Rhetorical Analysis
So what? So what if I drive my car to my neighbor’s house instead of walking? So what if I leave the water running when I brush my teeth? So what if I buy make up and food that has palm oil in the ingredients? What difference could my little footprint really have? A lot. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman writes a column on the alarming rate in which our natural recourses and spectacular wild life is decreasing. In the day and age of gasoline guzzlers, unrecycled recyclable waste, and poaching, Friedman points out that humans “will become just another bad biological experiment” (Friedman). The Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award recipient and Oxford scholar appeals to pathos and uses juxtaposition to convey to his reader the imperativeness of not waiting a second longer to do something about saving our planet from the only real monsters there are: ourselves.
Friedman uses juxtaposition to convey the state our world is in. He compares the real world to the world of the screen that today’s youth lives in. He strengthens his argument by making comparisons that everyone can relate to such as saying “dumping Amazon words for Amazon.com words”. This hits home with the reader as it makes the reader evaluate priorities: is internet shopping more important than our earth?
In this column, the writer appeals to pathos. The reader’s emotions are tapped into when they consider the actual state of our planet. Through facts that make the reader think and the talk about the children of the world, the reader is forced to see the errors in their own ways. The nonchalant tone Friedman uses when he says “O.K, so you don’t care that your kids may never see an elephant” implies that the attitude of humans have become this unconcerned with the wellbeing of the planet we call home.
Things To Do:
- each paragraph needs claim
- use transition from claim
- after claim come in with evidence
- use transition after evidence
- strength analysis; what is the effect on the reader
- increase substance of paragraphs
- change intro claim to include logos as well
- transition to each new paragraph
- citations
- cry