1.) I thought by the end of the profile, the author had given enough background information to illustrate why Alewitz was the natural choice. The profile highlights his background as a worker, activist, and proponent for education which gives him a lot of life experience to pull from when creating murals. The profiler also states "Everything under the sun is suitable for reworking as an Alewitz image". It seems Alewitz is able to sympathize and create a mural for many types of situations. I think this makes him an effective muralist because he is not stuck solely in his own experiences, but applies what he has learned from them to many different situations which might not directly correlate. I think the profiler does a good job portraying this when describing several specific murals Alewitz had painted. They deal with a variety of subjects but are linked by key characteristics like working conditions and education.
The effect of letting the question of why Alewitz was the natural choice challenges readers to decide on their own if the statement is accurate. We spend the rest of the profile gathering evidence for each side of the argument. In that sense it is an effective technique in making the audience read more closely and also prompting the readers to have their own opinions.
Overall, I did not like how the author posed that question at the beginning. The profile never referred back to that beginning mural of Cesar Chavez. Perhaps that was deliberate so that readers had to make conclusions on their own of whether he was the natural choice, but to me it seemed like setting up a question and never getting around to answer it.
2.) First off, I should admit I am not totally sure what the question is referring to as a "dominant impression", but I am taking it to mean that the profile creates a strong, defined perspective of who Alewitz is as a muralist. With that being said, I didn't feel like the profile created a dominant expression of Alewitz. I felt the profile wasn't always cohesive and often I wondered how we had gotten from one topic to another. In particular, I did not understand or like the flow in paragraphs 7 through 10. It goes from discussing the places/movements Alewitz had covered to his artistic inspirations to the process of making a mural. Without the annotations I don't know if I would have fully understood the profiler's thought process moving through those few paragraphs. I felt that because I was sometimes questioning the structure of the profile instead of focussing on how it applied to Aleqitz, it took away from his "dominant impression".
3.) Buhle evaluates Alewitz's murals as reminders to citizens that they must play an active role in the education and furthering of themselves while also having pride in what they do. I think the profile did prepare readers to understand this because it explained several specific murals and thus gave lots of people ways to identify with them. There was the Chavez mural in Oxnard, the food worker one in Austin, and the civil rights one in New Market. Each of these had different purposes and concerns being depicted, but shared Buhle's evaluation of what Alewitz's murals "boldly insist".
I liked the way you responded to the first question; though I disagree with the idea that he answered the question. That being said, your reasoning was good, and I think it was an accurate description of what the author was seeking to accomplish. I also believe that you are correct that we spend the rest of the essay trying to respond to it, but I think that it isn’t at all effective. I believe that we seek to answer the question, and he really doesn’t give us any response at all to it- we are just left hanging, wanting to answer the question, but he seems to have forgotten it immediately after opening his essay with this question. I agree that it was not a good way to open an essay.
ReplyDeleteThe dominant impression was referring to the “point of view” the author holds, I believe. It is stated directly before the profile itself, though I’m confused about it myself. It seems like a strange way of referring to the concept. You answered this question in a very different way than I did, and I wonder if I didn’t understand it correctly. I agreed with everything you said as a response in this question, though, and agree that the cohesion in this essay was lost on me.
I didn’t particularly agree with or understand your response to the final question. I think it would have made more sense if you directly addressed the sentence a little more? I got kind of confused with what you were trying to say. Overall, I think you did quite well.