Description – This essay is a rhetorical analysis of Gerald Graff’s writing. It tells about his background and how he became to be the writer he is today. Throughout the essay his ethos and pathos are discussed by telling how those two aspects effected him as a renowned author.
Essay 2- Writing a Rhetorical Analysis: Gerald Graff
Gerald Graff is a renowned author and professor from Chicago, Illinois, who wasn’t always the most interested person when it came to reading. In his childhood, he disliked books and avoided anything that wasn’t a comic book, sports magazine, or sports novel. It wasn’t until his junior year of college that literature caught his eye. His instructor told him that critics did not agree on the level of merits that the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had. Graff found a connection with the book and with the discussion of opposing sides on the book ending. It gave him confidence because he understood the content of the arguments and could contribute to the conversation. The exposure connected him to literature and gave him a reason to seek more discussion, which is why he wrote this “standard story”. He wanted to inform his readers that he too had to grow to love literature, he wasn’t simply born with it.
Since Graff had to essentially work to reach a connection with literature, he has obtained a healthy reputation with his readers and students. This track record is shown in his piece of writing, Disliking Books at an Early Age, that he struggled, just like most people do, and he understands the struggles that some people have connecting with literature. Through the use of ethos and pathos, Graff is effective in conveying his insight through his rhetoric to capture both sides of his audience; students and teachers.
Graff starts off his piece by establishing his ethos. His first sentence states, “I like to think I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature because when I was growing up I disliked and feared books” (111). This initial sentence creates a development of a connection between Graff and his audience of student readers. It shows that even though he is an intelligent professor that he was also like the average person. He ends the sentence with, “disliked and feared” which both have negative connotations, causing the reader to bond to the words and reflect on their early memories of reading. This creates a solid base in developing his ethos by displaying that he understands and came from the same place that most of the audience is still stuck in. He continues in the next sentence to say, “my youthful aversion to books showed a fine impartiality, extending across the whole spectrum of literature, history, philosophy, science, and what was known by then (the late 1940’s) as social studies” (111-112). This sentence adds to his appeal to his student audience because he, again, tries to reach out and find a connection with his readers. He states that it was not just English class he did not like to read in, it was most reading in general. Graff states this to broaden his audience even more. He went from his writing being applicable to students who don’t like to read in English class, to students who don’t like to read at all. This reach for a connection is what creates such strong ethos throughout the piece.
As he continues his story, he gives details about his life to further develop trust with the reader. To justify his reasons, besides books simply boring him, of why he didn’t like to read he says, “as a middle-class Jew growing up in an ethnically mixed Chicago neighborhood, I was already in danger of being beaten up daily by rougher working-class boys. Becoming a bookworm would have only given them a reason for beating me up” (112). He identifies with a specific religion to indicate that he was part of the minority, which made him susceptible to being bullied. By saying, “rougher working-class boys” shows that he did not see himself as ever becoming like them due to the negative connotation associated with the phrase, which tells the reader that Graff wanted to be a student and go to college, so that he could avoid being part of the rougher working-class. The next sentence then contradicts the previous because it shows his fear of being harassed by the working-class for being intelligent. These two sentences come together to open up to the audience about Graff’s personal life so that they can feel a sense of personal connection to him, adding to the overall ethos of the passage.
Graff goes on to tell how his father didn’t like his reading habits because it was expected that he would go to college, just like everyone else. He didn’t identify with a prestigious study and he drifted around trying to find himself, ending up becoming an English major. The sense of drifting and not being able to find himself is very relatable in many ways. At most colleges, students can go in undecided because they have no idea what they want to study. So, now his audience has shifted from high school students to college students. To further reflect towards college students, he says, “at this point the fear of being beaten up if I were caught having anything to do with a book was replaced by the fear of flunking out of college if I did not learn to deal with them” (112). This sentence is crucial to the shift in audience, in order to broaden Graff’s spectrum of who he is developing a connection with. It also creates a shift in topic from his childhood to his adulthood where he finds his passion for literature.
Throughout college, Graff still described reading as “painfully difficult and alien” (113). These descriptive word choice add to Graff’s pathos by appealing to the readers emotions about the struggles of reading. This statement goes back to relating to the overall audience, not just a single spectrum of it. As he continues on, Graff explains further about not connecting to any of the literature that was fed to them throughout school. Then as he got deeper into his studies, he was shown literature debates. His kairotic moment was during his first exposure to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when he stated “what first made literature, history, and other intellectual pursuits seem attractive to me was exposure to critical debates… one of the first sparks I remember was a controversy over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that arose in a course during my junior year in college” (113). This kairotic moment is the defining reason why Graff wrote this piece, it was the first time that he had finally connected to some sort of literature and also found it captivating. He felt as if, “mere literary-critical talk could give you certain power in the real world” (114). That is what created his initial interest in intellectual discussions which ultimately led to his love of literature, adding to the ethos of the argument. Another element that this kairotic moment adds is it shows how Graff recognizes of both sides of the argument. He starts off his argument telling how he understand the frustration of not loving literature, then going on to tell how he understands the love of not only literature but also of teaching English. This contributes to overall persuasion of the writing and goes more in-depth to Graff’s thoughts and feelings.
The audience shifts when Graff begins to speak about his time as a teacher. He tells the audience that he didn’t actually want to be a teacher and that “this wasn’t the way it was suppose to happen” (115). How does someone go from not wanting to pick up a book to being a professor of literature? He tells his audience, “ it was through exposure to such critical reading and discussion over a period of time that I came to catch the literary bug, eventually choosing the vocation of teaching” (115). Although he switched audiences, this still is relatable to the common reader because the average person is well aware that nothing ever goes as planned. Some people set goals then an event occurs and the whole course of action is changed to a different destination. Whether the goal is large or small many people can relate to it, so by Graff mentioning that it gives the reader a bond with him and his story thus creating the “standard story” (115).
Towards the end of the piece he writes, “as I think back on it now, it was as if the critical conversation I needed had up to then been withheld from me, on the ground that it could only interfere with my direct access to literature itself”. This is a profound statement because through his reflection he somewhat correlates literature with a higher power, as if God had a better plan in store for him than he had planned for himself. He says that the moment was specifically placed in his life at a certain time in his life so that he could fully understand the meaning of it. This moment may strike many readers because it extends Graffs purpose of writing. Overall through this piece Graff wanted to make three main points. The first being that he is an average person who made a career out of his love for literature and that anyone else can do that too. The second is that even though you may not have found your passion, it will come to you. The third is that someone who comes from a nonintellectual background can become intellectual and use it to their advantage. As his last statement, Graff closes with the same statement that he opened up with and that was “I like to think it is an advantage for a teacher to know what it feels like to grow up being indifferent to literature and intimidated by criticism and what it feels like to overcome a resistance to talking like an intellectual” (116). By closing with this statement Graff efficiently shows how throughout his entire piece of writing he focused on portraying ethos and pathos to the readers.