TOW #20: Nicht das, was Sie Erwarten (Visual Text)

In Frau Wilson’s room there is a poster that I have found interesting since 9th grade: it shows grass and a shovel, except where the grass has been dug out, there is not soil, but rather a layered cake! The poster is for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which I had the privilege to visit last summer. The poster’s goal is to show potential museum-goers that the museum is not what one would expect of a Jewish museum in Germany.

The image on the poster is certainly rather surprising. Under the grass is cake? Of course, logic would say that is not so, but cake is for most people a more pleasant option than dirt. That appears to say that even if the Jewish museum is not what you would expect, it is something better. The words at the bottom of the poster below the name of the museum say “Nicht das, was Sie erwarten," which is German for “Not what you would expect.” The positioning of the words is key, as it allows the viewer to take in the image, to be confused, and then to have their eyes travel downward and realize that is the point. Ultimately, if the viewer is curious, the museum hopes that curiosity will make them decide to visit. Important also is that the shape of the building is shown on a small logo, as that is part of what makes the museum so unique: it is not only a visual experience relying on facts to carry a message, but also a spatial experience. The building is a zigzagging form with a straight line that cuts through the building, creating voids the architect says demonstrate “that which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: Humanity reduced to ashes." Not all that can be grasped from the poster, but the form on the poster gives the viewer an inkling of what they will discover when if they visit. More simply, the poster is brightly colored, using vibrant green and pink to catch the attention of someone passing by. Before anyone can even be drawn to appreciate the message and have their curiosity piqued, they must think to look at it in the first place. The bright colors serve that purpose.

Ultimately, I believe the poster achieved its goal, as when I found out we were going to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin last summer, I immediately thought of the poster and was rather excited. I was curious to see how the museum would be anything but what I expected, and I was not disappointed! Not only was the poster unique, but also accurate to the experience.

TOW #19: The Act of Rigorous Forgiving (Written Text)

David Brooks, a New York Times op-ed columnist, published a piece reacting to the Brian Williams dilemma a few days after the news broke, taking a rather surprising approach: forgiveness. I decided to read the piece because forgiveness is a word not heard too often in reference to the media - in fact, it is probably the most unforgiving element of our society, spurring twenty-first century witch hunts for wrongdoings that, when examined more closely, most of us are not in any position to judge. Brooks aims to highlight that idea, and to convince his readers that “civic fabric would be stronger if, instead of trying to sever relationships with those who have done wrong, we tried to repair them, if we tried forgiveness instead of exiling.”

Anticipating a somewhat contemptuous reaction from those who regard forgiveness as a somewhat romanticized idea, he makes sure to note that his idea of forgiveness “balances accountability with compassion.” He organizes his piece by breaking down forgiveness into four processes. In each section, he explains what must be done in that stage. By explaining the processes, he makes it easy for his readers to truly understand what it means to forgive. He also makes it seem reasonable enough to be a viable option to be chosen over the present burning at the stake with acrid words to destroy all remaining shreds of the reputation of a man who realistically cannot say or do anything to defend himself. Additionally, Brooks uses respected figures like Martin Luther King Jr. to enhance the argument for forgiveness. Brooks states that King said that forgiveness is not an act, but rather an attitude. The use of a persecuted, yet triumphant figure like King helps to Brooks to convince his audience that though forgiveness is indeed right. If one who was so much more affected by another’s wrongdoing than his audience likely is by Brian Williams spoke of forgiving, then who are we all to take an attitude of superiority? Brooks takes one more significant step to convince his audience by ending with the question “Would you rather become the sort of person who excludes, or one who offers tough but healing love?” The preferable answer is obviously the second, as the first option uses the word “exclude,” a term which usually carries a negative connotation and is associated with bullying. Though perhaps one could see it as a false dilemma, it still gives the intended effect of making the reader consider their own character and decide what kind of person they would rather be. Thus, Brooks achieved his purpose by at least making his audience consider forgiveness.

TOW #18: "After Life" (Written Text)

A few months after her husband died of cardiac arrest at the dinner table, Joan Didion wrote “After Life,” an account of the sudden death of her husband and her resultant grief. Didion, a lifelong writer in many fields, often authors essays with depressing themes or melancholy undertones. This essay, however, is perhaps more powerful than any of the others of hers that I have read in the past, because of the gripping emotion and bewilderment she aims to portray, and how this time it is clearly so real.

Didion structures her essay chronologically for the most part, a strategy that is helpful in leading her readers with her down the path of love and loss and shock and sorrow. She begins her outline with the death itself, contextualizing it by recounting the events of that day, namely their visit to their only daughter, Quintana, who was in the ICU after having fallen ill with pneumonia, which escalated, putting her in a coma. Despite the tough day, Didion places an emphasis on how utterly ordinary the moments before John’s death were: she was cooking dinner while he asked her something about the scotch she had poured for him, and they discussed WWI. “John was talking, then he wasn't,” she writes. Short sentences like this, which she uses after each longer, narrative paragraph, convey a sort of aloofness one wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in an essay about the death of a loved one, but which so perfectly, I am told, conveys the bewildering emptiness that follows such a loss. The idea of the “ordinary,” like the calm before the storm, while not hers specifically, is one she uses throughout this section. As a writer, she references the deaths she has experienced through others, quoting the people of Honolulu she had interviewed, saying: “ without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an ‘ordinary Sunday morning’ it had been.” Such references exhibit the magnitude of her husband’s death to Didion. As a journalist, a tragedy meant a new story to Didion. However, following the death of her husband, the stories of others became her reality. By including stories she has covered in the past, Didion strengthens the message of her own account by forcing her reader to bring it to a personal level for themselves, letting them know that this is not just a story that they could leave and go back to a normal life, but that at some point, this just might be their reality. 
My reaction to this was to be somewhat taken aback and horrified. This, however, I believe was Didion’s goal. She aimed to convey death in a way that anyone could see as startlingly ordinary and natural. She solidifies this message by concluding with her decision to look up her and her husband’s old house in California, at which point she discovered that the area had been destroyed by a landslide that blocked off a cave she and her husband used to swim into: “We could have been swimming into the cave with the swell of clear water and the entire point could have slumped, slipped into the sea around us. The entire point slipping into the sea around us was the kind of conclusion I anticipated. I did not anticipate cardiac arrest at the dinner table.”

TOW #17: Let's Pretend This Never Happened (IRB #3, Part 1)

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is a “mostly true” memoir by Jenny Lawson, which presents her life as a series of humorous, albeit disturbing stories. Lawson grew up in a very small, very poor Texas town. Most of her early stories come from incidents relating to the animals her father, a taxidermist, brought home, to keep as pets, to eat, or to use for his business. Through her series of bizarre events, she strives to help readers of all walks of life realize that “... you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them” (Dedication).

The means Lawson uses to help her audience come to the realization to which she came, is humor. Though perhaps not everyone has the same sense of humor, it makes her story fun to read, which in turn makes the reader more likely to continue alertly through it, which of course is necessary to the delivery of her message. In one of her stories, she describes the time her father’s “quail” (actually a turkey) named Jenkins followed her to school and made a mess of turkey droppings, which her father was invited in to clean up. Though perhaps most people cannot claim to have been followed to school by their father’s semi-vicious, very loud turkey-that-he-insists-on-calling-a-quail, her concern for her reputation as a result of the unexpected event is something with which most people can identify. After that great embarrassment, she felt she could never achieve a good social standing in high school, and she became a goth drug user. Meanwhile, her sister brushed off the turkey disaster and proceeded with an air of confidence that made her rather popular. Lawson does not really present either path as better, but rather uses the humorous story to show that each of their reactions to the same embarrassing event made them into the very different people they became. Through stories like this, Lawson achieved her purpose, at least for a reader like me.