After rereading the essay by Southan, my opinion didn’t really change, but my view on the points made did. I still appreciate art and believe that there is a purpose to everything people do. During the first reading, I was very critical of the text and completely disagreed. I don’t necessarily agree now, but I have more of an understanding of what the author and the EA’s were trying to say. Instead of saying that art, among other things, is completely useless, the text was trying to covey that meaningless and nonsense things are a waste of time. I still believe that everyone has the right to be creative, but I understand Southan’s point that all art produced should be unique and moving. I also noticed that the EA’s actually want artists to help them draw in new people. Finding a purpose for art is a great way to compromise; people still get to enjoy the art they create, while also attracting people to an organization that saves lives. After just the first reading, I was very unsure of Southan’s opinion about art. First, he was a struggling artist himself and he had quotes to defend artists. It appeared that his opinion went back and forth. At times, it seemed that he totally agreed with EA’s and thought art was useless. Once I read the essay a second time, his opinion became more clear. He was initially supporting artists, but he began to understand the EA’s point. He saw that art could be used to help people, but duplication and the creation of meaningless art helps no one. The first time reading the text, there were a few words I didn’t understand. Although it’s always important to know the meaning of challenging vocab used in writing, these words weren’t significant to my understanding of the text. The only thing that changed was that I got a better understanding of the countryside they visited in the beginning in the text. The word ‘idyllic’ means happy or peaceful. This helps emphasis the life of the area they visited and why. Another word I learned the definition of was ‘subversive’. I found out that this word means disruptive or nonconforming. This helped me understand an idea on the fifth page much better. I now understand that doing altruistic deeds is both conforming to a situation, but disrupting expectations at the same time. I used dictionary.com to find these definitions. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/subversive