You have to find a TED TALK THAT SPEAK OF SUCCESS
We’ve studied three films with highly functional protagonists. Of course, none are free of struggle and yet all are masterful gardeners. Success is different for everyone and so too are these three gardens different. Napoleon’s is well-tended (like his home) while Harry is right at home amongst the weeds just as long as the food and flowers he likes are able to thrive. Tick certainly tends his garden though it isn’t as weed-free as Napoleon’s (Tick’s identity/fatherhood issue) or as inundated with them as Harry’s (Tick’s awareness of his issue). To further clarify, let us, like all good scholars, turn to Shakespeare, for Shakespeare, like God, has already answered all of the questions we mere mortals have ever asked and will ever ask.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
William Shakespeare’s Cassius speaks these lines to Brutus in the third scene of the first act of Julius Caeser. In context, they’re chilling words because of what is about to transpire (Cassius’s own death), and, in the abstract, we go merrily along with the trope that both our successes and failures are not fated but of our own making, don’t ask but do and ye shall receive, yada yada yada…until we get to the last four words: “that we are underlings.” Again, in the context of the play, this brings in a nice complication, primarily that fate or the heavens (or both) is also at work in our lives. If the scale is Nature, itself, during the Renaissance, the physical and the metaphysical worlds (the garden, itself, and our “gifts” we use to tend it) are distributed evenly to each pan. Thus, to achieve any sort of success, we must be in balance with both – or, put another way, in balance with Nature. For Shakespeare, for life, anything that challenges Nature – weeds that choke the garden’s bounty; political correctness untethered – will lose.While this may seem a romantic notion bordering on cliche, your third essay is going to reveal just how profound and relevant this coalescence of Nature and the individual is.
* Find one Ted Talk with the theme of success and use it to illuminate the salient virtues of the three protagonists. Like all assignments, it’s vital that you refer to your lecture notes and assigned readings as they are the critical lenses through which you answer the assignment.
* Reference the various parts of the Toulmin Method as they appear in your essay. For example,
* Because we accept the enthymeme that…
* This is a ground for my claim because…
* My warrant for this assertion is…
* etc.
* Be sure to review the grading rubric