Rhetorical Analysis: The Death Of The Funeral Business

At the beginning of the course I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was my first year in college and my first English class of the year. In High school, English classes worshiped the 5 paragraph essay format, and this format spontaneously disappeared in English 101. Instead of the 5 paragraph format, we were introduced to writing about the text instead of the topic. Our papers weren’t structured as 5 paragraphs as much as length in pages. The texts we were introduced to were focused on rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis is an essay that breaks down a work into pieces and explains how these pieces fit together to give off a certain effect, such as persuasion. The papers we were doing were are interpretative but based on rhetorical analysis.
“Hingston opens up with getting a letter from one of her relatives discussing the cost of reserving plots. One thing that could be motivating Hingston to write the essay the way she did was how death is effecting her life and how she is planning on being cremated when she dies. Hingston states, “A traditional American funeral cost $8,300 vs. $1,400 for cremation” (38). Money is a big motivator in our society and unless you’re rich, no one wants to spend a lot of money especially on a funeral.” When I read it now it just looks like a summary of a part of the text with a quote in it. The background information is important but discussing the text and talking about the strategies is even more so. During the revision period I focused a lot more on the strategies and the text itself. “Hingston talks about how people value money so much that they have to show their status even after death. “where models range from a $650 bare bones casket to a $17,950 bronze number so gorgeous that I’m tempted to climb in” (Hingston 40). Hingston uses sarcasm to show how much we values money and status even after death.” Hingston uses sarcasm in her text to emphasize her point on how ridiculous it is that humans value money so highly. I went into the text and explained a
One activity that helped me understand interpretation was assignment 8. Assignment 8 was titled “Making Observations about a Manifesto. This assignment helped me understand what a manifesto is about and how to interpretate text that is given to me. The assignment also helped me work on talking about the text and in my papers and not just summarize the article. In this assignment I focused more on writing styles and key terminology. For example in assignment 8 I talked about how Rushkofff uses fear to galvanize his audience into acting and changing there ways. “Rushkoff clearly talks about what he does not like about CEO’s and how they run their companies. Rushkoff uses insults to prove his points. “Good CEO’s reading this manifesto should already be making the connection between presentism and their operations, and considering the implications of the culture of “now” on their workforces, customers, and even shareholders” (Rushkoff 116). “Good CEO’s…” he talks to them as if they are stupid, and have not realized what they need to change.” In my second interpretative essay I worked on having my controlling purpose more noticeable, without bolding it and having arrows pointing at it saying, this is my controlling purpose. Rushkoffs manifesto, “Time Aint Money”, was an interesting article to read. Rushkoff uses key terms to empathize his point. I focused on this and made it my