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CSUN ENGL 098 - Breakdown

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Kathleen Ayala-Rivera Nicole Warwick English 098 4 May 2009 Breakdown We have all been there before, to that point in our lives where we realize we have fallen into a rut. We become so entangled in our everyday routine that we forget to just relax and enjoy living life to the fullest. When we reach a point were we can no longer distinguish if we are living life for ourselves or living life for others, or if we are just lost in an endless list of things we need to do. An excellent example of this can be seen in the song “Let Go” by Frou Frou and the movie Garden State. Both emphasize how sometimes a person just needs to hit rock bottom before they can truly begin to live their lives. The author of this song is trying to emphasize how sometimes in life you need to let go of your current habits in order to discover life. The singer in this case uses the rhetorical devices pathos, ethos and at times logos to appeal to her audience. Playing on the audience’s emotion can be seen both in the song “Let Go” and also in the film Garden State where a young man named Andrew travels back to his home town in Jersey and realizes he has been feeling empty his entire life. Here he meets a young girl named Sam who helps him break down and finally find his true self. During the film we see what Andrew goes through just to be able to feel life for the very first time. The audience feels his emotional pains and joys on his journey to his new meaningful life. The song “Let Go” which was featured in this film is conveniently enough talking about the exact thing, and so goes hand in hand with the film. In a similar way we see the use of pathos throughout the song because it appeals to the listener’s feelings by being a very soft melancholy type of song that a person could just listen to and it would really highlight their feeling of that day. Whether a person is depressed, relaxed or angry, this is a good song to listen to because it connects so much to any emotions. Well at least in my case it did. Listening to this song really helped put my life into a perspective I don’t often think of. I wanted to stop sweating all the little things and start enjoying life. “So, let go / Jump in / Oh well, what you waiting for? / It’s alright / Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown.” This is the chorus to the song “Let Go” and it appeals to people’s emotions because it is reassuring. “It’s alright” is something that people tell you when they want to make you feel better, therefore it is part of pathos. The entire chorus is telling a person to take a leap of faith, which is something very emotional, but at the same time is telling them that it will all be alright and that they have nothing to worry about. This can also be seen as the songwriter trying to gain the listener’s trust by reassuring them, which is pathos. Second we see that the song uses ethos because it is a personal story, which the audience can relate to. Like I said earlier we have all been at this point in our lives. When an audience identifies with a song and creates it his or her own they remember it longer and it also becomes a part of their personal story. The personal story in the song also applies to the film because it depicts the personal struggles of a young man tying to find himself. “Oh well, what you waiting for?” is a part of the chorus of this song and appeals to a personal story because it uses the word “you” specifically. By doing so they are associating the audience to the song. Both the song and the film also relate to a personal story because they both give the idea of feeling so stuck that you just want to scream at the top of your lungs just to let out all of your emotions. Even though asimple scream may not solve your problem it’s the idea that it will make you feel something, and that is what’s really important. Third we see the use of logos in both the song and the film. Logos is used in the song because it gives the impression that it is healthy and therefore logical for a person to break down once in a while. “It’s alright / Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown.” This piece of the verse is talking about it being alright to breakdown even thought society see breaking down as something negative. This song is saying that breaking can be a good thing and it is seen as something positive. By doing this the song takes “breakdown” and “beauty”, which are used as an oxymoron in a sense, and associates them with something that is good for you, and as something you need to do to be healthy. It’s perfectly logical for a person to take a day out of the week to focus on himself or herself personal needs. A quote I really liked from the movie Garden State is said by Sam: “I look forward to a good cry. It feels pretty good.” This line also goes hand in hand with the song because it basically sums up the entire point of the song: it’s good to cry and let your emotions flood out of you from time to time. This quote also appeals to ethos, pathos and logos because it’s a personal story when you cry, its perfectly logical to cry and it’s has an effect on the audience’s emotions. The song “Let Go” by Frou Frou and the film Garden State are both talking about the same concept. They are both saying how it is good to let go and breakout of the routine in order to find the real you. This song has the ability to engage its audience and really make a person reflect on their lives. This song is basically telling you to slow down and smell the roses. Take time to live your life before it’s too late, and it’s alright to be a little selfish from time to time. So if you reach that point in your life were you fall into that rut and you want to start living for yourself and you find yourself looking for a way out, all you need to do is “let go”, and remember there is “beauty in the breakdown.” Professor’s note: (Works Cited should be on its own page, but I was trying to save paper). Works Cited Frou Frou. “Let Go” Garden State Soundtrack. Epic Records and Sony Music, 2004. Garden State. Dir. Zach Braff. Pref. Zach Braff and Natalie Portman. Fox Searchlight Pictures,


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