This is why I picked up The Resilience Factor, despite being dubious of the “self-help” genre. A beautiful day at Griffith observatory, overlooking Hollywood, made for the perfect opportunity to learn how to keep going in the face of struggle. What more apt setting, where so many dreams are chased after for lifetimes, could there be to find the elusive key to resilience? After

Symbolism is an effective technique that is used to establish the central theme of perseverance. Symbolism is the use of ideas or objects to represent something more than its original meaning. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, Melinda’s tree project is used to represent her growth at the end of the book. “The bark is rough. I try to make it look as if initials were carved in it a long time ago. One of the lower branches is sick… that branch better drop soon so it doesn’t kill the whole thing” (Anderson 196). Throughout the book, Melinda’s art project symbolizes the trauma that she experienced and her survival. Melinda is isolating herself by refusing to talk, and she is ignored by her friends. Her troubles are reflected in her art project as she struggles with her tree. When she is able to learn and move past her experiences her project begins to form and she is able to complete it. Symbolism is also used in “The Art of Resilience,” the author explains the reality of resilience and its tendency not to be easy. “Resilient people don’t walk between the raindrops; they have scars to show for their experience” (Marano 1). The article uses raindrops to symbolize the troubles in life. Hardships are inevitable and one has to persevere. These experiences should be used to grow and evolve rather than excuses to stop. It is survival of hard times that build resilience and can make a person excel in life. Both texts describe that hardships in life are unavoidable. One

Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.

Source: CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Health, United States, 2002. Flegal et. al. JAMA. 2002;288:1723-7. NIH, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, 1998.

“Your assignment is to write a persuasive essay and present it to the class in a week. You will be graded based on how convincing it is. Today we will be choosing topics,” announced Mr. Bowerbank, my 7th grade English teacher and ruler of classroom 110. My class simultaneously groaned at the prospect of work. I simply lifted my head with intrigue as it was already May and about time we had our first essay. He then proceeded to give examples of topics we could choose and gave us some time to think before we had to tell him our topic. My classmates were already rushing to tell the teacher their idea lest someone else steal it. That meant the usual abortion, death penalty, or drug use topics were out. I really couldn't think of anything and the teacher was slowly making his way through the remaining students like an executioner beheading criminals in a line. I have always thought that he would make a marvelous supervillain if he had a curly mustache, a tophat, and a cape. Eventually my name was called. I slowly dragged myself over to his desk. Even sitting down, he still seemed to tower over me. “What is your topic Cindy?” As usual in such desperate times, my mind turned to food. “Waffles are better than pancakes.” I figured that a waffle was just a differently shaped pancake with a nicer texture. “Hmm. Excellent topic. I look forward to your essay!” I survived to live yet another day.

Why spend money that is really needed for other things? Why live uncomfortably? Why be trapped in this hole called a home that belongs to another person? Why not live free and peacefully? When a person rents he or she usually throws away money that could be used to purchase something that belongs to them. Money is not easy to come by so why pay out hundreds toward something that is not benefit to the person paying it out. There is no good explanation for making a decision like this. The best option in a situation like this is to buy a house. Buying a house is a better option than renting an apartment.

Having escaped rule from a tyrannical British government, the United States was founded on ideals of freedom and equality for all people. These fantasies of universal egalitarianism turned out to be merely that: fantasies. American history is full of stories of the oppressed struggling to get the rights they deserve and of the controversy over these issues that consequently ensues. “The Hypocrisy of American Slavery” by Frederick Douglass and “We Shall Overcome” by Lyndon B. Johnson are two speeches made confronting two of these issues. Douglass’s speech, delivered in 1852, condemns the institution of slavery and maintains that slaves are men and are therefore entitled to freedom. Johnson’s speech, on the other hand, was written in 1965 and discussed the civil rights movement. In it, he implored local governments to allow all American citizens, regardless of race, to vote. Despite the significant gap in time between these two addresses, both speakers use similar persuasive techniques, including ethos, pathos, and parallelism, to convince their audience that change needs to be implemented in America.