Use Of Reasoning With Her Audience example essay topic

Rhetorical Analysis Nancy Mairs "Body In Trouble" Nancy Mairs begins her essay by stating that in biblical times, physical and mental disorders were considered to signify possession by demons. She commences in such a way to draw her audience and to keep them tuned in. It is evident that Mairs realized her audience. The audience, being disabled persons, like herself, feminists, and even people who are interested in or have experience with the difficulties of her disease. The audience described here is the population of beings who will eventually read the essay. This essay will naturally adduce an audience of intellect due to its use of figurative language.

Mairs uses this figurative language to explain the difficulties of her disability. This language reflects her effort to reach the audience. Mairs' techniques for conveying her ethos and engaging readers' emotions assist with her explanatory project. The author Nancy Mairs establishes her credibility well. She proves knowlege ability of disabled persons and feminists by being one which concludes her to have experience. She is widely acclaimed for her autobiographical essays about her struggles with disabilities.

This essay, "Body In Trouble" characteristically confronts readers with blunt language that asserts feminist values. She also uses this language to display herself as a strong human being regardless of her situation. There are several aspects of he personality -as she conveys it here- that the audience can respond to positively. For example, Mairs says that she cannot use sharp objects because of her disability but uses metaphor to compare the last sharp object that she has as being her tounge. She asks the audience what a "cripple" like her is good for. She continues on to say that her keyboard is only waist high and that she can still use it to write books.

This a special talent she has and that not everyone can do but that she can do very well. In this essay, Mairs is seeking to explain her difficulties with dealing with a disability, that is depression, agoraphobia, and multiple sclerosis to which she has lost the use of her arms and legs. Her primary purpose in writing this essay is to get her readers to understand her disability and to sympathize with her and others like her. Mairs explains this through the use of anecdote, division into parts, analogy, reasoning, narrative, and example. She speaks of the bind women have found themselves in which gives them relatively little power. She refers to the "Malleus Malefic arum" and notes the saying, "All witchcraft comes from carnal Lust which is in Women insatiable".

Through the use of reasoning with her audience she displays the difficulties of being a woman, with all the stereotypes that men have given us. This is then used to explain that to be a crippled woman is twice as hard. Another example of her appeal to reason is her attempt to explain how people look at her. She tells us that she is a Catholic Worker, someone who works at the catholic church. Mairs then asks the question, "How can a woman identify herself as a Catholic Worker if she can't even cut up carrots for the soup or ladle it out for the hungry people queued up outside the kitchen door"?

This question is used to help the audience understand how society seems to rob someone who lacks physical capacity of moral efficacy. Mairs presents herself as a woman who talks about her experience being in a wheelchair. She gives an example of a specific experience when she went with her husband to a large resort to see the Dalai Lama. When the workshop participants were let into a narrow hallway she saw that now one even realized she was there. She felt invisible having to "roll to one side and hug a wall". This is ironic beacuse all these people, fourteen hundred of them were there to celebrate the beauty and sacredness of life but "not one of them seemed to think that any life was going on below the level of his or her own gaze".

This paragraph effectively engages the targeted audience through emotional appeal. It has made them think about their own life therefore triggering a connection between themselves and the writer which keeps them reading. Other examples of the emotional appeal she provides is the list of "dead" metaphors. These images convey an intense emotional power because they equate physical ability with positive moral equalities. Someone who is strong or in good physical condition can be considered a better person in these reasonings although often this is not true at all.

She also explains that wicked witches are always described as bent and misshapen and since she is bent and misshapen she is put in the same category as a witch. Not only ugly but wicked. There are several values that are inherent when she chooses to use the metaphor "childhood" and "imprisonment" for disability. This extensive use of figurative language is used to help deepen one's understanding of the difficulty of being disabled.

Mairs' essay is both intensely personal and conceptually abstract. She has offered a persuasive argument". Body In Trouble" has affected my thinking as well as many others. She wants people to accept that all people are different and to have respect for and sympathize with the unfortunate. In the end, her audience sees "eye to eye" rather than "eye to naval.".