A Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Reviving Ophelia' By Mary Pipher

Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher,written as a narrative about multiple teenage girls experiences, who discuss their own problems with pipher, a therapist. Pipher wrote this book to explain how from the 1970’s to the 1990’s adolescent girls tend to be putting their lives at risk . The end result may be to kill themselves. Pipher comes into play by trying to save the lives of the young teenage girls who are lost and not sure where to go or who to talk to. Her story reaches out to the adult’s who are not sure how to approach the situation. Adults will have guidance on ways to help out their teenage daughter. Pipher use the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to address her purpose. In the beginning of the book Pipher used ethos as an rhetorical appeal to discuss how parents tend to be a bit more over protective when they see their teenage daughter growing up. Parents see their daughters as “people
Teens however are confused about when it is appropriate to be sexually active. The rhetorical appeal logos is used when there was a study in rhode island for when it’s most appropriate to have sex with your spouse. The results claimed the “Eighty percent said the men had the right to use force if the couple were married”(206). This illustrates a significant amount of girls who feel that it’s acceptable for a guy to have sexual intercourse without the women’s permission. This is the issue in the environment we live in girls feel men have power to go what they want. Teenage girls who were already sexually active had little knowledge on sex. Some teenage girls “didn't know they had the right to make conscious decisions about sex”(209). Clearly this is an issue because girls feel that they have no choice when being urged to have sex. They want to feel love when they’re not even sure what real love is. The main thing is for them to gain attention so that they can feel someone cares for