Week 5 Reading Response, Akosua Omari-Dottoh

1.An example of ethos in my essay is, “ As I’ve lived in the US all my life, I never allowed myself to feel ashamed for being black…. However, when it came to my African side, I never portrayed that same proudness, I ostracized myself from my own African community.” In this quote I prove my credibility to talk about this topic, being both African and Black American. I show pathos when I say, “ I felt trepidation that that lost feeling made me do to myself what I feared others would do to me.” This sentence uses emotion to move the reader and show the reader how I felt in the moment. Finally I show logos when saying, “Black Americans are already discriminated against and treated badly in this country. Having to accept that they are too African is something that is too difficult for the majority, especially Black men.” This sentence uses facts as an introduction to the insight on why Black Americans feel the need sometimes to treat Africans differently.

2.This image is a visual representation of the phrase “ you got the whole world in your hands.” The image depicts a woman in traditional hospital/nurse attire, holding a globe of the world in her hand. The globe is surrounded by rope and gives the earth a trapped/restricted look. The woman is wearing a mask but shows quietude as she stands in the middle of a lake with a hazed view of a waterfall/rainforest in the background. This image was published on May 24th, 2020, in the midst of the COVID outbreak. This goes to tell us that the purpose of this image is to depict how at the time the world was essentially in the hands of these hospital workers, as they were overwhelmed by the immense scale of COVID clients they had to encounter and care for. The woman is presented as relaxed and that is to show that she believes she can handle it , she doesn’t show any sign of fear or worry. This is to represent that the workers that felt at this time that the world was literally in their hands, were indeed capable to take on this responsibility. This image is to tell those workers that it will be okay, they can do this.

3.While doing this summary I noticed that I had an urge to over summarize and not give enough analysis. While I was writing I felt like I lacked deep thinking and slowly realized that I wasn’t interpreting the image myself, and decided shortly after to try and do that. I also realized that it was harder than I would have thought to create a new insight and interpretation, like Blankenship suggested, because I felt like anyone who would look at this image would draw the same conclusion I did. I just realized I didn’t ask the reader any questions which is something I definitely want to do next time.