Didion In Bed Thoughtful Analysis
Her ethos is her personal experience with the subject as demonstrated in the first paragraph: “Almost every day of every month, between these attacks, I feel the sudden irrational irritation and the flush of blood into the cerebral arteries which tell me that migraine is on its way, and I take certain drugs to avert its arrival. ” She uses exact medical terms such as “Methodologies,” “lysergic acid,” and “synthesized L SD-25” to demonstrate her knowledge and research on the subject. 3. ) Make observations about the remarkable language use in the first paragraph.
Here are a few to get you started, but add a few of your own: “unconscious with pain,” “shameful secret,” “chemical inferiority. ” What does each of these phrases do for the passage? Doing is showing what the majority of people think of migraines by using these words. Most people don’t understand that it is more than a headache, but people think those who suffer from migraines are weak and that it’s something they do to themselves due to “bad attitudes, unpleasant tempers, [and] wrongdoing. ” Doing sort of mocks the general preconceived attitude towards her affliction. . ) What is the intended effect of the parallel structure at the end of the second paragraph? What type of appeal is this? Be specific. Doing utilizes the parallel Truckee to provide specific examples of her struggles with migraines. Doing uses logic to contradicts her statement the when she said “nothing wrong with me at all: I simply had migraine headaches, and migraine headaches were, as everyone who did not have them knew, imaginary’ and then uses the parallel structure to show that migraines are an issue. 5. ) What is the purpose of including Jefferson and Grant?
What about the lengthy paragraph on medical treatments? Jefferson and Grant weren’t weak people who were likely to complain about a “headache. It’s not just a disease that affects weak personality types, so the two men lend credibility to the issue of migraine. The paragraph on medical treatments demonstrates her knowledge of the issue. The medical paragraph lends credibility to Doing, but it also shows that there is no easy cure for migraine; one of the drugs is even a derivative LSI showing that it’s a pretty intense treatment. . ) Comment on the importance of the phrase “ambiguous blessing. ” The blessing is arguable because in the midst of a migraine, the individual suffering the attack would rather die than eave to suffer, but after the attack is over they’re glad they survived. 7. ) Find a logic fallacy in the first full paragraph on the back (HINT: Doing herself is not culpable Of the offense). What is it, and how does it strengthen her argument? The doctor makes an assumption about her condition based on her appearance, specifically her messy hair.
He assumes she must be a compulsive housekeeper because her hair is messy and that all patients with her condition have a specific personality, and he tries to find a way to file her within that personality type. 8. Throughout the essay, why does she refer to it as “migraine” and not “migraines’? Doing is trying to express the seriousness of migraines by stating it by its medical term, much like we call cancer cancer and diabetes diabetes. 9. ) What do you think is the purpose of the final paragraph?
Its purpose is to show that she’s found a silver lining in the pain of a migraine. The migraine is brought on by the small stresses of her everyday life, and every anxiety she has is magnified by the migraine before the pain, but then the pain comes and she has to focus all of her energy on that singular pain. When the pain passes, all of her problems are no longer real problems. The migraine is now a kind of therapy. It brings her life into perspective and while it’s violent in its execution, its still a form of meditation. 0. ) How does she create empathy in the essay? Dingo’s personal experiences bring out the pathos in the passage. Her suffering and struggles are empathic by the reader because Doing is so descriptive of her own experiences with migraines; she makes the reader feel and understand what she is feeling during a migraine. 11. Using Doing to justify your response, explain why a balance of pathos, ethos, and logos creates the most effective arguments.
