A Sweet Devouring by Eudora Welty

           Eudora Welty is a well-known American author. Throughout her career she has won many awards and honors. Some of these include: many O’ Henry Awards, National Book Awards, National Medal for Literature, and others.

            In this essay Welty writes with the purpose of explaining the love for books. This purpose was when she said, “The pleasures of reading itself ­— who doesn’t remember? — were like those of a Christmas cake, a sweet devouring” (Welty 247).  This quote shows her purpose, which is made obvious since it quotes the title of the essay in it. This purpose is also supported by the numerous examples that Welty brings up in the essay.

            Throughout it, Welty made many references to her childhood memories of reader. She described the books she has read, the ones she has received as presents, and her trips to the library to read books.

            With an audience of other book lovers, Welty makes sure to use a lot of pathos in her essay. All of her flashbacks in time show a lot of emotion. For instance, Welty writes, “I coasted the two new books home, jumped out of my petticoat, read (I suppose I ate and bathed and answered questions put to me), then in all hope put my petticoat on and rode those two books back to the library to get my next two” (Welty 248). This quote shows a lot of emotions when it comes to her love for books. There is a lot of anticipation and excitement shown. By adding the parentheses she adds little comments to what she is saying to show even more emotion. This makes the reader able to connect to what she is saying which makes her purpose more present.

            I don’t think Welty did a great job when it came to showing her purpose. For the most part she jumped around from example to example and I thought it veered away from her purpose more than it did support it.  

(A picture of books with a quote that I believe Welty lived by. Credit: kriscamealy.com)

The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

           Lewis Tomas, the author of this essay, is a physician and a novelist. He has attended Princeton and Harvard and has received the National Book award three times for his work. He is mostly known for his essays that he wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. 

           In this essay Thomas contemplates the idea of man being separate from nature. He goes on to talk about different parts of the body and nature, and how everything works together in a sense. Come the beginning of the book Thomas writes, “Man is embedded in nature” (Thomas 358). Then he goes on to support this claim. And this statement was the purpose of his essay. He wanted to explain how even though we feel as though we are separated from nature, we are closer and more connected than we think. The author explains this purpose well throughout his essay. Come the end of the essay you have a firm understanding of the point that Thomas was trying to make, mostly because of he rhetoric he uses.

            The most present of these rhetorical strategies is logos. Through out the essay Thomas uses a lot of facts and creates logical arguments. When talking about the mitochondria he states, “Thy turn out to be little separate creatures, the colonial posterity of migrant prokaryotes, probably primitive bacteria that swam into ancestral precursors” (Thomas 359). This quote exemplifies the amount of facts that the author knows and shows he is an expert. This creates a logical argument to support his purpose and it also adds to his credibility (ethos).

            It is because of these rhetorical strategies that Thomas is able to get his point across to scientist, who I believe to be the audience that he wrote this essay for.

(A picture of the food web to further illustrate Thomas's purpose of showing how all nature is connected. Credit: http://biology.tutorvista.com)

Corn-Pone Opinions by Mark Twain

            This essay was written by Mark Twain who is a novelist and humorous. He is a major icon when it comes to American literature. This essay was about how Mark Twain listened to a black slave give a sermon and how he learned an important lesson from it. The lesson that was taught is that we are a people that conforms to each other. All trends are caused because of a chain reaction between one person following a trend, then another person following them, and so on. And this was a purpose of his essay: to argue how there aren’t any individual ideas anymore. Everyone is influenced by what the majority is doing.

            This article, which was written for an audience that contemplates individualism, got its point across by using rhetorical strategies. One of the most prevalent of these was ethos. In the beginning of the essay, Twain establishes himself as the main character and the one who experienced all the events that took place in the essay. This adds to his credibility. Also, Twain uses a lot of reference in his essay including Shakespeare and political parties. This adds even further to the credibility of the essay.

            Then once Twain establishes his credibility he uses logic to explain the rest of the essay (logos). He makes many different logical arguments. One of which was discussing the trend of the hoopskirt. He explains that at first this was nothing. Then some nobody starting wearing one, and then another person saw this and starting wearing one, and a chain of events occurred until this skirt became a trend. This logic gives Twains essay a big backbone that supports his purpose.

            I believe Twain achieved his purpose well because of the rhetorical strategies he used. Because of that his argument was a good one and his audience will definitely listen.

(Picture of a quilted skirt, which is said to be the latest fashion trend. Credit: http://www.brooklynblonde.com)