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Melanie Moreno

Professor Massie

ENGL- 1302.IN1

February 17, 2019

The Sanctuary of School

The Sanctuary of School is an article written by Lynda Barry, that discusses a common

problem in society. Lynda Barry speaks on her life as a kid, in a neglectful home; it was school

that made her feel welcomed. Barry goes through speaking about how art in school, was a way

she coped with her emotions. She speaks on the governments funding plans for cutting fine arts

programs as if they were unnecessary, and thoroughly explains how that impacts children. Using

persuasive methods of ethos, pathos, and logos as well as literary devices to make her own story

much more effective to the reader, along with her personal experience and background, Lynda

Berry completes her argument against cutting fine arts programs.

In the excerpt Berry uses a big series of ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade her reader to

believe cutting arts programs is wrong. Using pathos to explain her own personal story,

beginning when she was 7 years old leaving home brings the audience into pity. A quote from

the reading itself states “In a perfect world my absence at home would not have gone unnoticed.”

Berry shows emphasis here on how the world isn’t perfect, and a 7 year old child leaving home

is now something that is unnoticed to her stressed parents. As well as using Ethos for her own

credibility when telling her own story, and the way she set up her argument. Before mentioning

the issue at hand, she lets the reader know why she is one to speak on this subject, and gaining

the readers trust in Berry because of her personal experiences. Towards the end of the article,

Barry closes off her Argument by using pathos; with her last paragraph stating “Mrs. Sane asked
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us to please stand, face the flag, place our right hands over our hearts and say the pledge of

allegiance. Children across the country do it faithfully. I wonder now when the country will face

its children and say the pledge right back.” This not only gives common people a sense of how

passionate this subject is, but it guilt trips anyone behind these fine art cuts.

Berry used many forms of literary devices to bring her own story to life, as well as make

it more effective. She starts off in her second introductory paragraph sharing a memory of her

and her brother watching television with no sound, to not wake their family as they slept on the

couch. Berry then continues using the phrase “sound off” to represent different aspects of her

story. With the quote from the article “Nothing moved and nobody was in the street. It was as if

someone had turned the sound off on the world.” One can understand how Berry was using

personification to emphasize the quiet of the night, and how a 7 year old year should not be alone

at night on the streets by using her previous memory of a television with n sound. She continues

using this phrase as repetition going deeper into the story; when she explains how her absence

was unnoticeable to her parents she then continues her reasoning and states “ the high levels of

frustration, depression, and anger in my house made my brother and me invisible. We were

children with the sound turned off.” Berry uses this repetition to not only emphasize, but also for

a reader comprehension of how neglected children feel as if they don’t matter. She used an

example of a television with no sound, and used it in sentence fragments to show different

feeling or tone. She then compares herself to kids who don’t have fine arts programs, as they

learn to deal with coping on their own. She states in her article “ we leave them to learn from the

blind eye of a television, or to the mercy of “a thousand points of light” that can be as far away
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as the stars.” This metaphor emphasizes for the reader how much harder it is for other kids to

have to cope with life by themselves, persuading the reader to join the cause.

Lynda Berries personal experiences are what drive this article to be attention grabbing

and understandable. She speaks on how her family was struggling with financial crisis, and how

much it affected her, even as young as 7 years old. She found to love school with a passion, and

snuck out just to arrive at her happy place. As soon as she steps foot on school grounds, the tone

of the story shifts. In the article it states “I didn’t know why I was walking to school in the dark.

I didn’t think about it. All I knew was a feeling of panic, like the panic that strikes kids when

they realize they are lost. That feeling eased the moment I turned the corner and saw the dark

outline of my school at the top of the hill.” It is understood that Barry as a 7 year old, coming

from a neglected home, woke up with anxiety attacks, and snuck out to school. Seeing the school

is what eased her pain; She then ran into the janitor, office workers, and teachers; who all

welcomed her with warmth. When running into her own teacher she feels a sense of relief not

recognized until 28 years later. Explaining how most neglected children feel towards school, an

article from the article stating “I was with my teacher, and in a while I was going to sit at my

desk, with my crayons and pencils and books and classmates all around me, and for the next six

hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and stable world.” Berry uses this feeling

of finally being at ease to then explain what art did for her. She explains how her teacher let

children draw when they seemed to be having bad days, and it caused major impact.

Berry used a very strategic set up of her article to persuade readers with her personal

experiences, giving the excerpt even more gravitational pull to see where the story will lead. Her

ingenious repetition and use of literary devices created a emphasis to the feeling, as well as
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created tone for the reader to better understand how neglected children feel. Overall Barry

successfully spoke up for neglected children like her who rely on school for a safe and warm

home.
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Work Cited

Barry, Lynda “The Sanctuary of School” The New York Times, January 8th 1992