Due Friday 8Pm

Marjorie

For this week’s forum I chose “The Damned Human Race” by Mark Twain. In this selection, Mark Twain compares animals to human beings to show the reader how the human race is revengeful, avaricious, and has generally degenerated. The structure of this essay is a little bit disorganized but it flows into each idea decently. The author starts off by telling the readers that he has been studying the traits and behaviors of what we know as the “lower animals.” He then goes on to tell us how he came to his conclusions of the human race descending from these so called lower animals by suggesting that he has used the scientific method and conducted an experiment. In his experiment, the english earls kill seventy-two buffalo and eat part of one of those buffalo, and leave the other seventy-one to rot. (Twain, 2)  Then he put seven calves into a cage with an anaconda and the results were that the anaconda ate one of those calves and did not feel the need or show desire to harm the other six calves. He tried this experiment several times and had the same results. (Twain 2) To the author this showed how man, who is supposed to have moral sense,  is cruel and greedy. He tried this experiment with different species of animals such as - birds, squirrels, bees, ants, etc and came to the same results. Twain becomes more opinionated as he moves towards the conclusion of his essay stating that man is cruel, revengeful, vulgar, indecent, unreasoning, and incurably foolish and giving examples of how he has come to these conclusions. “And so I find that we have descended and degenerated... till we have reached the bottom stage of development…” (Twain 4) The method of organization helps Twain because he does not dwell on just one point but his ideas flow. The style of writing the author uses in this essay is persuasive.   This style of writing did prove his point because after every claim he supported it with it with real life events that are common knowledge. In the introduction, he starts off right away by stating that the comparisons between animals and the human race is humiliating. This hooked me in immediately because I wanted to know what was so humiliating. He ends his essay by summarizing his main points of devolution from all animals in a short sentence - “Below us, nothing.” (Twain 4) I really enjoyed reading this selection because Twain made a lot of great points and kept me engaged with his sarcasm and humor.

Mariajose

References

Twain, Mark. “The Damned Human Race.” Moodyap.pbworks.com. n.d. Web. 11 May 2012.

Angelina

THAT minds are not alike, full well I know,

This truth each day's experience will show;

To heights surprising some great spirits soar,

With inborn strength mysterious depths explore… (Morray qtd in I. Thomas and E.t Andrews (Andrews) pg.132)

This week I read, Women Suffrage activists, Judith Sargent Morray’s, essay titled, “On the Equality of Sexes”. This article was about the comparison of the male and female mind. According to the National Women’s History Museum, Morray was born into a wealthy family and taught herself to read and write. “She felt that the typical chores of women’s lives did not offer any intellectual stimulation and that if women did not find more uses for their intellect, they would use it for ill purposes (National Women’s History Museum).” Her views on women’s intellect reflected on her writing in her essay. She felt women were not getting mentally stimulated and otherwise tasked with mind numbing chores expected by the social norms of that time. Since Morray was not formally taught to right her thoughts were fairly erratic and unorganized, but her passion in the subject helped make the essay easy to fallow. This made the essay hard to read sometimes. The essay read as if it was written as she thought it. Morray’s hook was a well written poem. The first stanza is written above. I like this stanza, not because it is it first one, but because it states the pace and thesis behind the whole essay. It catches reader’s attention, leaving them wanting to know how she elaborates on her point of view on the subject.

Ho

The article “Now We Can Begin”: What’s Next?: Beyond Woman Suffrage is chosen for the analysis. The purpose of the essay is mark or to celebrate the win for the vote, to explain to people, to women and men it is not the end of the everlasting strive for it, it is the very beginning of the struggle for women’s rights preserving. The thesis statement is “Did women’s vote lead to a period of rest or of more activism through the use of the vote?” (Eastman).
        The essay consists of the paragraphs; some of them are introduced by short but very thoughtful ideas. The division is logical and it helps to read, to perceive the essay easy and thoroughly. It starts with the historical fact about getting vote by women. Then two paragraphs are devoted to feminism as a whole and its understanding of freedom of a woman. Then a big part of the essay is devoted to the necessity of change in boys and girls’ education. The essay presents the information on the fact how the men’s attitude had changed through the history of mankind.
        The style of the text is opinion piece with the elements of argumentative essay. It is the only right style for the topic chosen to lighten the problematic points of it. There is a huge amount of philosophical questions that the author raises at the very right time. And the conclusion of the essay is ended with one of them and the author is sure that it is enough time to speculate upon it. The essay was written in 1920 but it has the ideas and thoughts that are similar to the present times.

Rhonda

 For my forum post under the "Historical American Works"  I chose Mark Twain's "The Damned Human Race". There is no thesis statement it goes straight into the introduction. The purpose of reading the article was that the title caught my attention, anything doing with the human race is of high interest to me. Twain claims that the human race is the lesser of species in the evolutionary chain because of the barbarity of human in the way that they treat their fellow beings due to the lack of moral sense.

     The first thing that Twain did in the structure of the article is to describe the methods that he used to come to the conclusion that he came to, as to validate his research claims. Then he list the 3 different types of species that he used in his experiment. Lastly he talks about what made him decide to do such an experiment and his findings. I do feel that it is organized, detailed  and the structure takes you step by step into his thinking and why he chose this type of experiment to conduct about the human race that ultimately is not very flattering as he stated when comparing humans to animals " These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animal: he is avaricious and miserly; and they are not". (Twain 2).  For the most part to me it looks like MLA style without the indents at the beginning of each new paragraph

     The introduction did draw me when he stated that he found the results to be humiliating in comparing humans to animals. As for the conclusion I would only say that it is very brief to me, with his belief that the human race is the basically the bottom of the barrel.