TOW #11 - 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death' by Patrick Henry

            Towards the beginning of the American Revolution some colonists tried to redact the rebellion that was already underway. They did this by sending King Henry III the Olive Branch Petition, the petition was basically a small group of the colonists trying to get back in the King’s good graces. However, the King felt that it was too late for the colonists to redeem themselves and he claimed they were already in rebellion. Even though King Henry claimed this many colonists still felt that there was hope to stop a war with Britain from occurring. Patrick Henry, a lawyer and political, was not one of these colonists. He believed that war with Britain was just around the corner and that there was nothing the colonists could do to stop it. To address his beliefs, he gave a speech at the 2^nd Virginia Convention. This speech was called ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’.

            Originally most colonists still believed that there was a chance that Britain would forgive them for boycotting and having small rebellions. Due to their beliefs Henry first used facts to try and get the colonists to change their minds. He reminded them that Britain had not been responding very positively to their apologies and that they had already considered the colonist to be enemies and against Britain. He knew that none of them could refute known facts. Henry also used hypotheras to force his audience rethink their viewpoint on the argument.  He wanted them to see how flawed their opinion was. After Henry addressed the other colonists’ views he mentioned his own. He talked about how the Virginia colonists needed to start gathering arms, mentioning that Britain would be treating them like traitors and would not take mercy on them for not having weapons to defend themselves.

            Patrick Henry spoke directly to the President of the Virginia Convention, Peyton Randolph. Numerous times during his speech he address Randolph head on as ‘Mr. President’. Henry knew that in order to get all the other colonists on his side he needed to get the ‘leader’ of them all first. Once he got Randolph to agree with him all the other colonists would follow. Even though he directly told his views to Randolph his speech was also aimed towards every other Virginia colonist in attendance.  

           

IRB Intro #2

I chose to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. This book was recommended to me by Ms. Pronko, she described it as a ‘nonfiction read as a fiction’ and since I have a hard time reading nonfiction I thought this would be a good choice. The book is a murder mystery that takes place in the 80s, unsolved mysteries kind of interest me so I also thought this would just be an interesting unsolved mystery to create theories for.

TOW #9 – Visual Text: Trumping, Tweeting, Trolling by Clay Jones

Due to the recent election results many people are protesting the outcome. Most of the people protesting are minorities who believe that Donald Trump is a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobia, etc. person. A lot of Trump supporters are very outraged at the protesters, they think that the democrats should just accept the election results and deal with it. So while the protests are occurring against Trump, many of his supporters are attacking and intimidating African-Americans, Muslims, and Latinos in the streets, at schools, basically everywhere and anywhere. Clay Jones created this cartoon to address how ironic it was that Trump tweeted that the protests were unfair even though everything they’re protesting for is valid.

            Jones’ purpose was to bring light to the truth behind the protests. He achieves this by using satire and irony. All of the trump supports are sporting some type of racist, anti-Semitic, and violent accessory. Jones draws them this way because this literally what they wear in public. Many Trump supporters walk around with confederate flags and ‘make America ____ again’ shirts. Then Jones portrays the three protesters in the middle as scared for their lives because in reality that’s what they’re doing. Because of the election results and the personalities of many Trump supports a lot of people feel as if once they step outside they could be attacked or even killed.

            Jones’ audience is everybody in America because there’s a large majority of the country that feels as if the protests are unwarranted and he wants to point out to them that they aren’t’, that the people protesting have every right.