Literature Analysis

Nonfiction Analysis

Topic(s) and/or Event(s)

1.     The book Political Science: An Informal overview written by Dr. Francis J. Sorauf is about the birth and growth of political science in the United states and methods and techniques political scientists practice.

2.     Dr. Francis Sorauf works in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, so he chose to write this book to inform and teach someone uneducated in, yet interested in, political science.

3.     I chose this book because I’m trying to figure out what I want to further my studies in after high school. I have no idea what I want to become and make into a career. Mrs. Dirkes mentioned Political Science when I had a meeting with her and my mother. I went to the library, just eyeballing the shelves from top to bottom in the non-fiction section. When I came to a section about government, politics and law, I read political science on the spine of a red book, so I grabbed it off of the shelf. Once I started reading the book, I wanted to continue reading it because Sorauf goes into depth about the political systems and their distinctive characteristics that aren’t visible to the human eye nor known to the average man, so I was fully interested in learning about it all.

4.     I found the book very realistic and I also made a connection while reading the book. Right now I’m enrolled in Government with Mr. Wagner and he’s ironically teaching us similar topics in class at the moment. He’s teaching us about political behaviors, systems, political power of individuals, operation of political parties and mass media, which are all concepts that are part of Political Science.

People

1.     The choices that the author made in choosing what to write about or how to explain what he wants to get across to the reader says to me, that he really cares about political science, political behavior and authoritative decision-making of the political systems. He chose to write this book because he feels he has enough knowledge on the subject to lay down the foundation for someone learning or interested in political science. His tone is very informative and educated. At some points, I found myself re-reading sentences over and over again to comprehend fully what he was explaining or describing.

2.     Being there are no characters in the book, I’m going to describe a Political Scientist. They would look highly intelligent, maybe their eyes framed with glass lenses. They would be dressed very elegant in their business suit or slacks, heels, and blouse. They would act educated and proper, setting the very best example for citizens and their surroundings. I’m not sure how I might write them as fictional characters. Maybe grant them with superpowers of some sort.

3.     Political scientists are interesting to write about because they study the entire political system as a whole. The system is concerned with the authoritative decision-making and with all of the activities and processes by which a society makes the decisions. It is also concerned with the political interest of individuals and its prime focus is on the processes of policy-making. They have a better insight on society than most human beings, so that draws interest upon them.

Style

1.     The author didn’t use any tools from fiction writing from what I can remember. He wrote using an informative style, almost like what you would read from a textbook.

Ex- “What we have been calling the political system may also be viewed (Figure 1) as a series of consecutive activities which culminate in the making of authoritative, binding decisions (“public policy”).” Pg. 5

2.     The author used a lot of lengthy descriptions, which causes a lot of confusion, especially when it comes to reading and trying to learn about a topic this diverse. This causes a semi loss of communication between the author and the reader from my perspective.

3.     The author uses a lot of logos throughout his writing. He gives real life explanations which he persuades the reader with, to continue on reading to try and decipher the entire message/lesson being conveyed.

4.     I think Dr. Sorauf is very passionate about the subject, or else he wouldn’t have taken the time to write such a detailed and informative book. He took he precisely wrote out his explanations and own personal definitions in order to give the reader the best opportunity to learn about the subject.

5.     In the book, he writes about the United States Senate signing the nuclear test ban treaty. He explained that the consequences of signing the treaty were just as dangerous as not signing, which cause the debate and uprising in the senate. I felt that referring back to that event and going into detail about all of the complications and disagreements along the way really got me thinking about all the other possibilities of debates that might also take place in the American foreign and domestic policy. That is just one of many political behaviors that a political scientists studies, and I feel like I might want to work somewhere in the field of foreign affairs.

Enduring Memory

One idea I’ll remember is how Sorauf separates and explain the differences in political and nonpolitical behavior. It was never brought to my attention until reading this book that there even was a difference in the two. The political system deals with the social control of these two behaviors. “In every society individuals and groups disagree over goals and directions for the society, over how the society will achieve the goals and provide services, over the definition and enforcement of standards of behavior; and every society has a number of institutions which settle these disagreements.” I’ll probably always remember this quote from the book because I’ve been curious about these topics before, like who really settles political issues. Now I feel that I’ve got a more clear understanding of the basic concepts to political science.