Intro Paragraph Models for Skloot Analysis

Tonight I would like you to write an opening to your essay to bring to class tomorrow. I will not be grading it tomorrow, but I will want to take a quick look at your opening sentence and your hook. Try to use the professional example as a model, as I did for a hypothetical essay about the Ayn Rand commentary. (If you want to see the whole essay by Demby---which is NOT a five paragraph essay, by the way, it is in the Introduction to Rhetoric chapter we read last week.)

INTRO PARAGRAPHS-ETHOS, PATHOS, and LOGOS

Alarmist or Alarming Rhetoric?

by Tamar Demby

In an age when threats to life as we know it seem to grow too enormous to face, it becomes tempting to regard any danger as an apocalypse waiting to happen.  But however huge and urgent an incident appears, it is important to look at the big picture and calmly analyze the true risks of all responses.  Within the context of Japan’s struggle to avert a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture, Anne Applebaum, writing for the Washington Post, argues against any further expansion of nuclear power.  However, she undermines her own purpose by basing her argument on unsupported claims, relying on highly emotional language, and failing to establish her ethos as a credible authority on the issue.

A Proud Moment

by Jennifer LaMonte

Today it is easy to take space travel for granted.  It has been almost 44 years since Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong first touched down on the moon’s powdery surface while the world watched, spellbound by wonder, fear, and awe.  The novelist Ayn Rand, writing for her publication the Objectivist, argues that the 1969 launch was a triumphant symbol of all that we hold dear: individualism, freedom, and reason.  She achieves this purpose by basing her argument on concrete sensory details gathered from the launch site, utilizing grand and elevated imagery, and establishing her ethos with her eyewitness perspective.

REMEMBER that you are all operating under the assumption that Skoot's book is an effective piece of rhetoric. Later on, I will give you that task, but for the purposes of this, our first practice at RHETORICAL ANALYSIS, I am narrowing the guidelines a bit.