Free Rhetorical-In-Practice Project And Essay Sample

After reading Anne Waldman’s Gossamurmur, I was inspired to write a literary piece that would be synonymous with hers in terms of style. I therefore had to engage in an extensive rhetorical analysis so to come with an exemplary piece that would be characteristic of well-defined rhetorical choices in regards to the language, the audience and the genre of the piece. After the comprehensive rhetorical choices analysis, I decided to construct a poem whose focus was on two aspects of human life that are often considered to be correlated. These are loneliness and love. People who do have partners of lovers are generally assumed lonely and in this particular essay, I decided to adopt a similar assumption but also show that it is not love that is related with loneliness but it is rather obsession.
My major goal in writing this piece was to communicate a message about how humanity plunges itself into problems that are quite avoidable and how the failure to let things go can detriment one’s progress and hinder future achievements in life. In particular, I wanted to show obsession in the disguise of love is dangerous how this obsession with already lost or passed things can have a bad effect on one’s emotional wellbeing. Just like Anne Waldman’s goal in Gossamurmur, which is to defend poetry from manipulation by “Imposters” and “Deciphers”, my goal is to defend love from its confusion with obsession. The persona in my poem is not in love, he is simply obsessed.
The purpose of almost every literary piece is to pass along a message. The effectiveness of the message delivery is strongly dependent on the style used to deliver this message. In Anne Waldman’s “Gossamurmur”, she adopts a particular style that helps to deliver the message to the audience in an almost perfect way. This is in fact why I previously stated that I wanted to write a piece quite similar to hers, because of her impeccable style amongst other exquisite features of her work.
While Alderman’s uses s predominantly ethos appeal to connect to the audience, I on the other hand decided to use the pathos and the logos appeal because I thought that they would be more effective in the delivery of the message that I wanted to pass along to my audience.
The pathos appeal is clearly brought out in the persona’s description of his love situation. The personal in my poem is an obsessed individual who languishes in emotional turmoil after a lover has left him. He complains about how his life has taken a turn for the worst since his lover left and he how he now feels “lost”. He talks about his loneliness in explicit details to gain the audience’s or the reader’s sympathy. This way, the poem essentially tries to appeal to the audience by reaching out to their emotions.
The pathos appeal is also used in the poem to reach out to the audience. The personal goes into concrete details about the effects of his split with his lover on his life. Not only does he talk about his current emotional situation, he tries to show that this situation is a direct consequence of his split from his lover. He goes into concrete details to show how the split has had an effect in his life, and in this way, he is trying to appeal to the audience using the reason approach he shows that the reason for a particular situation (his loneliness) is another situation that happened in the past (split form his love).
However, in spite of the use of these appeals, the major outcome is that the persona still comes out as a love crazed and obsessive individual.
The other critical rhetorical choice that I made in regards to this literary piece was in reference to the audience. I figured that the major theme of my poem is something that is applicable to most members because most people have at one instance in their lives have been in a similar situation love or obsession situation. This is indeed the main audience of my piece. I wanted to reach out to this audience and show them that there is a difference between love and obsession. The persona in the poem is obsessed with a long lost lover. He has allowed his feelings to tag along with him even after his lover has left and this is reason why he is in an emotional turmoil and lonely. If the persona were truly in love, he would have understood that maybe the break up was for the better and he would have taken steps to try to move away from the situation and continue with his life. However, his obsession cannot allow him and he has nothing else to do but cry over lost things. The audience is therefore advised to not be like the persona.
The other rhetorical aspect that was utilized in my poem was that of simple language. I figured that to communicate well with the audience and that message was understandable even the laymen of the society, I used a very simple language.
In conclusion, it is fair to state that the poem credibly communicates to the audience the message that it is intended to communicate. Using several distinguishable rhetorical choices, that include, language, style and audience, the poem is able to pass along the message effectively.