Rhetorical Analysis Of The Logic Of Stupid Poor People

describing how outsiders are poorer and unable to have the funds for the luxuries that

The ultimate goal of pathos is to emotionally impact the readers in a way that leaves the stories ever-present in their minds for months or even years to come. Pathos is conveyed through the depictions of hardship, poverty, and loneliness faced by Suitcase Lady and multiple characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’. From broken dreams and complete isolation to extreme poverty, the characters are able to connect with the audience through feelings of sadness and pity. Isolation, delusion, and poverty are the traits of characters that are key to evoking emotional and sorrowful reactions from the readers.

Ethos is an appeal to ethics, which gives the author credibility to persuade their attended audience. For instance, both Lukianoff and Haidt give a little insight about who they are, “Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars.” (Lukianoff and Haidt). Using this rhetorical strategy to start their argument off was a strong approach to persuading their attended audience because it provides credibility to the readers to prove to them that the authors know what they’re talking about and it makes the argument much more effective. Another example of ethos that the authors provide is, “Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them… But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way… A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes

In “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society”, a chapter from book called Illiterate America (1985), the author Jonathan Kozol highlights that society cannot continue to sustain if we all neglect 60 million Americans who suffer from illiteracy. Kozol develops his claim by utilizing logos and pathos on describing the hardships that illiterates experience on a daily basis including their political rights. His purpose is to inform non-illiterates about the kind of life that illiterates go through, in order to bring the awareness on illiteracy. Kozol establishes sympathy relationship towards illiteracy and intended audience are two types of non-illiterate Americans who are not aware on suffering of illiterates and who blames illiterates without

Democracy has always been threatened by illiteracy. There are a few ways in which democracy has been threatened by illiteracy. These ways are, people forging a vote, not understanding instructions on medication, and traveling out to the streets. These three things are a huge problem for illiterates. In order to prevent illiteracy one must open themselves to the world and learn about democracy. As James Madison stated, “A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives” (Kozol 114).

Pathos is used in order to link the essay with the reader’s emotions and ethos is used to show the writers moral character. For example, pathos is used when Kozol speaks to a student of a Bronx high school, “Think of it this way,” said a sixteen-year-old girl. “If people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone…how would they feel?...I think they’d be relieved.” (Kozol 205) This part of the essay really made me feel sad for this girl who lives in a society where she has grown up feeling like now one cares about her or others of her race.

Bringing awareness to poverty is important, and this essay has done a fine job in doing so. Not only does it touch on poverty but also on passing judgment on individuals when we really don’t know what they could be going through. When Scheller describes how the children at school react to others who don’t have much, it causes me to think about how blessed the majority of the population in America really is and also provokes the question, what can we do to help those in need of what we like to call “basic necessities”?

I wholeheartedly endorse what Cottom calls “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, that poor people buy status symbols to survive in this world. She demonstrates that, as a middle class black girl, her family had a way of turning the tables in their favor in multiple aspects in order to supply their needs and wants. Poor people buy expensive items, sometimes depriving themselves of their other needs, just for the respect of others. These items are 21st-century status symbols, they can single-handedly determine the fate of your everyday encounters. The author uses personal experiences to support her argument, persuasively changing your entire perspective and broadening your mind to another individual’s lifestyle.

Since the story uses a certain object, the Jacket, as the meaning of several issues, it primarily focuses on the narrator's poverty-stricken family. First of all, an example of the poverty is demonstrated when the narrator complains that the jacket "was so ugly and big that I knew I'd have to wear it a long time"(paragraph 3). It is clear that his lack of money was a problem in which he

The author uses pathos very frequently throughout the text to get her point across to the audience. In the text, Helen Keller mentions that, “For New York is great because of the open hand with which it responds to the needs of the weak and poor.” This quote demonstrates Keller's point that people in New York are a champion in helping so people of New York should want to give and help the needy, which carries an emotional appeal. In addition, Helen Keller says that, “The men and women for whom I speak are poor and weak in that they lack one of the chief weapons with which the human being fights his battle. But they must not on that account be sent to the rear. Much less must they be pensioned like disabled soldiers.” This also carries a very emotional point because she uses a metaphor

I liked bell hook’s essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”. Bell assesses the light in which higher class people view the poor or lower class. Bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins grew up in a small Kentucky town where her father worked as a janitor for the local post office. As one of seven children she was taught that money and material possessions did not make her a better person but hard-work honesty and selflessness determined character. Her hard work landed her acceptance into Stanford University. Although she received various scholarships and loans, her parents worried that she would not have enough for books and supplies or emergency funds. Regardless of this, belle went on to earn a Ph.D. Her experiences and education earned her a very good reputation and even an authority writing critiques on popular culture and diversity (hooks 431-432). She uses ideas in her essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, that stem from her own personal experiences with poverty to add credibility to her writing, as well as examples from pop culture and mass media to demonstrate how these representations portray the lower class in ways that radiate negative stereotypes. She wrote the essay because she saw how the poor had many assumptions made about them. It wasn’t until college thought that she made that discovery. She discovered how unjustly they were represented due to the

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the author of “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” writes about her life experiences and the inequality that she was able to overcome because of the example of her mother and how she was able to obtain access to opportunities that would otherwise be not available to her. Her argument in her article is that how an individual will dress and act makes a difference in what opportunities he or she will be offered. Although everyone would agree that they would hire the best looking person for a job to represent their company, she only declares about the black community. The author of this article, Ms.Cottom has many fatal errors that make her argument invalid and occasionally contradicting herself. In theory, this article was supposed to explain that poor people buy luxury items to fit in, but on the contrary, next she states that this still may not work if the individual happens to be black. In reality, this article is not about being poor; this article is about being discriminated for being black.

The goal of this style is to be able to convince the readers that your statements are better and more valid than anybody else’s. There are three categories for the means of persuasion which are; Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Thoreau uses these means pf persuasion very well throughout his essay to convince his audience.

The circumstance surrounding her addresses concerning poverty is where the author makes an appeal to pathos. She states,“the poor

For instance in the excerpt written by Jane Addams, she uses a lot of rhetoric when talking about the necessity for social settlements. In this excerpt there is one rhetoric in particular that stands out, which is pathos. Pathos stirs up feeling of sorrow, sympathy, and pity and that's exactly what Jane Addams does. Jane Addams put as lot of feeling into this piece of writing and that definitely helps build up her argument. When you read this you can get a