'Rhetorical Analysis Of But I Am'

Improved Essays
White. Black. Gay. Straight. AIDs is a perpetrator blinded from one’s characteristics. However in America, its victims are left to fend for themselves. In the speech “The Whisper of AIDs”, Mary Fischer uses strikingly sentimental rhetoric in order to effectively make the claim that AIDs still persists as an epidemic.

Fisher warrants that politicians simply politicize the disease. She stresses “It does not care whether you are Democrat or Republican; it does not ask whether you are black or white.” By employing personification, politicians evaluate their political approach on AIDs. Where for the average American, the realization of AIDs actuality clarifies many hazy perspectives. The repetition of “Though I am” equalizes all victims by showing how they are one in the same. Fischer convinces Americans that AIDs is relevant within society. She demonstrates that AIDs should not be a political talking point, but a problem that is actively resolved.

Stickler 2
…show more content…
Fischer hits home for many with the statistic, “AIDs is the third leading killer of young adult Americans”. A strong sense of AIDs reality is developed among those who push the issue aside. Fischer offers solid evidence that AIDs has an overarching presents. With the large amount of those AIDs impacts, she makes the average American think on the true meaning of humanity with the rhetorical question “are you human?”. Moral ground is established on the simplicity of human life. As the audience can not help but reflect on the rudimentary aspects of a human, they realize how AIDs is not a mystery. It is real and evident in the lives of

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Jason Hanna, Doug Criss, and Sandee Lamotte’s thesis in their article “Charlie Sheen says he is HIV-positive” depicts the tribulations surrounding Charlie Sheen’s “coming out of the closet” with HIV. The overall effect of the article was successful because the authors' style was compatible to their purpose for the piece. On a different note, could we possibly derive from Charlie Sheen’s attitude that he is not being a pompous greedy man, but, in reality, is advocating that HIV is not the end of the world?…

    • 85 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stephen Strauss’, “Feeding Monsters with our Young” really targets the use of variety in sentence length, emotional appeal, and repetition to emotionally engage his audience. First of all, using a variety of sentence length allows for a better connection with the audience. This correlates with the stories theme, and helps to emphasize on aids not being as bad as society perceives them. Including short sentences like, “What sadness?”(11) brings out the emotional effect within his audience that Stephen Strauss is trying to imply. Next, using a stylistic device like emotional appeal helps to emotionally engage the audience by comparing aids with “Children in the school who were sexually abused by their parents”(14).…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In August of 1992, a speech was given by Mary Fisher called, a Whisper of AIDS. Fisher gave this speech in Houston, Texas and many people witnessed it. During this speech, Fisher elaborates on the topic of AIDS and speaks to her audience about the effects of society’s preconceptions. She uses the construction of parallel structure to show listeners that she wants their attention and focus, personification to amplify the differences between society’s actions and the effects and anaphora to once again reiterate the effects of society. Mary Fisher uses many rhetorical devices and Parallel structure is one.…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the realm of medical anthropology, Julie Livingston’s Improvising Medicine stands as a poignant ethnography that examines the growing cancer crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa from the view of the oncology ward in Princess Marina Hospital (PMH) in Gaborone, Botswana. A professor at New York University, Julie Livingston is a medical historian who combines her training in anthropology and public health to evaluate medicine in Botswana with an emotional analysis, depicting a view of physical suffering in context of the social climate. Her previous work, Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana, analyzed the effect of economic and political development on traditional, medical care practices. This runs parallel with Improvising Medicine as the…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    It was rare for her to have contracted AIDS “because [she] was not a hemophiliac, [she] was not at risk. Because [she] was not gay, [she] was not at risk. Because [she] did not inject drugs, [she] was not at risk” (Fisher 2). However, as she gives evidence of why it was rare for her to contract such a disease, at the same time it also establishes her reliability because she was such a rare case yet she caught the pandemic which gave her the ability to share her experience and educate the public about AIDS and its effects. Furthermore, Fisher uses juxtaposition in order to establish her credibility by ironically admitting that she has the AIDS disease which is typically found in gay males while Fisher is a well-respected, upper-middle-class woman.…

    • 1790 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the movie Dallas Buyer Club the issue with Aids was very much highlighted regarding the ignorance of knowing what it is and how it’s contracted and also the proper treatment not being administered to patients in this era of time. I feel like safe sex in our society is touched on but should be even more encouraged to prevent sexually transmitted diseases such HIV/Aids. Just like then today it’s still cases of HIV/Aids being transmitted through unprotected sex that’s one of the leading causes of sexually transmitted disease are spread. Unprotected sex is a major social issue because so many people in our society still take that risk of not using contraception. Ron Woodroof is the face of many HIV/AIDS suffers today except medication is more accessible and most people today know that HIV is not ‘’homo sexual disease’’ anybody can get it different ways unprotected sex being the most prominent way of becoming a carrier.…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Every individual person in the modern world is innately capable of performing similar duties as everyone else, yet people differ immensely in cultures and beliefs. The levels of advancement and innovation are also unmistakably diverse, leading to certain societies dominating and seizing control over others. Recognizing the causes of these economic and social dissimilarities is crucial in analyzing and attempting to find an approach in dealing with world conflicts. Jared Diamond, an ornithologist, was posed a seemingly simple but very complex question by a local politician named Yali. During a casual conversation, Yali simply asks why the Westerners had already developed so much technology and goods when settling, while the Natives in New Guinea…

    • 1151 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages

    President Barack Obama’s actions have been questioned since the day he took the oath of office. These three articles address the constitutional limitations to his actions on immigration. Each article produces an individual view to the subject, including different tones and opinions, while maintaining objectivity and using rhetoric to convey their ideas. With this specific language, the authors are able to portray their view on the president’s plan in such a way that draws the reader in and allows them to understand different points of view and beliefs on President Obama’s congressional actions. The first article “The Constitutional Authority for Executive Orders on Immigration Is Clear” by Eric Posner sets a clear attack towards opposing…

    • 971 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages

    This paper focuses on an article in the Washington Post titled Why the Supreme Court should rule that violent games are free speech. The author of the article is called Daniel Greenberg and the paper will specifically focus on the way the author has employed a number of writing mechanics in presenting his arguments. Among the things to be highlighted include the way the author present himself as credible as possible. This refers to the use of ethos. The other thing to be seen in this case is the way the author has argued through the use of emotional speech.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages

    shoulders of present and future government, it also has a lot to do with past government officials as well. Kurt Schlichter, a retired army official and professor at an army academy, gives his opinion based on his experience serving our country on the government, and how it effects our obsession with zombies. He goes into detail about how in our history we have had many presidents, like Kennedy, George W. Bush, and now Obama that promise us many things they cannot deliver. These are the some of the most recent presidents, but certainly not all that have done this. He explains that each of them has offered up ideas and proposals that seem to be bullet proof and extraordinary solutions to the problems in our country—yet all of them have fallen short in some way or another.…

    • 1124 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) has taken victim of a multitude of lives in the United States during the 20th century. Many believed that this epidemic was a sign of judgement in relation to the religions they worship. Others viewed this stigma as a curse and that revealing themselves would shame themselves for the rest of their lives. Masami Teraoka is a Japanese-born American artist who began to focus his works on the AIDS epidemic after a close friend’s baby contracted HIV. His artwork, Tale of 1000 Condoms/Geisha and Skeleton, was created in 1989 in the United States.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    We Were Here Film Analysis

    • 1559 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of people witnessed their loved ones dwindle away helplessly. The AIDS disease spread faster than the medical community could maintain, thus creating more pain to engulf the homosexual community. Both videos, We Were Here and The Normal Heart, truly encompassed the heartache and anger which flowed amongst the homosexual and general community. We Were Here is a follow-up documentary which found men and women who lived in San Francisco during the AIDS outbreak and questioned them on how the disease impacted them during that time period. This documentary highlighted the struggles the community went through as they watched the people around them get added to the list of AIDS victims.…

    • 1559 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Age Of Aids Essay

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Age of Aids documentary contained many powerful scenes that expose the severity of aids and the political backlash that came with the issue of this new disease. One scene that particularly stuck out to me was a speech by Jerry Falwell who said “I believe when one breaks the laws of nature and the laws or moral decency and i do believe that homosexuality is moral perversion. when we go against nature and god of course is the creator of nature we therefore pay the prices for that.” Bumper stickers that read “ AIDS: it’s killing all the right people” were on cars indicating that government officials and citizens of USA believed that homosexuals deserved to die. The lack of acceptance towards the gay community delayed the scientific research going towards curing AIDS and HIV as the majority of the population believed it was a gay and IV drug-using related disease and had no sympathy to help cure the disease for those who “went against nature.”…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Including subjective language in addition to the medical objective jargon during patient encounters will help reduce the strict biomedical stance on the illness. In addition to this, modified attitudes toward AIDS patients can lead to improved health services to them. This can be solved by including education during training for healthcare professionals on the health implications of the stigma and how they can address them in a professional setting. It may be beneficial to create scenarios during healthcare training that depict interaction with an HIV/AIDS patient. As stated previously, another solution would be the incorporation of cross-disciplinary perspectives to foster a shared understanding of the broader policies needed to see the end…

    • 1492 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book Rose’s Story, I learned how endurance, ignorance and lack of communication have resulted to a public stigma. Rose is a strong woman who had faith in all her trial that she faced as a child and adult. She knew what she went through and did not want her children to go the through the same process. She worked hard even in her critical condition of her illness. Her motherly love for her children was so passionate that she wanted to have a good background of an upbringing for them.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays