What is the assignment? For this assignment we were asked to analyze a piece of writing called, "The Storm In Fragments." We then were assigned to write our own 1000 word rhetorical analysis essay using the different types of rhetorical devices.
Essay:
Kaylee Roche Lacee D Nisbett English 101-323 07 September, 2019 Terrible and Beautiful and Interesting What is more important, your happiness or pleasing others? In the article, “The Future Has An Ancient Heart” the author, Cheryl Strayed, successfully conveys her message through the use of personal narrative and her title as an author to persuade the reader to believe that your worth is not based on what others expect of you; your happiness and doing what you love is what matters most. She preaches to her audience, soon to be English major graduates, that it is important to make sure you do what you love in life, for yourself and not to meet the expectations of others. Strayed not only gives them hope for their future careers, but also speaks to anyone going through the struggle of wanting to feel important in this world. She uses hardships in her life to show the audience that not everyone may support what you do in life and you may go through some obstacles, but it is possible. Strayed displays the use of ethos in her work by using her status as an author to obtain credibility. Without her title as an author, her credibility would be questionable. Why should we believe her if she couldn’t even listen to her own advice? Ethos is an important aspect of a persuasive essay because the audience needs to believe the author in order for the author to successfully get the message across. Her boss didn’t believe in her reaching her goal. “‘All those years ago, who would’ve guessed we’d be here celebrating the publication of your novel?’ he asked when we embraced”(“The Future Has An Ancient Heart”). People in Strayed’s life never expected her to become an author since she didn’t get her degree and became a waitress. But because of her strong passion for writing, she never gave up on her dreams and met her goal of publishing her first novel. This shows the audience that Strayed had to work hard to get to where she is today, but it is not impossible. Her dedication to writing makes Strayed more credible since she never gave up on what she loved to do. This makes the audience have more hope for their own careers in the future. In addition, Strayed uses pathos to draw an emotional response from her audience by telling various stories of what she went through to get to where she is today. The author talks about the death of her mother right before she was supposed to obtain her PhD. It was awarded to her at her funeral ceremony. She described this as “terrible and beautiful and interesting”(“The Future Has An Ancient Heart”). This makes the reader feel sad and happy at the same time. By appealing to the audience’s sense of pity, the author can get some compassion from the audience further persuading them to believe the message that they should do what they love. You never know how much time you have left, so live life to the fullest. She went through ups and downs but she knew that writing was her happiness and she never lost sight of it. This was a touching part of her story that motivated her even more. Now, she knows that her mother is proud of her accomplishments and she can feel a sense of closure. Another example of pathos in Strayed’s essay is when she talks about how she lied about obtaining her english degree. On her journey to becoming an author, she went through some struggles; one of them being not actually receiving her degree in English and lying about it for six years.(“The Future Has An Ancient Heart”). Strayed felt the need to lie about it to feel like she had more value in this world, but soon realized that a degree does not necessarily give you more value. This further supports her message that your value is not based off of what others think of you. If you love what you are doing, that is all that really matters. If you are passionate and love what you do, with hard work you will get there and no one can make you feel like you are any less significant. The use of personal narrative enables the audience to relate to the author. Everyone goes through obstacles of their own. By including this in her writing she persuades the audience to believe that they will be okay if they choose to do what they love. Strayed uses personal narrative and attains credibility to effectively convey her message that doing what you love is more important than living up to the expectations of your peers. Rhetorical analysis is important in all forms of persuasive writing in order to connect with the audience and to get them to believe what you are saying is true. Appeals are used in all forms of communication whether we notice or not. When reading persuasive essays or even having and conversation, pick out the different forms of rhetorical appeals to determine if you should believe what the author or speaker is saying is true. Being able to identify these devices is an important skill to have in life so you can pick out the ways people are trying to convince you to believe them.
Works Cited Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (pp. 128-134). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Reflection:
I started off the essay by including a catchy hook. The hook I chose was a question to get the reader thinking a little bit. I crafted my thesis statement by listening to good examples of thesis’ in class. That helped me know what I should include in my thesis statement. I didn’t really do any type of planning. I took the feedback from the conferences from our first draft to compose my second draft. The conference helped me understand what I needed to include throughout the whole essay. Some changes I made was to the intro paragraph, the body paragraphs , and I added a conclusion. I didn’t really know how to do the conclusion without repeating myself. When I met with my professor, she helped me realize the importance of the different appeals and told me I should add something like that into the conclusion to leave the reader thinking about something. I added to the length of my body paragraphs and went more into detail about my topics. I added a hook to my intro and took some stuff out because my summary was too long. Comments from my peers helped me a lot as well. I got to fix small mistakes that I probably wouldn’t have caught myself. I reworded some sentences to make them flow better. What I learned about myself as a writer is that it takes me a long time to get my thoughts out and put together to fit the prompt. Next time I am going to make an outline of what I want to say in my essay. This will help me organize my thoughts. I also like to do this so that I don’t forget any good ideas I had in mind that I wanted to include in my essay. Some advice I would give myself two weeks ago when I first started this essay is to always include a hook and make sure my body paragraphs support my thesis.