The Men We Carry In Our Minds Analysis

“The Men we Carry in Our Minds” is a narrative essay written by Scott Russell Sanders that provides an insight to the overlooked lives men had to endeavour just so they could be at peace with themselves and their families. Sanders wants to remove this misrepresentation that all men are taking something from middle-class women and that instead he believes that any boy or girl and who lived in “dirt poor” (page 332) conditions would grow up to be men and women in a society “where the fate of men is as grim and bleak as the fate of women” (page 333). He un-isolates himself from using just one argument and instead produces a convincing emotional argument by using a broad choice of personal references and historical evidence. Sanders uses storytelling

His conclusions continues to stay valid as there are no gaps in his premises that do not support his conclusion. He uses particulars to build his general point towards the end, the premises he uses connect to his conclusions. Firstly his examples compare men and women who: died in war (page 332), men who had to feel ashamed for not providing for their families (page 332), and women who “suffered from men's bullying” (page 332) to men who “made decisions that mattered” (page 333) and ran the world (page 333). Secondly his example of “black convicts” (page 330) who were not privileged because they were controlled by white men (page 330). His premises show that the lives of these two different classes/races would define being underprivileged and privileged, instead of the feminist women who generalized its definition to only the difference between being a woman vs. a

Sanders realizes this objective positively when he writes about situations that arouse the audience's emotions. He does not isolate his argument with only one example, instead he uses many examples that appeal to emotion and ethics. For example, he writes about men who: laboured with their bodies, soldiers, and men from earlier bloodlines who had to strife with a society that broke them down like mules. Audiences can apply themselves, or empathize with the examples presented while they adhere to logical standard. He writes many of the horrific tolls on the labourers bodies such as: “hands tattooed with scars” (page 330), “guts weak from hernias” (page 330), “finicky backs” (page 330), and how only “women lived to old age” (page 331). Empathy arises when ironically Sander relates men of hierarchy: soldiers to “souls in limbo” (page 331); or “black convicts” (page 330) and white men who presented a vision of manhood as “--the brute toiling animal and the boss” (page 330). Sanders creates a vision for the reader, depicting how men have not historically always been “privileged”. Sanders also includes the hidden sad life of women and that if he had “looked harder at the their lives (women's lives). I (he) would have envied them less” (page 332). Bringing insight to the “grim and bleak” (page 333) fate the circle around him