Rhetorical skills enable speakers to convince the audience about the topic being discussed or the point being made. There are three artistic tools for rhetorical presentation; ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos or ethical appeal entails the speaker’s use of personal character or credibility to convince the listeners. More precisely, ethos is used to show that the speaker is a credible source of information about the topic being presented. In most cases, ethos is achieved by demonstrating experience and being a superstar. On the other hand, pathos is used to invoke patience sympathy or trigger particular feelings in the audience during the presentation (Killingsworth 26). In an illustration, the speaker can use words to make the audience feel sympathy for a particular person or group compel the listeners to take an action. The third rhetorical device, logos, involves citing statistics, facts, historical and literal analogs to express inward thought and support point about a particular subject. Words spoken by authorities to support an idea can also act as logos. In this essay, there is a detailed rhetorical device analysis in Flannery O’Connor’s masterpiece” A Good Man is hard to find” using historical criticism model.
Ethos
Ethos the writing style that draws the portrait of character and personality using the structure of sentences and tone. By assessing the words that the author uses, it is possible to determine his background. In light of this, O’Connor presents herself in the way that inspires trust thereby making the audience believe in her. First, O’Connor’s credibility is achieved through her origin and capability of writing about personal experiences in the South. In Particular, she was one of the most popular authors of Southern gothic fiction style and most of her work entails the ability to bring the picture of people and happenings of the American South during the time. Therefore, when she describes the family life aspects and the lifestyle of the family in the South, she can be trusted. In an illustration, with grandmother’s nostalgia, O’Connor creates a picture of the days when plantations were widespread in the South. With a vivid description of grandmother and her experiences, the audience can agree that she knows a lot about the history of the region, hence can write about their life encounters. For instance, O’Connor also presents the grandmother as manipulative, fussy and old-fashioned matron of the American south, a calcification of Southern womanhood. Also, each of the family members is rude to the grandmother, which represents the old stereotype of the American south.
Pathos
O’Connor appeals to the emotions of the audience using the picture of the life of the family and its unexpected end. For example, the family is significantly small and grandparents are directly involved in the affairs of their children and grandchildren. People spend their free time traveling to see friends and extended family members, stopping on the way to eat and having little squabbles. Interestingly, despite living ingenuously, a family meets a brutal end. The unfolding of the events that lead to the family’s demise triggers sympathy among the audience.
Moreover, from the beginning, Grandmother presents the misfit’s lack of guidance and the primary motivation for killing people; “Here this fellow calling himself a The Misfit a loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what he says to people. Just read it. I won't take my children in any direction where such loose criminal is.” In this case, grandmother’s statements are a form of logos because they prompt the audience to fear for the family. Specifically, despite being ridiculous, they are a stern warning to the family that they must brace for the inevitable confrontation of the criminal in case they opt to go on with their vacation option. The author says. A feeling of hopelessness is triggered among the audience when The Misfit seems to understand the Bible similar to the old woman and uses it to argue against real-life application of her Biblical knowledge. The audience’s feeling of depression is reinforced by the experience of the shooting of the grandmother.
O’Connor also triggers humor among the audience using personalized descriptions such as “the mother was a young woman with a broad face and as innocent as cabbage tied around with a green handkerchief with two points on top like the ears of the rabbit”(Mitchell, 351). June star’s statement that grandmother could not opt to stay at home even for a million dollars because she is afraid she could miss something is also humorous
Logos
The use of logos occurs towards the end of the story. In particular, O’Connor uses the moral codes of the Misfit and the Grandmother to demonstrate how their beliefs influence their actions. Her moral code is based on Christianity but does not have a proper foundation for believing in the code. In the end, O’Connor reveals the weak and inconsistent moral code of the grandmother. By contrast, the misfit is not only consistent but also strong in his moral code. He describes the disproportionate punishment for crimes committed, even when the crime hardly matters in the end. As opposed to the grandmother who accepts the Christianity doctrines without question, the Misfit lives with curiosity in the religion by questioning the manner in which Christians should follow their doctrines. Ideally, the Misfit lives with his belief that religion is pointless” it is not pleasure but meanness” (O’Connor 941). The grandmother pleads for mercy by bringing topics about Mercy and Jesus Christ to appeal to the safer side of Misfit but it turns out to be an inappropriate approach to save her life. Instead of sympathizing with her the Misfit picks the thread of her moral code to discount the argument, saying that Christ threw everything off balance by raising the dead, and rather than taking stock in Jesus Christ, he opted to give life to the fullest by acting in a mean way.
In an illustration, when the grandmother claims that “Maybe Jesus didn’t raise the dead”, the Misfit hits the ground with his fist and said” I was not there because if I had been there, I would be of known and would not be like this”, The audience understand that the words “you are one of my children” cannot save the woman because it is forged out of fear of death (O’ Connor 948). By failing to convince the Misfit about the morality of Christian codes, which is a religion that is significantly old, the audience is convinced that the grandmother’s negotiation for freedom using Christian teachings cannot save her life because she lacks a proper foundation for them.
Conclusion
In the whole, with historical criticism theory, it is evident that O’Connor succeeds ethos, logos, and pathos in her work “A good man is hard to find” In ethos, the author convinces the audience that she is credible by presenting the picture of the lives of the American south in the 1950s vividly. Pathos is achieved by triggering humor at the beginning and depression and sorrow at the end of the story. Lastly, O’Connor uses logos in the end when the grandmothers plead for life fails as a result of her inability to convince the Misfit using the Christian doctrines
.Works Cited
Killingsworth, M J. Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 200
Mitchell, Ken. The Wascana Anthology of Short Fiction. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1999
O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Short Story. Place of publication not identified: HarperCollins Canada, 2015
