TOW #3 IRB Post "Madame President"

One of the chapters from my IRB, My Kind of Place, by Susan Orlean, is titled "Madame President". This chapter documents Orlean's visits to Martin Luther King Jr. High School in New York City, mainly focusing on the student body president, Tiffanie Lewis. (This would have been a while ago; the book was published in 2004). Orlean begins by recounting the story of Lewis's election, introducing the reader to Lewis herself, and describes her interactions with other members of her student government and body. She also writes about the school itself, which has been known as "Horror High" because of the incidents and issues the school has faced, but is also home to some of the highest-performing students in the area. Susan Orlean comes to the piece with some automatic ethos, being a writer for The New Yorker and already the author of other books. She further establishes her ethos by the inclusion of her interviews with the students and other related information: she clearly visited the school multiple times and knows what she is writing about. The main way that Orlean communicates her experience is through anecdotes. She tells stories of meetings on which she sat in and she records her conversations with the students. Besides establishing her ethos, as mentioned before, this helps her create an appeal to pathos, because it allows the reader to identify with the students of the school and understand them better. She also appeals to pathos by creating a contrast; she positions the lively, kindhearted, rather innocent students against the notorious, big, city school to which they belong. Orlean writes "When you are in the student affairs office... it's as if there were no metal detectors in the lobby and no school superintendent politics and nothing but the exigencies of being sixteen or seventeen," (52). We are shown these ominous aspects of the school but we are also presented with these active, animated students who manage to succeed despite their surroundings, and that connects to our emotions. This contrast is important to the purpose of this piece, which I believe is best exemplified by the last line, a quote Orlean includes from student Tiffanie Lewis. She says "Can I say this, people?... You know what? This is not a perfect world" (Orlean 53). This isn't a perfect world, and this fact has been made obvious in the previous depictions of a school that has experienced crime and tragedy and many students falling behind. However, in this piece Orlean shows that amidst all this good things can still grow. The proof is the caring students who do creative things.