"The Devil Baby at Hull-House"

Jane Addams, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and celebrated philanthropist wrote The Devil Baby at Hull-House in 1916 during her time operating the Chicago located Hull-House. This “settlement house” was essentially a halfway house for struggling, low-income women. The house attracted many struggling mothers, and in 1916 it was rumored that one had given birth to a deformed Devil-Baby. While completely false, the tale attracted much attention from the surrounding population, especially women. What followed from Addams’s observations of these women became the topic of The Devil Baby at Hull-House. Addams analyzed the various women that made their way to see the Devil-Baby, ultimately surmising that there was an underlying motivation for the women’s curiosity. Addams made the revelation the women’s fixation wasn’t purely curiosity; instead it was born of a desire to find meaning in anomalous events in order to cope with conventional woes. As she explores this concept, Addams writes “all human vicissitudes are in the end melted down into reminiscence, and that a metaphorical statement of those profound experiences which are implicit in human nature itself, however crude in form the story may be, has a singular power of healing the distracted spirit” (Addams 15).  Thus, Addams’s purpose of informing the reader to this revelation is evident as she argues that humans seek meaning in the metaphorical (the Devil Baby) in order to heal their spirits.  Addams relays this to the reader by using the rhetorical mode of classification and division. After describing the circumstances surrounding the Devil-Baby, Addams begins to classify the visiting women. She contends that there are three types of women visiting the baby: old, sage-like women who have lived long sad lives; women hoping to instill fear in their husbands through tales of the Devil-Baby; and failed mothers who can relate to the sadness of a lost child. Despite their obvious differences, Addams asserts that these women share the same motive: they hope to find peace through interpreting that which they cannot understand. Through this classification, Addams relays to the audience of assumedly other women her argument, thus achieving her intended goal.

The Women of Hull-House
The various women who came and went to Hull-House provide an interesting look into the sociology of females. (Via voicesinwartime.org)

"Pamplona in July"

Written in 1923 for the Toronto Star Weekly, Ernest Hemingway’s Pamplona in July is a soberingly simple account of Hemingway’s brief time in the 1920s spent in Pamplona, Spain, where he witnessed the famous Festival of San Fermin bullfights. Known for his brevity in writing, the celebrated writer of classics such as A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea writes with a matter-of-fact, uncomplicated style that serves well the seamless picture that he paints in Pamplona. He takes the reader on an effortless trip through timeless Pamplona, recounting in successive fashion the events he encounters. He and his wife are strangers to Pamplona’s World Series of Bullfighting. Hemingway describes the colorful and foreign (to him) customs he encounters: the famous running of the bulls to the colorful Basque Riau Riau dances. The affairs build until the culminating event: a riveting and graceful bullfight won by the champion matador, Algabeno. Through his writing, Hemingway attempts to entertain the reader while constructing an image of distant exoticism in Pamplona. His writing aims to transport the reader to a dreamy, far-away land that is far from the tedium of the reader’s assumedly ordinary life. In order to convey this to the audience, who would likely be Americans seeking respite from their ordinary lives, Hemingway utilizes various types of rhetoric, including prevalent use of imagery. He appeals to the reader’s sense of sight as he recounts the vivid images of Pamplona, saying “The cafes under the wide arcades that run around the Plaza de la Constitucion have every table crowded, the tall Pilgrim Father sombreros of Andalusia sitting over the sane table with straw hats from Madrid and the flat blue Basque caps of Navarre and the Basque country” (Hemingway 2). Hemingway’s detailed, yet still somewhat terse descriptions facilitate the reader’s ability to visualize Pamplona, thus effectively developing his purpose of transporting the reader to distant Pamplona.

Fiesta de San Fermin, Pamplona
Pamplona's colorful backdrop provides the perfect setting for Hemingway's descriptive narrative. (via Associated Foreign Press)

"The Crack Up"

Many readers associate the name F. Scott Fitzgerald with his life's most beloved work–The Great Gatsby. However, in stark contrast to that Jazz Age drama, his essay The Crack-Up (written in 1936 and featured in Esquire magazine) deals with a much less magnificent topic: midlife crisis. Although somewhat of a generalizing phrase, Fitzgerald's essay can be understood as simply that: an existential crisis catalyzed by the time-transcending buzz-kill of age. In the essay, Fitzgerald chronicles his personal "crack-up": a loss of self-identity leading into a spiral of declining self worth. The reader is led through Fitzgerald’s psychological journey: feigned direction in life; the sudden realization that all stability in his life is a façade; the black depression that follows as he realizes he has lost trajectory in life; and finally, tentative acceptance of an existence that is far from ideal. Throughout this journey, the reader is uncertain as to what the author’s purpose is. Fitzgerald’s account is highly personal, and seems to lack any objective in its narrative. However, if the reader persists on through Fitzgerald’s melancholy trek, they are rewarded with a bitter-sweet resolution and purpose. Fitzgerald resolves that, in order to bring himself from the grip of depression, he must accept that he is not as relevant as he once thought he was; and that he must reserve himself to the role of jaded miser in order to salvage his ability to function in society. Thus, through informing the reader on the topic of gradual depression–or “Cracking up”–Fitzgerald is able to prove his point that life manages to creak on, even when all seems lost. In order to make this point, Fitzgerald employs various types of rhetoric, but most prevalently an extended metaphor involving a cracked plate. He compares a person’s depressive breakdown to the cracking of a plate. Like the cracking of a plate, depression can happen slowly over time until it consumes a person. But also like a cracked plate, a person can be repurposed, though not to their former glory, thus connecting to the author’s argument that a “crack-up” isn’t the end.

Fitzgerald Cracks Up
Like these plates, Fitzgerald is cracked–not broken. (photo credit Tamara Maynes)