Rhetorical Devices Anyone!

The passage below is from Last Child in the Woods (2008) by Richard Louv. Read the passage carefully. Then, in

a well-developed essay, analyze the rhetorical strategies Louv uses to develop his argument about the separation between people and nature. Support your analysis with specific references to the text.  DO NOT list logos, pathos or ethos as rhetorical devices.  Talk about how rhetorical devices are used to appeal to logos, pathos and ethos.  Here is a link to a list of rhetorical devices.  You need to know some of these for the success on the exam.  Study.  We have 6 weeks.  Learn 5 to 10 a week and you will be golden.  http://teachers.sduhsd.net/ppennock/ap%20resource%20packet.pdf

 

Researchers at the State University of New York at

Buffalo are experimenting with a genetic technology

through which they can choose the colors that appear

on butterfly wings. The announcement of this in

5 2002 led writer Matt Richtel to conjure a brave new

advertising medium: “There are countless possibilities

for moving ads out of the virtual world and into the

real one. Sponsorship-wise, it’s time for nature to

carry its weight.” Advertisers already stamp their

10 messages into the wet sands of public beaches. Cashstrapped

municipalities hope corporations agree to

affix their company logo on parks in exchange for

dollars to keep the public spaces maintained. “The

sheer popularity” of simulating nature or using nature

15 as ad space “demands that we acknowledge, even

respect, their cultural importance,” suggests Richtel.

Culturally important, yes. But the logical extension of

synthetic nature is the irrelevance of “true” nature—

the certainty that it’s not even worth looking at.

20 True, our experience of natural landscape

“often occurs within an automobile looking out,”

as Elaine Brooks said. But now even that visual

connection is optional. A friend of mine was shopping

for a new luxury car to celebrate her half-century of

25 survival in the material world. She settled on a

Mercedes SUV, with a Global Positioning System:

just tap in your destination and the vehicle not only

provides a map on the dashboard screen, but talks you

there. But she knew where to draw the line. “The

30 salesman’s jaw dropped when I said I didn’t want a

backseat television monitor for my daughter,” she told

me. “He almost refused to let me leave the dealership

until he could understand why.” Rear-seat and in-dash

“multimedia entertainment products,” as they are

35 called, are quickly becoming the hottest add-on since

rearview mirror fuzzy dice. The target market: parents

who will pay a premium for a little backseat peace.

Sales are brisk; the prices are falling. Some systems

include wireless, infrared-connected headsets. The

40 children can watch Sesame Street or play Grand Theft

Auto on their PlayStation without bothering the

driver.

Why do so many Americans say they want their

children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the

45 opportunities for them to watch it? More important,

why do so many people no longer consider the

physical world worth watching? The highway’s edges

may not be postcard perfect. But for a century,

children’s early understanding of how cities and

50 nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the

empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the

variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and

fields and water beyond the seamy edges—all that

was and is still available to the eye. This was the

55 landscape that we watched as children. It was our

drive-by movie.

Perhaps we’ll someday tell our grandchildren

stories about our version of the nineteenth-century

Conestoga wagon.

60 “You did what?” they’ll ask.

“Yes,” we’ll say, “it’s true. We actually looked

out the car window.” In our useful boredom, we used

our fingers to draw pictures on fogged glass as we

watched telephone poles tick by. We saw birds on the

65 wires and combines in the fields. We were fascinated

with roadkill, and we counted cows and horses and

coyotes and shaving-cream signs. We stared with a

kind of reverence at the horizon, as thunderheads and

dancing rain moved with us. We held our little plastic

70 cars against the glass and pretended that they, too,

were racing toward some unknown destination. We

considered the past and dreamed of the future, and

watched it all go by in the blink of an eye.