Author: fgschueler6

Analysis Chapter 2

/ fgschueler6 / 1 Comment

In the following I’m going to analyse Arnold`s feelings and emotions in the chapter “Why chicken means so much to me” and explain his emotional conditions. In this connection I will look closer at his language and the stylistic devices used in the text.

It’s very obvious that especially in this chapter Arnold uses a lot a of repetitions to stress his statements and to make them memorably. For example on page 17, ll. 8-10: “[…], but I’m really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane indian Reservation.”. This shows that he is not happy about being poor because he connects “poor” with “ass”, which is a negative word.

This thought gets more clear in the following of the Chapter, where he tells us about the fate of his dog Oscar, who was very important to him. This is shown with the enumaration on page 19, ll. 12-14. But one day Ocar got sick . Arnold makes use of the repetition/ anaphora “Nothing.Nothing.Nothing” (p.20), which demonstrates how desperate and hopeless he was because he couldn’t do anything to save the life of his dog. The next anaphora expresses his anger towards his dad ( p21, ll. 8-10: “I wanted to […].I wanted to […].I wanted to […]”), because he decided to end the suffer of Oscar by shooting him. But he says that he knows that he can’t blame his parents. In this context he makes use of the methaphor “[…]my mother and my father are the twin suns around which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them.”and the concurrent exaggeration “EXPLODE” to stress the relevance of his parents for him. As he said they are as important for him as the sun, because just like nobody and nothing could live/survive without the sun, Arnold could not live without his parents. Another aspect needed to be focused on is the fact that the most used word in this chapter is “poor” ( almost in every page) -because it’t the main topic-,connected with a lot of negative and agressive words like “hate” (p.21), “blame” (p.21), “pain”(p.24) , “nothing”, “cry” etc., to  produce a bad emotion, so the reader is forced to associate a negative feeling with the word  “poor”. But there are still some postive words like “(to) dream” (p.21) and “believe”, “trust”  and “love”, to show that there is still hope left.

 

Comment

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This comment is about, whether I believe that Arnold could become rich and famous or if his disabilities are a problem for him. I am going to state pro and con arguments and present my own opinion.

An argument which pleads for the con side is that especially physical handicapped people often have problems by getting treated equally, because our society has a specific association with those human beings. We often tend to think that we are able to achieve things in a better and easier way than disabled people which is in my opinion a wrong way of thinking. Isn’t it our task to show those people that they can do things as good as we can? But as always there are folks who do not share those views. To feel more powerful or sometimes to be funny they prefer to bully people who are weaker than they are.  So I think that not necessarily the disabilities are a problem for people like Arnold to become rich and famous,  it’s us, the society and people who are making their lives harder than it already is.

So one of the main argument which supports the pro side is also that just because you are disabled in some way it doesn’t have to influence your strength. Even if you can’t walk, you’re still able to for example play basketball, which you can see on the Paralympics. Another aspect is that there many famous people with disabilities who have become very successful and rich by doing the things they were good about. Look at Steven Hawking (ALS) or Ludwig Van Beethoven (deaf) So why shouldn’t someone like Arnold also be able to get success by drawing cartoons. The most important thing is that those people have to be more ambitious because their disabilities can make their lives harder than the ones of people without. But I think that everything is possible, if you only work hard enough and have the right attitude.

So in my opinion Arnold could become rich and famous, because he has a talent for drawing and being funny. He only needs to focus on his dream, work hard for it and not let himself get “knocked”.