Ani DiFranco’s poem “Self Evident” is a politically provocative work to say the least. The speaker fights the status quo of what our culture thinks about 9/11 and its repercussions. The speaker of the poem seemed to be someone who was in obvious anger over how America perceives the events of the infamous day. The speaker is someone who strongly believes that Americans are being fed some type of propaganda from the media and the government in order to satisfy its hunger for retribution on other nations. It’s like the creator sees mainstream America as slaves to our newscasters and presidents.
I think this poem mainly appeals to Americans that don’t have strong ties with one of three things: the formal news media, George Bush, or the democracy of the time. People that were Republicans for instance were probably pissed-off by the poem; the speaker was just so direct by saying that the election was a phony and that George Bush isn’t president. The speaker would mostly appeal to Liberals and people in the middle of the political road the best. I think that the speaker is trying to get these people to feel angry and to take a stand against the supposed deceptions behind the media and the government about terrorism. I think the main reason for this stand is to get our troops out of Iraq and to not allow us to be fooled by “the man”.
The speaker at least uses two of the rhetorical appeals in the poem. Logos is displayed when the speaker uses facts about September 11th. The poem as a whole appeals to pathos because most people get emotional when you just mention 9/11. There might be some ethos in there somewhere but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know if it’s effective or not. I mean, it’s nothing like we haven’t heard about this topic a thousand times before since 9/11. I bet this poem was made shortly after that day because then it would be effective many times over. The very fact that I’m reading this poem instead of hearing it probably dictates my view of it not be as effective as it could be. Hearing the voice of the speaker would help me truly gauge how he/she feels (I say “he” because the speaker might be male; the poem doesn’t specify).
This analysis compares to the other exercises in class for several reasons. Firstly, it was political. Secondly, I kept asking “why” when I was reading the poem to help with my own analysis. Thirdly, I found different elements of the poem that demonstrated two different types of rhetoric.
*NOTE: Sorry for using the term “The speaker” over and over. It’s just hard to find a decent pronoun for that.
Your post was very insightful. As I was reading, I found myself agreeing with a lot of the comments you made regarding the poem. I felt that DiFranco was trynig to get the American people to realize exactly what the government was telling them. I found our responses to be fairly similar regarding the rhetoric. I also felt that she had a lot of pathos in the poem, considering she was dealing with a very emotional topic.
ReplyDeleteGood work.
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