Rhetorical Analysis and Reflection Essay

Overview

Read the essays on the list below. Then, in an essay of about 800 of your own words, analyze the way in which one of the texts utilizes deliberate rhetorical strategies to create an argument. Your essay needs to contain a persuasive thesis that it develops and supports through the use of evidence from the text that you are analyzing.

Required Reading

Booker T. Washington, “The Struggle for an Education” (Chapter 3 of Up from Slavery)
Frederick Douglass, “Learning to Read and Write” (Chapter 7 of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave)

The essay must be 800 of your own words. No additional research is required, but it is encouraged. The essay should be double-spaced and in 12-point Times New Roman font.

Process

The first step is to decide which of the essays you desire to analyze. Then, take a look at the following factors:

· What is the rhetorical situation? (the relationship between text-audience-author)
· How are rhetorical appeals used? (such as pathos, logos, and ethos)
· What are the most characteristic/frequent rhetorical devices used by the author?

Develop your ideas as an argument about how various rhetorical interactions within the text strengthen or weaken it. You need not look at all rhetorical devices (that would be too big a project), but you should stay focused.

Sample Thesis: Douglass’s use of vivid metaphors and imaginative allusions helps establish the truth of his central idea that literacy and freedom are intimately bound.

When you write the thesis for your essay, it should have the two elements contained in the one above: 1) an expression of the main idea in the piece and 2) an explanation of how that main idea is expressed.

Purpose

The purpose of this essay is to further hone your ability to use the language conventions appropriate for an academic and professional audience. It includes, moreover, learning about how rhetorical features contribute to the development of an idea. It includes, in other words, practice not only in what kind of language to use for an educated audience but also experience in how to deploy that language for persuasive effect.

Audience

The audience for this essay is a group of educated people interested in your analysis of one of the texts above.