WP1: Statement of Purpose

The main purpose of my project is to find insight in the argument of “Sitting on Rail” and to share the insight that I have found. Not only should the project share what was found, it should also explain how I found that and why I see the certain arguments in the photo. While describing the rhetorical techniques and appeals in the photo, I will need to use rhetorical techniques and appeals in my project, for my argument. This will keep my audience interested and my argument moving.

The project will be posted online, on this blog. That means the people who see it will be looking at it online. This is good because it is easier to use multimedia elements which can add to my argument as another way of displaying the ideas or concepts. It also means that I need to be sure to have good paragraph breaking so all the words do not run together on the screen.

By having this project online it opens up my audience. My main audience will be my teacher and classmates. But also, my audience should include future classmates and anyone who stumbles on the blog via Google or casual browsing. Fellow classmates and future classmates would be working on similar projects while reading through mine. I need to have unique ideas, to keep them interested in it, and need to explain my ideas clearly. This will give them ideas for their own project and to understand mine as well. My teacher will be reading this in the midst of reading multiple similar projects. To keep him interested I need to again be unique like stated before, but show thorough insight into the photographs argument. I have to be confident in what I see as the argument in “Sitting on Rail” and in describing why that is the argument of the photo.

The broad audience of anyone with access to the internet will be more difficult to keep in mind. Most likely if they find the project by a search engine, they are looking for a topic that I am covering in my paper. This means they most likely will be interested, but they will not know what we discuss in class or read in the book. Keeping this in mind, I need to describe these things clearly, or provide links that offer a description. My responsibilities to all of my audience is to teach them the argumentation of “Sitting on Rail”, explain the techniques and conclusions of the argument, and to brainstorm many ideas that different people could have about the argument and address them, to make the whole audience feel included.

The worries I need to keep in mind when constructing this project include being too general, speaking like monotone, making assumptions, and getting off topic. To avoid being too general I need to focus on explaining every idea I have, and showing where and how it came about. In order to avoid speaking like monotone, I need to remember to keep the voice professional, but to add my own voice as well. I do not want to make assumptions about what the audience does or does not know when speaking about photography and argumentation techniques. Although I will not want to describe all the techniques thoroughly, by using contexts that give clear ideas of what they could be or providing links to information would be ideal. While writing the project, I should keep in mind the main purpose I stated above and continuously check to see if what I am writing is supporting my main purpose.

The best possible outcome of this project would be to inspire the audience. That could be to inspire them to take photographs to capture arguments they want to make. Or it could be to inspire them to look at photographs and find arguments in them. It could even be to inspire them to find an additional argument in the photograph I have chosen. If this is accomplished I would be proud of the project and the knowledge I have shared with my audience. It will also make me proud if I can expand this photographs recognition, because it is a special photograph with an important argument to make.

Prewriting Assignment 3

The Belgians gave the Rwandan colonials cards according to their ethnicity. Although the Hutus and the Tutsis were very similar, the Belgians considered the Tutsis superior to the Hutus even though they were the minority. This is when the tension between the two began. Juvenal Habyarimana was the Hutu president of Rwanda leading up to 1994. The economy of Rwanda was very desperate. The Tutsi refugees in Uganda, supported by some moderate Hutus, were putting together the RPF, Rwanda Patriotic Front, to overthrow Juvenal Habyarimana take back the Rwandan land they believed they deserved. In April of 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana died when his plane was shot down. The Hutus immediately blamed the RPF leader, Paul Kagame. This began the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

In only one hundred days, eight hundred thousand Rwandans were killed. The radical Hutus were killing every Tutsi, or moderate Hutu they believed to be in support of the RPF, they could find. They even forced some Hutus to kill their neighboring Tutsis, threatening their own death if they did not comply. The Hutu forces collaborated in Kigali, so in July of 1994 when the RPF captured Kigali, the Hutu forces fell apart and a cease fire was declared. This ended the massacre, but not the struggle.

When the RPF seemed to have the victory, many Hutus fled to what is now the Dominican Republic of Congo. The government in Rwanda was initially led by a Hutu with Paul Kagame as his deputy, but the Hutu did not last long. He was put into jail for "inciting ethnic violence". To this day, Rwanda is led by Paul Kagame of the RPF and continue to struggle with the Kutus forces in the Dominican Republic of Congo. BBC News states that "The world's largest peacekeeping force has been unable to end the fighting".

The photograph "Sitting on Rail" was taken in Rwanda in 2001. The boy who took the photograph, Musa, would have been three years old at the time of the genocide. This struggle has been surrounding him, and the boys in the pictures, all of their lives. Despite the Tutsi and Hutu struggle, Rwanda has always struggled economically. For example, in June of 2006 David Kubaye wrote that they were just beginning to insert a sewage system.

From the information given at the site of the photograph, I know that Musa arrived at the orphanage in 1997. Knowing how the Rwandan past and Musa's personal past must be affecting him makes the gray sky in the photograph seem even more dooming. I originally thought this picture was taking to inspire sympathy, not understanding, and I think the background supports that even more. Musa must know that we cannot understand what he has been through, so he captures the picture not to inspire pity, as he does not show the faces, but to inspire sympathy. This sympathy should inspire people to help in Rwanda. If he was trying to have the viewers pity them, or feel guilty for the lack of help given to Rwanda, he would have shown the faces of the kids, and not had the vectors of attention directed away from the viewers and into the gray sky. In the photograph, he is showing the struggle that they face every day.

Work Cited

Kabuye, David. "Rwanda: today." Web log post. Rwandanstories. John Steward and David Fullerton, 2006. Web. 17 Feb. 2010. .

"Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened." BBC News. BBC MMX, 18 Dec. 2008. Web. 17 Feb. 2010. .