Family Values In Society and Addiction as a Relationship In this assignment, you will use the ideas you worked on earlier this week to craft your analysis essay.
Write a rough draft of your analysis essay that evaluates a specific concept (such as community, family, or freedom).
Use the guidelines shown in Chapters 5 and 6 to develop your ideas and shape your essay.
You should include 3-5 outside resources in your assignment.
The assignment should be three to four pages in length.
Analysis involves investigating particular parts, elements, or ideas within the whole. If we were to analyze an object, we might take it apart and look
inside. We might, for instance, analyze a computer by opening the case and looking at the internal wires, the cards, and the connections. But when examining
a concept, we cannot take off its cover and sim-ply look inside— at least, not physically. Instead, we have to depend on intellectual inquiry. Rather than
physical tools ( screwdrivers or wrenches), we have to develop questions that get inside the abstraction. We have to ask questions that point to the
particular elements of the concept.
Family Values In Society and Addiction as a Relationship
And the more particular we get, the more we’re apt to discover. In other words, if we should try to understand the
concept in the most narrow terms possible. For example, consider col-lege. To analyze the concept, we must break it down and look at particular issues: What does college suggest for people’s lives? Is it a time and place for learning specific skills or for exploring boundless ideas? Is it a place for making
choices or for generating options? Such questions are analytical; they help to shed light on specific issues inside the broader, more following Invention
Questions to break it down: * Specifically, how does your chosen concept influence or change people’s lives? *What particular emotions, behaviors, or ideas
are associated with it? * What hidden role does it play in everyday life? * Are there complexities to the concept that people overlook?
Creating Intensity Analysis requires intellectual commitment from both readers and writers. When writers intensify their voices, they bring readers into
that commitment. But what does it mean to intensify a voice? What does it mean to make the voice you’ve fashioned into something more engaging and insistent? What features create intensity? The following Cameron Johnson passage insists that the reader pay attention.
Family Values In Society and Addiction as a Relationship
Johnson creates intensity with repetition parenthetical phrases, and word choice: But such an image leaves an impression. It resonates with our songs (“. . . purple mountains’ majesty . . .”);
it appeals to our longing for escape; it captures our desire for solitude and security; it fits into our drive to scoff at nature. And when such imagery
pounds the average citizen relentlessly, it begins to reside in the consciousness. It becomes familiar. Even though most Americans will never see the top of
a mountain or careen down a cliff ( on purpose), they can buy ( into) the vehicle attached to the impression. What if Johnson’s passage were slightly
different? Notice how the subtle changes in the following passage influence the voice: But such an image leaves an impression. Even if you think it does not, it does. The image resonates with common songs (“. . . purple mountains’ majesty . . .”); it appeals to the longing for escape and captures the desire for
solitude and security. Also, such an image supports the idea that we are not slowed down by the perils of nature. When such an image consistently shows up in
our magazines and television screens, it begins to take over the consciousness and create familiarity. Even though most Americans will never see the top of
a mountain or drive down a cliff in a truck, they can buy the vehicle attached to the impression. Not all passages in an essay can be intense. Some passages,
even in the most ferocious and passionate essays, are more relaxed. They let the reader move along without a fierce intellectual commitment and build a
foundation of thought. In the following passage from her essay “ Addiction as a Relationship,” Jean Kilbourne analyzes the relationship between alcoholism and alcohol advertising: An important part of the denial so necessary to maintain alcoholism or any other addiction is the belief that one’s alcohol use isn’t affecting one’s relationships.
Family Values In Society and Addiction as a Relationship
The truth, of course, is that addictions shatter relationships. Ads like the one for B and B ( a brand of alcohol) help
support the denial and go one step further by telling us that the alcohol is, in fact, an enhancement to relationships. While this passage is direct, clean,
and highly analytical, it is not necessarily insistent. But notice the next paragraph in Kilbourne’s essay. Something changes: “ In life, there are many
loves, but one Grande Passion,” says an ad featuring a couple in a passionate embrace. Is the passion enhanced by the liqueur or is the passion for the
liqueur? For many years I described my drinking as a love affair, joking that Jack Daniels was my most constant lover. Kilbourne’s voice changes pitch. It
invites us to ask questions, to enter her life. It becomes slightly more informal and intimate. ( But it is no less analytical.) Because reading ( like all
tulle and p, an ebb and flow of consciousness, these subtle changes in pitch help make Kilbourne’s writing seem more intense human activity) depends on ag and p, ullan ebb and flow of consciousness, these subtle changes in pitch help make Kilbourne’s writing seems more intense
and alive.
