Jennifer Novak's WRIT 1122 Rhetorical Analysis
Cameron Bowen

In the rhetorical analysis assignment, students were asked to write a rhetorical analysis of a travel essay, choosing either an essay the class had previously read or an essay that students had founds on their own. Students were to imagine their audience to be a writing teacher at the college level. Specifically students were to analyze the essay they chose in terms of its audience, writer, text, and argument, as well as how the essay employed ethos, pathos, and logos. In addition, they were to discuss how the travel writing essay they chose used both identification and difference to persuade or make a point.

It has been said that travel and it really never matters to where ignites a flame of change within people, making them assess their values, beliefs and thoughts differently. Kristin Van Tassel, in The Places we Find Ourselves, utters a slightly philosophical commentary about the nature of people amidst chaotic, confusing circumstances, such as the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the devastation it brought to New Orleans, and how by traveling to new places and seeing and experiencing things you never have before, you can come to see yourself in a different light. Throughout her article, Van Tassel thoroughly employs the use of ethos, her ethical values which establish credibility via her own naivety and contemplation; pathos, her emotional appeals to her audience through the anecdotes about the people and the destruction she witnesses; and logos, her physical examples and logical reasoning, to effectively convey her message that even though you may occupy your place in life, you really never know who you are until your masks are unveiled, forcing you to reassess your role, accept your uncertainties and try to expand your limitations when you find yourself in a place unfamiliar.

Ethos is generally found in this article in the beginning, when Van Tassel is trying to make the reader identify with her and her pre-epiphany values. In the second paragraph she felt like she took a wrong turn when she, obviously bewildered at the scenario, led her students to a gay bar and felt rather lost. Most readers would probably be able to identify well with this, putting themselves in the same situation and feeling uncomfortable at such a venue. Whats more, this example could potentially be viewed as a lack of, or violation of, ethos in which this teacher, in [a] technical sense, was able to take her students to a place that is obviously quite contrary to her own ethical values. Another example of ethos appears in paragraph five, in which Van Tassel is relating her naivety and ignorance of mixed drinks and how her students henceforth cheerfully took it upon themselves to teach me. This somehow innocent school teacher captivates the audience here and allows them to trust her through her sheer openness to relate her personal choices and the audiences subsequent identification with her plight. They, like her students, want her to have fun and are beginning to understand how crucial travel is to opening up new values and experiences. Van Tassel here, through her demonstration of ethics (and lack thereof), not only asserts credibility but also gives the reader the understanding that she doubts her role as a teacher and needs to come to accept it as well as surpass her limitations.

Pathos is perhaps the rhetorical strategy found most commonly throughout Van Tassels essay. The anecdote about her encounter with the disoriented Lee certainly evokes emotion in the audience; he is displaced and lost in his own, changed city and, above all, he cannot read. The audience, although most likely not illiterate, can empathize with Lee and his plight as evidence of the destruction caused by Katrina and the personal growth and confusion accompanied by it. Upon discovering Lees illiteracy, she offers him encouragement, Its not too late You can still learn, just like she [Lees granddaughter] can. This emotional comment by the author suggests to the audience that even though she may offer him advice to overcome his disability and restraint, she herself is struggling to overcome her restrictions and find her niche, even coming to ask herself, What was my role, exactly, in this new territory? This rhetorical question asked by the author implies that, once she has found herself in this uncertain, distorted place, she no longer knows who she is or what her responsibilities are. By reflecting on the worst scenario of Lee via pathos, Van Tassel is able to communicate her message that one must try to overcome his or her challenges and discover what his or her role is, and, subsequently, who he or she is as a person once the signs have been translated and the masks come off. Van Tassels own personal journey, in an emotional parallel to Lees bewilderment and struggle, has been confusing, and, only when she finds herself in a place also filled with debris, confusion, and reflection, can she comprehend her true self her values, beliefs, and role within society.

Kristin Van Tassel uses logos mostly in references to the physical destruction of New Orleans after the hurricane. She craftily contrasts the scenario to her quiet hometown in the Midwest and claims that the city is disorienting. Again, these physical descriptions help the audience identify with her and accept her credibility, while provoking the overwhelming sense of loss, confusion and uncertainty in a place so foreign that it might as well be on the other side of the world. Like with ethos, occasionally, Van Tassel will employ a violation of logic altogether: Although she is the instructor, Van Tassel often remarks But the truth is, they were taking care of me. Just as she logically could not picture herself at a Drag-King show on New Orleans Bourbon Street, yet somehow ended up there anyway, she seems to find herself in a situation of role-reversal with her students, when technically, she is the teacher. The authors plays with logic stress the fact that she should know what she is doing and the role she is to play, yet, when thrown into an unknown world where all sense of judgment is skewed, she experiences ambivalence about her job and whether she is capable enough to be leading these students into vast, unknown territory with which even she herself is unfamiliar. Another potent example of logos is the section at the end of the essay when Van Tassel is in the mask store. She admires the uniqueness of each mask and, when trying one on, comes to the logical conclusion that she felt familiar but strange. This example she gives strengthens her argument that travel experiences can throw one out of ones comfort zone and into a strange uncertainty of emotion, just as she is in charge of these students and yet sometimes feels so helpless and out of control. She notes that the masks are merely a cover, a label, a mark that the person underneath is still dazed and confused, meandering through experience after experience and wandering aimlessly among signs that dont always make sense."

Van Tassel, as she leaves the mask store, realizes that travel has a way of showing us how close we all live to the boundaries of what we know. This argument is essentially saying that every day we live our lives under the cover and protection of a mask, but as soon as an unexpected storm hits and we find ourselves in a new place, everything that we know is turned upside-down. Often, we are unsure of what to do and come to test our limitations in adapting to the new surroundings. In this essay, author Kristin Van Tassel argues this point through the establishment of ethical values (or lack thereof), the emotional appeals to the audience, and the logical (or illogical) conclusions that she draws, all through her own personal journey in discovering how to lead her students through the battered New Orleans, test her limitations in her encounter with Lee and takes off her own concealing mask as she left the Mardi Gras mask store. Van Tassel comments subtly in this essay that people should all take journeys similar to this, and it doesnt matter to where, in order to truly discover who they are as people, what their values and beliefs are, and how they can challenges their restraints. This is communicated effectively by the author through the audiences identification with her, her system of judgment, her empathy with Lee, and her eventual realization of what her role, as forced upon her by travel and experience, is. Yet of course, Van Tassel ultimately says that no matter how you go about traveling, you will never be able to fully understand yourself or the places in which you find yourself because this world is a place we are still merely learning to recognize.

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