The second essay I read was Corn-Pone Opinions by Mark Twain. Mark Twain is a pseudonym of
Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Clemens was an journalist, humorist, and novelist who
is one of America’s most beloved writers. Twain wrote this essay with the
objective to inform people of his position that peoples actions and thoughts
are greatly impacted by others. Twain believes that your opinion is not formed
on your own it is formed by the general publics opinions. He disagrees that
people can make their own independent opinion with no effect from the public.
However his tone throughout the essay was not harsh or scolding, it was
interested and curious. He establishes this disagreement slightly disagreeing
with Jerry’s beliefs. Twain used an anecdote of a black slave that preached to
him. This successfully introduced his argument in a compelling way. The
anecdote also leads him to establish what his belief is and what he’ll be
talking about. Later in the essay he uses many relevant modern examples
including hoopskirts, bloomers, and wineglasses. By doing this he is appealing
to logos. At the end of the essay he capitalizes “Voice of God” which
personifies it and incorporates it to make his point. Twain also uses the
subordinate clause in the middle of Paragraph 13 to further prove his argument
by giving many examples. By the end of the essay Twain solidly established his
position on the public impacting individual decisions and actions. In the
beginning of the essay he used “I” to make it clear it was his opinion. Later,
he started using “we” for example, “we are creatures of outside influences”. He
refers to everyone as a group in order to prove his point. Twains audience in
this essay is very broad. He directs his essay to the general public hoping to
inform them of his beliefs. Although his audience is not very specific, the
essay wasn’t released until after his death.
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| Title: Media Influence Media is only one of the things that can influence your opinions. In this photo the different types of media are trying to persuade and influence the man. Source |
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