Mr. Fields
English Composition 101-30
21 October 2013
“Why Don’t We Complain” Analysis We don’t complain enough. Is the simply and unique argument that Buckley is presenting in his essay. The purpose of this essay is to convince Americans that it’s time to start complaining. Instead of simply pushing aside the issues that are present to us on a daily bases Buckley wants us to confront them head on and to simply speak up. Instead of dealing with hot trains, an unfocused movie screen and long line that is caused from a supposedly lazy worker, we should speak up because we have the power to change the little problems. Buckley is afraid that if we continue to show apathy towards small problems then we will continue this trend when faced with much larger conflicts that can be found in things such as our government. Buckley’s thesis is that we should speak up when we aren’t satisfied, or don’t agree with something, essentially complain more often, because if we don’t complain it can lead to us entering an apathy coma that will cause the American to blindly accept an issue because we choose not to exert the will power to fix it. Some of his suggestion as to why we don’t complain is include: we assume someone will, we don’t know why its wasn’t done in the first place so we don’t question it, we just don’t want to cause a fuss, we think our opinion doesn’t matter, or we receive peer pressure from others not to complain. To understand Buckley’s essay I used the stasis theory questions to help me identify which one that author is trying to present. The Stasis questions are meant to help the readers determine the question at issue so that you can get to the heart of argument and distinguish major claims from minor elements of support. Buckley’s central question is stated clearly in the title of the essay “Why Don’t We Complain?” I started to search for the author’s main question by trying to apply all of the six stasis questions and choosing the one