Rhetorical Situations - Narratives

2. Lydia Questions Similarities and differences:

• The main point we all gathered was to illustrate the hardships people faced at a closer, more personal level. She uses a specific example of a woman’s own story to make a disasters as large as hurricane Katrina and Rita seem real at an individual and personal example. It’s easy to get lost in an event so large and forget about all the small factors, all the small people actually affected by the situation.
• The perspective of the narrative as a whole is first person through Brideau. However, when she tells the story about Lydia, she changes to third person. This is because she is recounting the story told by Lydia, it isn’t a direct telling by her. After the story passes, the perspective shifts back to Brideau’s first person.
• Given that we all read the same story, and with more or less the same around of background information on the topic at hand, our conclusions were all parallel to one another.

3. Connections between Chapter 2 and “Lydia’s Story” related to rhetoric:

• The genre Brideau chooses is a narrative. She also carefully writes to accommodate for the audience that she assumes will be reading her piece. The tone helps to project the main idea in the story: the deeper and more personal suffering and survival of individuals in the aftermath of the two hurricanes. The main idea is also a direct link to the purpose of the narrative: which is also to highlight the personal stories of people after the hurricanes.
• The tone of a narrative often has the objective to capture its readers at an emotional level.
• We are able to see the rhetorical guidelines said in Chapter two in Lydia’s Story. These examples help us better understand rhetorical situations in our own writing.
 

7. The general synopsis of our discussion was that we hear small narratives every day. We also hear stories in songs as long as we are listening to the lyrics. Some songs are literally narratives, that are written in a creative rhythmic manner. In our discussions with parents or friends, we constantly hear about their days or an exciting thing that has happened to them recently. We may not always draw meaning from the narratives, but if we listen with intent, we can understand the situation.

10. We were able to conclude that in this particular case, the videos were more powerful than the text, this was because it gives the viewer the ability to see the person's face, their tone, etc. An addition in the form of dramatic music draws the audience into an emotional state and uses it to the story's advantage.

12. Compare Narratives:YouTube Short Film vs. News Article (written version of short film)

Similarities: They both tell a sequence of events, both have characters, plot and setting, they both have a climax or point to the story.

Differences: One uses music to illustrate the intensity of the situation at hand, where as on the contrary, this is extremely difficult to do in a news article due to the brief nature of them.

Effect of the Medium: The video allows the reader to relax and enjoy watching while still gathering the context of the story entirely. Small details that make writing come alive are often overlooked and therefore in general writing (in this case) is less effective.

Summary: We compared a video to a written news article. We concluded that they both have many good aspects in their effectiveness of telling a story.