Tow #13 Visual Text

For this Text of the Week, the Timberland shoe company has created a poster to persuade their audience into purchasing their running shoes by using pathos and juxtaposition. Usually Timberland is known for their working boots, not their running shoes, so this is very interesting that they’re producing running shoes. To start off, the poster has a brown bear, a wolf, and a human being, all of which are showing their teeth in an aggressive manner. With humans, wolves, and bears being different, mainly because they’re all different species, it’s hard to see the similarities. Somehow Timberland was able to capture a moment when all three species are displaying the same facial expression. By using juxtaposition, the human is being compared to a strong independent wolf and a big muscular and fast brown bear. By having the three species together in this order and reserve, the positive and courageous characteristics of each are being applied to the other species. Now by Timberland having their audience, mainly runners and other individuals looking for popular footwear, they can provide this confident and individualistic persona for their target market to flaunt with pride. Another interesting and effective text that is incorporated into this poster, is the quote, “If you’re not fast, you’re food”, this being directly under a picture of a brown bear and wolf. Now that you don’t have the Timberland running shoes, you’ll be hiking or jogging and a bear/wolf will eat you because you can’t run outrun the ultimate predators of the woods. Now this is directly towards the viewer's feelings, since no one wants to be eaten by an animal, it makes a person feel inferior. As some humans now feel inferior because of the text, they will have to purchase these shoes due to the fact that they want to be better than a four legged animal. Which is another reason why they were so successful in their running shoes sales. As a runner myself, I found this poster to be very convincing and would definitely consider purchasing the shoe.

Tow #12 IRB

For this Text Of The Week, I am going to go into detail about the boring yet somehow and somewhat interesting book, How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. Before you raise an eyebrow or two and question why an oxymoron describes this fiction book, let me give you a taste of the book. In the beginning, Jonathan brings the reader along the hard times during in adulthood life, zooming in on his father in particular. His father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and it was tremendously affecting Jon's mother and the rest of his family. With the sad details of how his father’s last days were spent as he aged back down to a baby, I had been pulled into the book and was gripping onto the edge of my seat with the plot building slowly and the details only getting denser. That was the first chapter. The next chapter consisted of nothing but Jonathan contemplating whether or not to write another book while he was laying down on a couch surrounded by food and television Not only was this chapter boring, it lacked the small details that he had presented in the previous chapter. Where was the motivation? Why wasn't he describing how his pen glided across the paper as his creative mind exploded with ideas? These questions flew through my mind as I read page after page, the content just not improving after each flip. The content had its ups and downs, at some points being so boring to me that it eventually became a hassle to read. Pushing through those hard-to-read-chapters, I began to notice the author's purpose. With the sophisticated diction, dense detail, and his anecdotes, I realize how the book highlighted the struggles of the author, his successes, and the times where he questioned himself. Although not fully done the book, the boringness of the content is going away and my interest is being pulled back in.