How Urban Legends Work

Pulliam, Wilton, D01438200

Professor: Lori Henson

Summary: How Urban Legends Work?

By Tom Harris

A Summary of “How Urban Legends Work”, Mr. Tom Harris came with a popular story that was folklore and that allegedly true and believable. If a story is told by one person and another person tells the same so on and so on, by the time the tenth person has told the story. We can imagine how this story will evolve. These stories are believed by a lot of people to be truth because they are spoken with conviction Tom Harris gave example on how these have no moral relation to them but have been used for amusement. Tom Harris mentioned the information superhighway which has been the culprit for folklores that seem to be truth. These have been passed on, thus how it evolves in to this tale. I have been receiving text message from other unknown people the notions I should pass this information to the next unsuspecting person. I never do, just delete it. Mr. Harris stated in our text that “Thematically, urban legends are all over the map, but several persistent elements do show up again and again. Typically, urban legends are characterized by some combination of humor, horror, warning, embarrassment, morality or appeal to empathy.”1 (McWhorter, pp. 515-516) He also make it a point in examining the Transmission of these legends to that of how our brain can somehow transmit a single command in a fraction of a nano second. He also warned us of how we can be duped. So we should always do own on research on story.

1. McWhorter, K. T., McGrath, J. L., Smith, a. D. College Reading and Writing, 3rd Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781256084051