I like rhetoric. (For the life of me I didn't know how to incorporate this word in)

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, you could only ever in your wildest dreams have a body so out of proportion that you would fall flat on your face every time you tried to stand up. Well, Jesus Christ Hallelujah! Turn that dream into a reality with the new and improved plastic surgery *For only $9.95 + shipping and handling*! With the technology we have today, everyone can have a "thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist"! (Prager 354).
Exhibit A:

Barbie dolls are basically pink elephants. A human being wouldn't naturally have a Barbie-like figure, like how an elephant wouldn't naturally have pink colored skin, they both are extreme abnormalities. The only difference is that Barbies have been socially accepted (this acceptance is dying as we begin to realize Barbie's strong influence). It's quite interesting that despite Barbie dolls being extremely unnatural, we - at a glance - view them as nothing but ordinary, even natural-looking. In this regard, how do Barbie dolls look normal but pink elephants do not? Barbie dolls have become so popular around the world that we have subconsciously accepted them as the go-to for describing the ideal look for women, even though it's so clearly unrealistic.
Can we really blame Barbie dolls for influencing women across the world to strive to have large breasts and small waists? It seems like the problem lies in us, as a human race, because of the way we define what's hot and what's not. If we, as a society, found pink elephants attractive, wouldn't we strive to genetically engineer pink elephants to our heart's content?

I like rhetoric.

Race? Or Racism?

Is race a socially constructed concept? A social construct is defined as an idea or notion that appears to be natural to people who accept it but may or may not represent reality. Thus, it remains largely an invention of a given society. Race is defined as the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. Even if society has a different idea of race, race will always be the major divisions of humankind based on biological differences. In that sense, race is not a socially constructed idea, as it is not subject to change. Racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race. Racism goes beyond the hard-bordered physical distinction of human beings and tries to differentiate humans by their assumed mental characteristics. Physical characteristics, such as skin color, are not directly linked to mental characteristics, yet society tries to falsely link them together and therefore race becomes a socially constructed concept. An example of this can be seen here, from Maus (p. 50):

The German soldiers couldn't even recognize a German from a Jew, even though they had a "defined" system of distinguishing Jews from other people. The idea of racism is subjective to the core and is inefficient as a means of classifying people. Racism shouldn't be confused with the concise definition of race, which it commonly does in today's society. The assumptions we make about people purely based off their looks should be understood as they are, assumptions.

Maus Analysis

From the day we started reading Maus, I've been captivated by the way Spiegelman combines artwork and narration to describe the past. More than anything, I'm shocked at how much analysis can be done through a single page of a comic book. 

(Example from page 116 of Vol. 2)

Just from just the arrangement and content of the panels above, we can infer that the Vladek is torn apart figuratively and physically by the way the panels literally split him up into different pieces. Throughout the book, Vladek and Artie have shown to be distant, specifically by the smoke that appears to "create a rift between them." This separation is also evident here, as Artie is purposefully excluded from the big picture of Vladek, with text bubbles and a different panel taking Artie's place besides his father. From the words on this page, we know that Vladek's close family members have all passed away, except for his brother, Pinek. To show this, Spiegelman places the picture of the only surviving member in the hands of Vladek, with the photos of the deceased members on the ground. The pictures of the deceased members on the ground also appear to keep their distance away from Vladek, creating a circle around him, possibly to show that the memories of them keep circling around in Vladek's mind. Also, the recurring motif of a cage cell seems to be evident in Vladek's jacket. The jacket could represent a metaphorical "jail" that Vladek puts himself in every time he talks about his past to Artie.

Bird Analysis

Birds have been a recurring symbol for the different attributes of human life in a majority of the pieces of literature we have read about in our years in public education. Kingston uses the motif of birds in "White Tigers", a chapter in "The Warrior Woman", to describe aspects of human life - specifically bravery, dreams, death, and innocence. Bravery is displayed when seven year old Kingston is describing her climb of the mountain. The bird follows her during the climb, where "the brambles tear off [her] shoes and the rocks cut [her] feet and fingers", yet she still remains courageous and perseveres through the hardships, with the bird as her companion throughout the journey (Kingston 20). As the bird flies alongside of Kingston during the climb, the bird can also be interpreted as Kingston's dreams of becoming a bird to literally rise above the obstacles the mountain poses to achieve greatness. Going back to reality, Kingston describes her Fourth Uncle's death, where he is killed by Communists for attempting to catch doves to feed his family. The uncle can represent innocence, as "he's too damned shy is raise his voice" against the Communists, who end up killing him in cold blood (Kingston 51). As seen in other works, such as "To Kill a Mockingbird", the mockingbird shares a very similar symbolic meaning. The mockingbird is considered to be an innocent figure, and to kill a mockingbird is to commit an unforgivable sin. Connecting the two, the Fourth Uncle can represented as a mockingbird.

Uncivilized Disobedience?

In the recent months, Black Lives Matter has become a more pressing movement, but is it still a civil protest or is the friction becoming a catalyst for machine's combustion?

While Thoreau may agree with the basic premise of the movement, he most likely would not be entirely on board with how this movement is solving the issue of racism, as the issue is being solved relatively slowly. The protest group (primarily consisting of black people- who would've guessed?) has been attempting to spread the truth about racism in order to end it, similar to the ongoing "Say No to Drugs" movement. The issue of racism (or any harmful issue) is purely like a machine, as Thoreau states, as the only way to stop the machine is to damage it from the inside, either taking out parts or having the friction of the machine slowly erode itself away. Thoreau would rather see an honest white man (or any other stereotypical racist man for that matter) stand up and strongly advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement (this would be like taking out a gear in the machine of racism, the seemingly "perpetual" mechanism immediately stops working), instead of seeing the victims of the issue attempting to escape from the grasps of injustice. Similar to the topic of abolishing slavery, Thoreau states that if "one Honest man, in the State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold staves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked upon the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America" (Thoreau 1023).