Gage Glupker
Doupe
2nd Hour
On Compassion, On Rhetoric
Human emotions are among the least understood things in the universe.
Trying to read emotions accurately is like trying to find a needle in a haystack; it’s a
good change you’ll have to dig for a while. This is why people are misunderstood,
why therapists are paid so highly, and why men and women will NEVER understand
each other.
Barbara Ascher saw the fallacy in human logic that is emotion, and wrote her
essay “On Compassion” to bring some light to the subject. In this essay, she regarded
the public’s view of compassion, as well as the driving forces behind such a
righteous feeling. In addressing our views of compassion, she wasn’t focused on
explaining what compassion is, but rather why we do the “compassionate” actions
that we do. She wrote in a very neutral tone, used selective detail, and used outside
emotions to link her point.
Writing an essay about compassion, we would think that Ascher would have
used a compassionate tone to describe the actions we define as compassionate.
Rather, she switches back and forth between compassionate and skeptical. This
creates a neutral tone, and shows that even Ascher doesn’t fully understand the
subject at hand. That is a positive aspect of this essay, because the whole point is
that compassion can be based out of many more emotions than love, and it’s nearly
impossible to define. Her own confusion in writing the essay provided validity to her
point, and allowed readers to connect with the piece.
Connection is more than just tone, however. Connection is being able to
visualize details, and have a picture of an idea. Ascher utilizes her details in a very
specific way to create a picture. She understands that environmental details aren’t
super important in creating emotional imagery. Rather, she focuses her words on
body language. Specifically, she focuses on small details such as eye contact saying
“his eyes pierce the white veil”. Her conveyance of desperation in the homeless men
of her stories resounds into the not-so-hesitant do-gooders whom “help” them. This
is where the confusion takes place in her essay as to their motivation being fear, or
true compassion.
Often fear drives such actions of love and peace that we define as
compassion, which is what Ascher is trying to convey. To prove this, she describes
the homeless in a mode of desperation, but also as frightening. The homeless man
who comes into the coffee shop smells of coffee and urine, as she describes him. If
she were solely looking for us to feel empathy toward him, she would have
explained him only as a starving man looking for a quick meal. Rather, she regards
him unpleasantly to create a small sense of fear alongside the empathy, fueling our
motivation for compassion. By bringing in her paragraph about the empathy
Gage Glupker
Doupe
2nd Hour
growing in New York near the end, she allows her essay to present an idea of hope
and leave readers thinking when they are done about how empathy grows.
Ascher knows that whatever the motivation behind acts of compassion are,
the end result is always good. Empathy does not have to be present for
compassionate actions, bur rather she suggests that compassionate actions give
birth to empathy. This essay is well constructed, with a highly effective tone. It has
left us questioning our own motivations behind compassion, and whether or not we
know true empathy.