Sams Song Analysis

Audience: People who are interested in travel

Purpose: To portray a picture of where they are

Pathos: makes you want to go there
Ethos: They have traveled there, becoming more of an expert than most
Logos: -

Momaday

N. Scott Momaday's target audience is the" white man" who may not have the same grasp on the spiritual aspects of the land and experiences with the land. I feel that this can include todays hunters. In our day and age hunting has become a sport more than anything. To Momaday, hunting was for survival and in a way out of respect for Mother Earth. He took the bisons life but at the same time honors the it for helping him. Momaday is also talking about the ideas of earth being our mother and the sky being our father. That comparison is particularly effective because when we are children those are the people that provide for and take care of us. His goal is to make this realization set in so that we may have the same respect for Mother Earth and Father Sky as we do for our family. One of the strongest peices of this work is the vocabulary used. The words chosen are extremely powerful and descriptive giving the reader an incredible visual of the wold he is talking about.

Symposium

I forgot my phone to take a picture of Patricia speaking, but I felt that this picture was relevant because of the mention of the picture her husband showed her. That picture was of a dog on a power line because of the high water levels. She said that she normally didn't really understand animal people, however, this picture made her realize that some people consider their pets part of the family. I have a definite soft spot for animals, (I sometimes still cry when the dogs die in movies), thusly the passage about Luther B. was one of my favorites. Hearing her read the passages gave me a much better comprehension of what she was trying to convey. In retrospect I was reading the poems with a completely different rhythm and tone in certain cases. One of my favorite parts was her opening poem dedicated to the 5th grade class that she taught. This made me respect her on a more personal level, because it showed a little bit of her character. The poem itself also reminded me of how when I was younger I wanted to be able to express myself, and get the same joy from poems that other people did. Unfortunately, I was neither able to fully gain the ability to write poetry, nor an adequate appreciation of it. Listening to Patricia Smith present her own poetry actually gave me a much deeper appreciation of this book, and kept my interest entirely.