This week's assignment is to "contain a question, observation or conclusion linking the online readings about poetics to the monuments." My question is, "How can we use poetics and rhetoric to create an abject monument to anorexics that are prevented from seeking treatment due to the lack of coverage by the insurance industry?" I will draw on Aristotle's treatise on poetics to come up with some answers. According to Aristotle, the use of tragedy is more persuasive than the use of history due to the universality of the tragic theme. The most important element of a tragedy is the "plot." An effective tragedy has a plot that "depends on a tightly constructed cause-and effect chain of actions ¹" consisting of a beginning, or incentive moment, a middle, or climax, and an end, or resolution. A series of devices are used within a tragedy to increase its effectiveness. This series starts with the anagnorisis, or a change in the protagonist's way of thinking, that brings about the dianoia, or recognition of that change, and culminates with the catastrophe, or the final "scene of suffering ²."

In our abject monument, the tragedy that we will relate will be that of the nature of anorexia, the scope of its victims and the lack of financial support from the insurance companies that prevents the victims from seeking treatment. By concentrating on the universal instead of the particulars of a specific biography of one of the victims, we will change the image of anorexia from one of vanity to that of a diagnosed disease. We will also make the audience realize that if the insurance companies can withhold support in this situation that they could withhold support for any type of treatment. The plot will revolve around the education of the audience as to the nature of this disease and the financial predicament of the victims. The incentive moment will be induced the by the exploration of anorexia and its victims. The anagnorisis will be realized with the recognition that anorexia is not just a matter of vanity, but is a physical and psychological condition and the recognition of the obstacles to treatment that are created by the insurance companies . The anagnorisis will climax with the dianoia in the realization that lives are lost for lack of money that insurance companies should provide. The catastrophe shown will be the unnecessary loss of so many lives to a treatable disease.