The Abolition of Man homework #1

Rossi, 1

Michael Rossi
October 14, 2009
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Read the section of The Abolition of Man entitled "Men Without Chests." When you have completed it, select two quotations that you think illuminate his main argument in the section. Then, once you have selected the quotations, try to summarize in a single paragraph his main argument in "Men Without Chests." Also, annotate his use of appeals, rhetoric, syntax and diction in the text itself.

Quote 1: “The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. Famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

Quote 2: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at hour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst” (Lewis, 26).

Lewis remarks upon just how society has become entangled in an ignorant and contradictory snare. Educators, given the pseudonyms Gaius and Titus taught erroneous philosophy in the place of English. Gaius and Titus impose their philosophy of description merely being subject to the speaker and one’s perception merely becomes one’s opinion. Lewis vehemently disagrees and provides a counterexample to his opponents’ assertion: “This is pretty if those words simply described the lady’s feelings, would be absurd: if she had said I feel sick Coleridge would hardly have replied No; I feel quite well” (Lewis, 15). Lewis dubs the teaching not completely deliberate. Lewis claims that our method of inoculating the youth is like not creating an organ, but demanding the function.