Blog 12- Chapter 10

The article “Why Literature Matters” by Dana Gioia speaks about the fact that young Americans study in the arts, especially in literature, has declined. The article goes on in attempts to explain why reading is so important and why we should engage in this activity more often. I honestly found this article very difficult to ready. Perhaps it was simply boring me. I felt that the sentences were all very long and wordy. Sentence length was not varied very often which made it monotonous. I had to keep reading the same sentence three times in a row to finally understand it. At the end I still didn’t feel that I should read more. It failed at doing its job. I felt to motivation to read whatsoever. It did have a lot of good facts and arguments. It talked about the decrease in literacy impacting the level of political awareness in our country. All of her facts and points were relevant and strong. However, I didn’t think it flowed well or appeal to me at all.
The other article “What Makes a Serial Killer?” by La Donna Beaty was more interesting to me. Perhaps this is because I am obsesses with CSI and have a fascination with criminal justice. Comparatively though, I thought this article was 100 times better. It was interesting and outlined the points of the argument well. I thought it was a clear example of the causal arguments. It clearly outlines the different causes that can produce the effect (becoming a serial killer). I thought that that the set up of the article was good as well. It first talked about the fact that serial killers are not new to our society. Then it moves on to talking about the progression of serial killers. I thought the author used good transitions. Next it talks about all of the different theories there are as to why these people kill. I thought the article was interesting and grabbed the attention of the reader.