The Great Influenza By John M Barry

“If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar” John Henry Cardinal Newman. Newman’s quote connects to the passage by stating that one will never break away and soar if they cannot understand failure. Originally this passage was based on the flu epidemic of 1918 hints the name of the title, The Great Influenza. Throughout the passage of The Great Influenza, John M. Barry establishes the message of embracing uncertainty and doubt. In the first section, John M. Barry establishes logos in an effort to explain the logical understanding of science. When talking about uncertainty Barry truthfully explains what uncertainty seems like to most people. The text explains, “Uncertainty

Giving the audience a deeper understanding, Barry uses examples of what questions might arise in an experiment. Taken from the text, “A shovel can dig up dirt but cannot penetrate rock. Would a pick be best, or would dynamite be better—or would dynamite be too indiscriminately destructive?” (Barry). Throughout this passage Barry uses vivid images of a rock to display the effectiveness of questions a scientist might face. Consequently, Barry does not only uses imagery, but also metaphor’s to get his point across. Barry states, “Ultimately, if the researcher succeeds, a flood of colleagues will pave roads over the path laid, and those roads will be orderly and straight, taking an investigator in minutes to a place the pioneer spent months or years looking for” (Barry). While he uses a metaphor to create imagery about paths, Barry predominantly tried to express a deeper meaning about those paths and pioneers by giving the audience an in-depth scenery. Barry’s effectiveness of imagery helped the audience not only comprehend the passage verbally, but also

Nevertheless, using another source of evidence, Barry was able to again persuade the audience from a different point of view. As seen in the text, “And just as Einstein refused to accept his own theory until his predictions were tested, one must seek out such findings” (Barry). This showed that the author is credible and persuasive by using a well known scientist to aid him in explaining uncertainty. Coincidentally, Einstein went through the struggle of uncertainty himself, he is better able to understand the importance of it. However, using all scientist’s as a source for understanding the importance of uncertainty, gives Barry the advantage of multiple sources. Barry also states, “All real scientists exist on the frontier. Even the least ambitious among them deal with the unknown, if only one step beyond the known” (Barry). Since he is using multiple sources for this example, he was able to show how every scientist has faced this problem or even larger problems. Barry, yet again, was able to persuade the audience by using other examples besides his own