Literature concepts and analysis

Personal experience provides an ideal base for the supportive arguments presented in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream." By texturing his experiences with comparative statements, he was able to affect a wide population and encourage his position on non-violent, pro-active behavior to bring about equality for black Americans. Eric Liu employs the same personal technique in "A Chinaman's Chance: Reflections on the American Dream," but to support an argument somewhat opposite of King's. His position that racial identification is quintessential to each person's existence comes across as being less emotional than King's speech. However, Liu is no less convincing as he plays upon the practicality of his readers.

Barbara Kingsolver's "Stone Soup" seeks to redefine the popular concept of what composes a family unit. She calls upon her readers' sense of practicality, decency and humanity. Conversely, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's "Women and the Future of Fatherhood" implores her readers to take action to stop the changing nature of the family unit because it is the mother's and father's duties to abide by their specified roles. Whitehead relies quite heavily on statistical data to make her case.

The various reasons that affect Americans from being more proactive to bring about social change is explored in "Soul of a Citizen" by Paul Rogat Loeb. He uses a combination a unique combination of statistical fact combined with rationale to explain the underlying cause of social apathy. Being a whole complete individual takes precedence in light of political leanings according to Sven Birkerts' "Confessions of a Nonpolitical Man." While there is nothing wrong with social action, Birkerts maintains that, in order to be truly free, one should be free from others' manifestos. He takes somewhat of a backwards stance by seeming to answer readers' questions before presenting his hypothesis. In a sense, he seeks to earn readers' respect before presenting an idea that might not be tolerated long enough to get readers into the heart of the essay had the text been written conversely.