Introduction
Rhetoric refers to the study of how speakers and writers use words in their presentations and writings to influence their influence. Therefore, a rhetoric analysis refers to an essay that splits a work of non-fiction into different parts and then elucidates how the different parts work jointly to create a certain impact. These impacts could be entertaining, persuasive, or informative. Rhetorical analysis can also be conducted of a primarily visual arguments such as an advertisement or a cartoon, or even a speech that has orally been performed. A person who writes these primary sources can be referred to as a rhetorician. The analysis should encompass the goals of the rhetorician, the tools and techniques they use by citing the examples of those techniques and their effectiveness in relation to the general goals of the primary work. Writing a rhetoric analysis does not involve the writer taking sides of whether they agree or disagree with the argument in the piece of work, however, it majorly deals with elaborating on how the rhetorician presents his argument and whether the tools and techniques used in this particular piece of work best serve the purpose for which they were intended.
This piece of work – the anxiety of the long-distance mediator – talks about the importance of mediation. The articles explain the effects of using meditation as a means of solving certain issues of life. The rhetorician explains the meaning and importance of using meditation when one is in agony. The writer gives evidence of trying other forms of treatment and solutions to problems that are related to stress, which he relates as religious. He assures the readers that even after trying these particular remedies, things did not work out for him until he resorted to meditation. The writer’s main intention in this article is to persuade the audience on trying a new thing – meditation – in trying to release the stress that they go through, or those that they have lived with and would wish to drop. He advises that the other methods are not permanent solutions to this problem.
The writer indicates these different types of remedies when he was in agony. He says he tried sex, exercise, drugs, psychotherapy, creative expression, and even ADD medication, which all failed to work. With the citation of these remedies, the writer tries to persuade the readers that the various remedies a person might seek in relation to reducing stress in terms when they are in agony, would not yield any fruit. Not unless they resorted to meditation, which he explains was the last resort that he tried and proved to work out for him.
The audience
The audience refers to the people that the writer of article sends his message to them. They are either listeners or readers of the pieces of work by these authors. The audience of this article is the people who are confronted with stress, who are having stress, are in agony, and have tried several remedies to solving their problems. However, despite the efforts of this audience to have their problems solved, this audience might not have thought about attending a meditation retreat as means of having their agony reduced or even eliminated. The writer talks to this audience by sharing with them his own experience on with this retreat and how things worked out for him after attending it. Before the writer was advised on taking this option, he never thought of it as an option, even though it worked out from him. Therefore, he requests his audience to try this and find out for themselves if it worked.
The persona
The persona in this article is a person who has been living in agony for a long time, depressed and in a lot of stress for a long time. He tries working out several ways to get rid of this status that he has lived with. After some advise, he decides to for a meditation retreat where he spends sometime and after advices and readings from the retreat, he is finally relieved from the depression, which he never thought would leave him, after trying several methods such as medication among other methods.
Ethos
The ethos used in this article is the reference the author makes of Daniel Ingram, who he says his major means of making a living was from being an emergency doctor. Nevertheless, despite this occupation, Ingram had a passion in teaching advanced meditation.
Analogy
The writer’s situation has much similarity with most of the readers. Most people, in fact, almost all have some stresses in life that they have always struggled to eliminate, but their different intervention strategies have failed to work out. They have been advised by others on different ways of reducing stress and handling themselves when in agony, but have never thought of the option of either attending a retreat or reading articles related to meditation. The writer of this article tried it for the first time and it worked out for him, despite several constrains, which he later learnt were part of the process he would go through; fearfulness, dejection, and the desire for deliverance.
Conclusion
The article is persuasive in nature. The writer uses techniques such as giving testimony and referring to Ingram as a living proof. He persuades his audience into buying the idea that meditation is the best remedy to stress relieving in times when people are in agony. He disputes other forms, including the most trusted such as medication and psychotherapy, saying he tried them out, but they never yielded any results. Therefore, the tools that the writer uses in this article to pass his message to the audience rightfully and successfully serve their purposes. Any reader who shares the same state as the writer was in before attending the retreat conducted by Ingram would obviously take this option of meditation to help them relieve themselves.
