TOW #3- The Washington Post Article/ "Pearls Before Breakfast"/ Gene Weingarten

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". As unfortunate as it is, the human race is a materialistic species. People value what they consider beautiful, and if it doesn't meet their expectations, they pay no attention to it. This idea was expertly applied in in January 2007 when The Washington Post decided to do a psychological experiment: Get famous violinist Joshua Bell to play six of the most complicated classical pieces ever written (including Bach’s Chaconne and Schubert’s Ave Maria), on a Stradivari violin from 1713, while wearing street-clothes in a Washington D.C. metro station, and see if anyone will stop to listen.

After 45 minutes of playing, Bell only made $32 (from 27 people) and caught the attention of only 7 who were willing to stop and take notice. This is surprising because, in general, tickets to Bell’s performances cost hundreds of dollars. Experienced Washington Post reporter/columnist Gene Weingarten expertly uses exemplification and testimonies to appeal to ethos and pathos in the text, and convince readers that though “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, people shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”. Through quotes from Joshua Bell, passerby, and acclaimed composers, Weingarten establishes both the difficulty of the music Bell was playing and Bell’s credibility as a musician. The examples he uses make Bell seem like an authority in his field, and also signify how monumental the social experiment was emotionally for the child-prodigy; why it was so sad that more people ignored Bell than praised him. The vocabulary Weingarten includes also adds to the curious mood of the article and the vivid imagery of the articles examples and anecdotes. The author portrays nearly every character in his article favorably and makes the events of this psychological study meaningful to readers, whether they are fans of classical music or not. “Pearls Before Breakfast” attempts to make readers more culturally aware and give them an eye for “real beauty”. 

The Man with the Violin. 2007. Photograph. Washington D.C. Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel. By Barbara Weibel. Barbara Weibel, 12 Sept. 2009. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.