M.a. Cuddi

The image above is a post 9/11 campaign in New York City, “If you see something, say something,” was a response to the 2001 World Trade Center attack. The poster above can be found in New York city’s areas of public transportation, like train stations, bus stops, and  airports. The legitimacy of the campaign is done through the incorporation of official government  agencies and departments logos, including New York City Department and Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The advertisement suggests the appropriate steps for an individual to take if ever encountered with a suspicious unattended package. The “If you see something, say something,” campaign originally began in New York City, but since has expanded to other metropolitan cities like Washington D.C.  The expansion of the campaign can be accredited to many reasons, but I believe two main reasons is the rise of domestic terrorism and the effective use of epistrophe in the slogan, ” If you see something, say something” the repetition of “something” is effective because it is clear to the public anything that seems out of place can be viewed with suspicion, which is also enforced by the image which illustrates a black bag sitting unattened.  Also, the slogan is short, striking, and a memorable phrase has been an effective way for addressing terrorism in the NYC tri-state area, which has caught in other respective metropolitan areas for the risk of a potential attack.  

Part I

The image is calling for an individual using the restroom to be aware this particular restroom is available for everyone regardless of their gender identity.  The sign is thanking everyone for making it an inclusive environment, and then goes into instructions on how an individual can enhance a sense of safety and security. The image is sponsored by American University’s Housing & Dining Programs demonstrating the university’s stance is in favor of providing all inclusive bathrooms to those who’s gender identity may not align with their physical gender.

Part II

The root of the sentence is: Bathroom available for everyone.  A few key terms that stand out are: inclusive, different, lock, and gender identity.  In response to North Carolina legalizing students in state schools to use the bathroom corresponding  with the gender recorded on their birth certificates, and Georgia protecting “religious liberty” by allowing faith-based groups to deny services to LGBT individuals. After North Carolina’s law, gender identity because a hot button topic, and many states and institutions responded with establishing all inclusive restrooms, like the one you see above.

Nobel prize laureate in literature, Samuel Beckett, mentions failure as an inevitable component in improving in his work “Worstward Ho!”. In it Beckett writes,“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”; the significance of this paragraph is because Beckett conveys an unusual message is often not accredited to failure. The paragraph promote tenacity, and Beckett does not allow failure to derail an individual from pursuing or trying again. On the contrary, Beckett encourages an individual to keep on pursuing by placing a positive connotation to failure, by humanizing it. For instance, his use of anaphora, “Ever tried. Ever failed.”, places emphasis on both “tried” and “failed”, later used as an anaphora in the last three sentences. Use of the period in this entire paragraph is being used as a tool in emphasizing a statement, as if there is no room for questioning. Perhaps, the simple structure must with the topic of the paragraph that failure is as simple and normal as his simple sentence structure. However, I do believe Beckett strategically chose to use simple sentence structure over commas, exclamation point, question marks, or other forms of punctuation as a strategic move on his behalf. For instance, if he placed two question marks for the first two sentences and exclamation points for each sentence would drastically transform the paragraphs’ relationship to “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter! Try again! Fail again! Fail better! “. The transformed sentence is no longer emphasizing the first two sentences as  statement, but  now changes the relationship of simple structure to a rhetorical one, and it is followed by commands that are expressed through exclamation points.  Both simple and rhetorical/ exclaiming structures assume the author’s audience has tried and failed, but the transformed version demands and pressures his audience, unlike the simple structure which simply states the entire phrase as a truth.

If the formatting was in DC, IC form the relationship and meaning of the sentence would look a bit like, “Ever tried, ever failed, but no matter try again, fail again, and fail better.” Frankly Beckett’s original version offers a sense of emphasis where it is needed, and it perhaps more effective in conveying his message of normalizing failure because it does not question or demand anything of his audience. His message has lived on since his publishing “Worstward Ho!”  in 1983, and has transcended into different electronic social media platforms creating the hashtag, #Failbetter, which I would be inclined to argue would have not caught on if Beckett placed exclamation points at the end of his two sentences, because individuals attempting to improve a lifestyle don’t want to feel like they are being told to do so. The father of successful failures and failing better was strategic in being conscious of his audience, and understood improving or modifying a particular behavior is to be empathetic rather than be demanding. The phrase has had such an impact that there was a FAIL BIG event on March 28th, where fail tales were drawn from artists, musicians, and scientists social media platforms. Some food for thought: if Beckett would have not used simple structure, would the lives it has impacted thus far be Vietcong failure with a positive connotation.

The image above illustrates an elementary’s school poster board on “How To Save Paper.” Ironically the school demonstrates “How To Save Paper” by using paper a 10′ x 8′ sheet of paper for each letter in the title, which totals to 14 pieces of paper. Below the title, there are descriptions essentially describing how to save paper by recycling. For instance, one states ” A way to save paper is to reduce, reuse, recycle .” The list at the end of the sentence effectively applies alliteration to emphasize on “How to save paper,” and the omission of a conjunction between  reuse and recycle allows the phrase to easily flow, allowing individuals to easily remember on how to save paper.

To place recycling paper into context it began in the late 17th century when the Rittenhouse Mill in Philadelphia opened and began recycling linen and cotton rags. The paper produced from these materials was sold to printers for use in Bibles and newspapers.