Tuesday, November 9, 2010

On "Looking at Women"

How does Scott Russell Sanders use cause and effect analysis to get his perspective across in "Looking at Women"? That's an interesting question, you see, because I don't know. To answer this question you first have to ask, "What is Sanders' purpose/perspective?". Well, Sanders is, in a sense, trying to answer the question of, "How should men look at women?". The problem for readers is that his essay doesn't answer the question with a clear and direct answer, which is okay for such an open ended question. Sanders instead describes how men look at women then answers why they look at women. He also describes what women think of men looking at them and how it further effects their actions. The causes and effects that he provides illustrate the problem that men looking at women are causing women to feel like objects or pieces of meat; makes them what to become like pieces of art or toys for men to play with. Showing the effects of looking at women answers the question of, "How should men look at women?". The rest is up o the readers discretion. If they believe the effects are wrong then they will find the answer to be that men should not look at women the way that they do so now.

1 comment:

  1. I have to say from what I read I can definitely say now I understand how Scott Russell Sanders uses cause-and-effect in his essay "Looking at Women". It intimidated me to revise my cause-and-effect essay because I didn't know exactly how Sanders used it, but thinking about it, what you described is exactly how he did it. It is cause-and-effect within cause-and-effect.

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