1. The Terrifying Normalcy of AIDS (Title)| The effect of the oxymoron in the title is to present just how common AIDS has become in society. | The phrase “terrifying normalcy” is an oxymoron because something that is truly frightening can never be normal in society. The author uses this phrase in the title to allow the reader to know that AIDS is affecting way more people than we think. | 2. Page 754, “unblemished future”| The effect of this phrase is to describe the boundaries that modern technology has with the fast pace of development that is occurring.
| The big corporations seem to believe that “technology is the solution to all human problems. ” The author however disagrees and questions why they haven’t been able to develop a vaccination against a disease that affects millions of people’s lives. | 3. Page 754-755, “The AIDS pandemic… to nature. ”| The effect of this phrase is to remind the reader that the AIDS pandemic is very much real and dangerous and is one thing that proves that we aren’t as advanced as we think. | The author conveys his idea that humans aren’t as advanced as we think by writing “… that we have not canceled our bond to nature.
” He compares humans to animals who are susceptible to diseases harming them without them being able to do anything about it. That’s the way humans are with AIDS, we have to live with it without being able to do anything about it to help the suffering. | 4. Page 755, “…we are all susceptible to AIDS. ”| This effect of this phrase is to dismiss the idea that only homosexual males were susceptible to suffering from AIDS. | The privately circulated essay was used to bring attention to the disease.
At that time people were simply dismissing the threat of the disease and this essay made it all too real to society. John Platt successfully demonstrated that AIDS was exponentially spreading and we were all under equal danger to being exposed to it due to the unprecedented growth. | 5. Page 755, “In the real, non-infinite world… destroys the entire system:”| The effect of this phrase is to emphasize how AIDS will eventually stop growing exponentially, as soon as the entire population is affected by the disease.
| The author is proving that unless we find a way to invent a vaccine against AIDS it will infect every human being on this planet. The author writes “some limit will eventually rise,” which is of course the population number. Once the population number is topped by the exponential growth number the disease will slow down, but it will have been too late by then. | 6. Page 755, “We have learned enough about… our own sexuality. ”| The effect of this sentence is to remind the reader that society needs to change its sexual views to avoid to spread of the disease from one person to another.
| Gould is stating that we now have “learned enough about the cause of AIDS to slow its spread. ” He states that it has spread throughout the world and will continue to do so. He seems to be hinting that people should be more protective to avoid the spread of disease and reduce the number of people affected by it. | 7. Page 756, “What a tragedy that… precious time. ”| The effect of this sentence is to appoint blame to the delayed reaction time and the reason as to why there may be no cure for such a deadly disease.
| The ignorance of society was what helped lead to the disease spreading much more dramatically than what it should have. The author writes that the belief that only three minorities of life were susceptible to AIDS was pure ignorance and cost time that could have been used to prevent the disease from multiplying so intensely. | 8. Page 756, “Our species… from nature. ”| The effect of this phrase is to reemphasize just how weak and susceptible the human race is. | The use of the word “independence” suggests that there is a bond between us and the animal kingdom.
Our race has been unable to separate from nature because we are just as vulnerable as the animals are to contract a disease without a cure. Until we can sure this disease we will be nature’s slave. | 9. Page 756, “… and I suspect that… an AIDS vaccine will one day be produced. ”| The effect of this sentence is to connect the essay back to the first paragraph. | The author connects to the introduction by stating that technology will eventually be able to produce a vaccine. |