Money: America's One True Religion

For as long as long as we humans have bartered and bargained with coinage, there have been countless proverbs on the matter, from the familiar “money can’t buy happiness’ adage of our mothers to the still more true “ Money often costs too much’. Although it is true that the following money has invoked in this world can rival that of any leading religion, it would in fact be false to claim that money is the root of all evil, as our forefathers have told us time and time again. Indeed, it is not money, but the lack of money and what people do to achieve it that’s detrimental to our society. Money itself is neutral, a simple tool that does the bidding of its master and nothing more, yet it is our favorite scapegoat when we lead ourselves down a path of destruction in the quest for it. This distinction is crucial in the understanding of Americans and modern society, and we would do well to remember it.

With that said, there is still no denying the fact that Americans today are indeed far too consumed by the notion of the "American dream" We are trained from birth to not become productive citizens for the sake of bettering the world around us, but for the selfish purpose of attaining profitable careers and fattening our own bank accounts. We are engulfed in the world of consumerism from the very jump, forever on a mission to earn more to buy more of the things that advertisers and big-name companies have convinced us we need. We have become the much scorned drug addicts in a sense, desperately reaching and grasping for that monetary high that seems so close to us at the time, but will remain eternally out of our reach.

This thirst for the dollar has another side effect, the neatly classified social classes in which we desperately cling to and identify ourselves by. The upper tier of society consists of the wealthy and powerful few, the ones in which most of the middle tier Americans place upon a pedestal and frantically try to become. There are measured not by their intellect or their moral fiber, but buy their status and possessions, something Lapham does and excellent job in pointing out. “The visible signs of wealth testify to an inward state of grace, and without at least some of these talismans posted in one’s house or on one’s person an American loses all hope of demonstrating to himself the theorem of his happiness”

The sad truth of the matter is, there never has, and never will be, a such thing as ‘just enough’ money; we, not only as Americans, but humans as a species, will always search for more and be forever short, a trait that will keep us firmly planted on the path of devastation and tragedy.

Of Faults and Fallacies

1) Edward Koch’s thesis in support of the death penalty was that the death penalty simply "helps to affirm" the sacredness of life itself, even if this is done by taking a life in the process. He backs this claim up by various facts and statistics about the possibilities of a murderer repeating his crimes, and the probability of a man being wrongfully executed. Koch asks the reader to agree with the idea that capitol punishment is a just and necessary practice to punish perpatrators of the most henous of murder crimes.

2) Koch used the time-old assertion that the death penalty served as a successful deterent towards violent crimes, namely murder. He does not, however, back this claim up with hard evidence, but instead depends on the infamous 'if only' arguement. '...Had the death penalty been a real possibility in the minds of these murderers, they might well have stayed their hand. They might have shown moral awareness before their victims died, and not after. He uses this logic to back up his original thesis of Humarabi-like punishments, putting various logical appeals in the article to lamenate his cry for eye-for-an-eye justice.

1) No. As said as it is to say, Koch seems to genuinely believe that taking the life of someone will somehow justify the crime, or avenge that victim. While it wouldn't be correct to say that he was impassioned exactly, he appears to battle the so called fallacies he brings up in the article whole-heartedly, a fact that I find discouraging to say the least. It would be nice to think that this was just a political ploy, that he was just repeating those time-worn lines to please the bloodthirsty American public, but I do not honestly believe that is the case here. The fact that he makes his history as a public servant known ('During my 22 years of public service....as a district leader, councilman, congressman, and mayor) seems as just an establishment of ethos, not of a shameless plug to get voters on his side come election day; he is genuinely ignorant of the faults in his logic.

2) I feel as though Koch expects his audience to either be hostile or apathetic to the issue of capital punishment, which is illustrated in his unyielding attempts to woo his audience over to the side of the electric chair. He addresses nearly every objection an anti-death citizen could have, leading me to believe that he anticipated some retorts to be brought up among his audience. It is equally clear, however, that he fully expected each and every dissident voice to be silence when confronted with his 'evidence' and logic. He even ends the article with a tactic probably meant to sink even the most liberal of readers; he guilts them into believing his blood for blood ideals by having the sin of the crime thrust upon them, saying that by refusing to adhere to these barbaric and outdated policies, they are encouraging more murder and killing the victims twice. It is shameless, tasteless, and, unfortunatly, it probably persuaded even more people than he intended.

3) He places the responsibilites of the vote into their hands, making sure that they know they have the power to make capital punishment the ultimate justice throughout the country. If there are any readers still left unconvinced, however, he then essentially places the blame of every homicide commited in the country on their heads, a blatant fallacy if I've ever seen one.

1) emotional and rational:" A study at M.I.T. showed that based on 1970 homicide rates, a person who lived in a large American city ran a greater risk of being murdered that an American soldier in World War II ran of being killed in combat" This both plays on the readers' fears and love of facts.

I myself was uninspired by the article and its arguements, but if I were to approach this with the completely unbiased mind of an apathetic American, the emotional appeals would probably play the biggest role in turning me pro-capital punishment. He plays on the readers feelingings like a true pro, inspiring a sense of indignation and terror that can be very hard to counter. And although the rational appeals were faulty and far-reaching at very best, he seemed to depend less on ethical appeals overall, making it the weakest device by far.

2) He purposely paints the two convicted murderers, Robert Lee Willie and Joseph Carl Shaw, as mildly apologetic but irrationally defiant, batting away their pleas for public awareness as if they were merely knats in the breeze. He quoted them as saying that by ending their lives with as much callousness and apathy as could be expected from the very 'cold-blooded' killers they were condemning, they were essentially no better that they were. In other words, they acknowledged their actions as regretable; now, it was time for the government to come to same conclusions. Not so, says Koch, who feels that the government (which is run by people) has the higher authority on the lives it governs, and they have every right to commit the crime in which they were punishing.

3) Personally, I found the counter-arguement to the barbarism claim as unmoving as the rest of the article, especially since it employs such god-awful analogies and slippery-slope fallacies. His claim that 'one does not have to like the death penalty in order to support it any more than one much like radical surgery, radiation, or chemo-therapy to find necessary these attempts at curing cancer' is incredibly faulty, which he even admits to a few sentences afterwards, especially since the death penalty has never been proven as an effective deterent, and certainly not the treatment, of murder. He tries to use the something as universally painful as cancer to stress a point that was backed up by only pretty ideals and quotable nonsense, and much like his logic, this arguement fell well short of being anything near convincing.

4) Luis Vera- "Yeah, I shot her. She knew me, and I knew I wouldn't go to the chair". This example is used to sqash out any sympathy felt for these future cadavers, as well as to prove his point that murderers only kill because believed there own lives will not be ended.

Robert Lee Willie- 'Mr. Willie had previously been convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, and the murders of a Louisiana deputy and a man from Missouri' and Joseph Carl Shaw- 'Mr. Shaw commited another murder a week before the two for which he was executed, and admitted mutilating the body of the 14-year old girl he killed. He used these examples to illustrate his point that the only suitable punishment for murderers is murder, or else they'll live to kill again. Nevermind that these are probably extremely isolated cases, considering the fact that, by the statistic that Mr.Koch himself included in the article, only a tiny minority, seven percent, have had previous murder arrests.

Lemuel Smith- 'Who, while serving four life sentences , lured a woman corrections officer into the chaplain's office and strangled her.' He used this to prove that a mere lifetime rotting in prison is not the proper punishment, that death is needed to solve the murder problem once and for all.

All the Little Things

In most cases, the setting of any fiction work is the breath of life to the entire plot, the one element that effects the plausibility and interpretation of a particular piece in a make or break sense. For plays, the setting of the story becomes doubly important and has to been handled more intricately, as this, coupled with the dialogue, becomes just about the only influential component that will be exposed to the audience.

With that said, it is my humble opinion that Ms. Glaspell successfully achieved the difficult feat of making a story and it’s characters come alive on stage while at the same time expressing distinctive and elaborate themes in the simplest possible way. The basic yet effective elements in the setting create suspense and intrigue on the part of the audience as an attempt is made to solve the mysterious murder of the Wright farm. The main setting of the play, the kitchen, can easily symbolize the confined life of Mrs. Wright, but the play is more so defined by the props that lay inside it. The rocking chair and the Cherry preserves, two of Minnie’s lone enjoyments in her lonely and hollow life, symbolize the last desperate attempts of happiness that she dared reach for. The fact that the bottles had been broken due to the cold weather of winter is also blatantly symbolic, as Mrs. Wright, much like the reserves which she held so dear, was shattered beyond the hopes of repair, much in part to the iciness of her life. Her husband’s frostiness nipped at her fragile core day in and day out, each time leaving barely detectable cracks and breaks along the surface, until one day, she cracked, exploding with the tiny shards of her sanity and broken life.

Both the bird and the bird cage, however, seem to have the most crucial meanings to this play, even with the air of mystery still surrounded the previous prop. In one sense, the dead canary (assuming that it was indeed Mrs. Wright who ended it’s life) could serve as the first hint that she was indeed capable of murder. If it was killed by Mr. Wright, it could indicate his disdain for anything his wife took pleasure in, and his sadistic love for snuffing such things out. As a whole, it could symbolize the end to her happiness, and consequently her sanity, altogether, as birds have long been used as symbols for freedom and contentment. The bird cage epitomizes the confinement and imprisonment, both physically and emotionally, of Mrs. Wright and the countless women she represents.

Through the simplistic setting of Trifles, Susan Glaspell captures the plights of an entire sex and the disenchantment they often face when they choose the perilous path of matrimony. She personifies the voices of millions through this play and, much like the ‘trifles’ in the story, creates something much larger than what first meets the eye.