Rhetoric-in-Practice Essay

To be honest, I had no idea what I should create for my RIP project. Therefore, I tried to focus on what message I want to share with my audiences and relates with the theme we study in 39B. Post-apocalyptic literature is one of the genre we contacted with this quarter, but from my perspective, what attracted me most in the post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven written by Emily St. John Mandel was not its genre but its text and pathos. Its thought-provoking content and warm feeling style in a tough context are really inspirable to me. Therefore, I decided to write something related to the theme of the book itself instead of its genre, and the thing that resonated me most in this book is that Miranda uses art as a way to escape from the life she hates. To me, studying abroad was not my own choice. Actually, I dislike the life being alone in an unfamiliar country; however, being a son in China, one of the most important rules is obeying my parents, so I have no choice when my father forced me to do it. Therefore, I felt sympathy when I read about Miranda, and I decided to create a project to show the reason and process people fight for life they yearning for. Obviously, the comic Dr.Eleven is the best context for my project, and I need to decide the genre of my project next. What is the best way to show the experience and internal feeling of my character during his/her struggling for the desired life? Diary may work, so I decide my RIP project: a diary written by John (my fictional character) living undersea in the comic Dr.Eleven.

The idea that use diary as my genre comes from Het Achterhuis, a diary written by a girl Anne Frank. As I read through this diary, one advantage of using diary as genre is that it is the most natural and directly way to show the psychology activities of my character. Since being rhetors of a diary, people will not use garish rhetorical strategies and always focus on expressing their opinion own their daily issue. In Het Achterhuis, what audiences read most are details of Anne’s life and her direct emotion or attitude, and I considered this naked expression of emotion in diary is the most powerful impact on reader’s thought. Back to my project, its purpose is to explore one of the theme of novel Station Eleven. It’s a project to help audience to cogitate and understand Station Eleven deeply. Therefore, diary may be the best carrier for my project, because to reach my purpose, plot is not as important as its connotation and diary is a good way to magnify the connotation part. Regarding to my project, I tried to show the psychology activities of my character directly from the first-person perspective and audiences can only get fragmental information of the plot between the lines of his opinion and emotional expression. Not like a novel, audiences need to figure out characters’ feeling and opinion by the description of action and environment. When reading diary, audiences will have more ideological communication with the character and a more subjective perspectives. This also a reason I choose diary as my project’s genre to help me reach my purpose, which is exploring deep of the theme of Station Eleven.

As soon as I have decided my genre, another thing I should consider is how to characterize the rhetor of my project. How to make him more reasonable and realistic? Considering this question mentioned me a mobile game called Lifeline. For this game, one of its selling points is its sense of reality. Player will act as a person who got a distress information from a distant space and provide some suggestion to help that person lost in space. Therefore, what Three Minutes Games (the company develop this game) tried through the whole game is convincing players that there is a real guy on the other side of the cell phone. When I played this game, I was surprised of the delicate emotion belonging to that virtual character, and the strategy those game makers used was modeling the character with ordinary and complex character. For example, when the character need to explore some unknown place in an abandoned space ship, he will not just ask you what he should do, instead, he will talk something funny with you and makes you feel like he is encouraging himself. Universal reaction like this or being afraid and curious to at same time when finds out something strange imply audience the reality of this character. Therefore, one thing I have tried in my project is creating a character with complex and universal personalities. As I write in my RIP project “I can partial understand why most of people living undersea want use such an aggressive way like war to solve the problem, especially when I faced to the dark sea surface and the rusty seahorses day by day” (Yuxuan 3). By the words “partial understand”, audiences can feel the contradictory attitude of John (my main character in my project) between cruel struggle and the beautiful future they fight for. This is also the universal reaction when people face an ethical question toward war: which weigh more, the cost of war or the purpose of war. By complicating and normalizing the personalities of my character, I can build sympathy on audiences easily and make the character more realistic and reasonable.

The last problem of my project is its venue. I have no idea at first because I considered diary is personal and private. However, I got some idea from Station Eleven. Why not to make it become an exhibition in a historical museum? Like in the museum of Station Eleven, every exhibition has its own historical meaning for the post-apocalyptic world, so when hundreds or thousands of years have passed, the diary will not be that personal and private. On the other hand, it was endowed with historical significance. By this, I can explain why audiences can read my project as well as show some annotation for it to guide audiences. In addition, this venue also provide a new perspective for my audiences to consider the theme, as a person who retrospect to some historical issue. This may also help me to evoke my audiences’ thinking of “fighting for life they desired.” To accomplish this venue, I wrote a preface for my diary as some introductions for exhibition in museum, to show where this diary was found and what’s it historical significance. And then I want to change the medium from text to the photo copy of some hand writing scripts. Moreover, I created a historian who found it to make the venue make sense.

Last but not least, this diary was created with a fixed context: Dr.Eleven, therefore I followed its science-fiction style and I intensified the contradiction between people leading by Dr.Eleven and people living undersea, in order to make up the background of my project. I also add some science-fiction elements in the diary because I know my intended audience is people who have read Station Eleven and know the setting of this comic. At the beginning, I tried to utilize some daily details to show the whole process of the war, but I found it’s too hard for me to create diary every day in a long period. Therefore I decided John just recorded some big issue that important to him in his diary, and I think this may be a more effective way for audience to get my massage.

Reference

-Mandel, Station Eleven;

- Anne Frank, Het Achterhui; 

- Three Minutes Games, Lifeline

Working Bibliography

RIP sample A

A travel blog help me consider what genre I can use for my project. It could be something like a travel journal

RIP sample B

Document for World War II which help me related my theme to the war in my project

The Lost Bird Project, Todd McGrain Sculptures

Provide me some ideas of the venue like an exhibition in a museum

Zombie Experiment

Provide me with some idea that not only focus on text but also some visual elements like red color used in this project. Therefore I changed the medium of my project to photo copy

Lifeline, Three Minutes Games

This game helps me to consider how to characterize my character

Het Achterhui, Anne Frank

Helps define my genre as a diary and teaches me what message I should include in my diary

Station Eleven, Mandel

Provides a context to me and helps me define the venue of my project

A Madman's Diary Lu Xun

This famous Chinese book provide me some information about how to write a fictional diary

Star war, George Lucas

Helps me to come up with some scenes of the war in a planet in the future

 V for Vendetta, James McTeigue

It also help me to define my theme “people fight for life they desired” when V sacrifices for a more democratic society.