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Different Rhetorical Strategies

It is 8  essays short.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald's best known novel is in part a description of America in the 1920's - the Jazz Age. A tragic, horrible war has just ended and the country is obsessed with having a good time. The self-made, corrupt millionaire Jay Gatsby typifies the period’s obsessions: money, pleasure, and, according to Fitzgerald, the endless reaching for an “orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.” Gatsby never achieves his dreams, just as many Americans lose their way toward the American Dream by embracing hollow values.

Write a short essay describing a well-known person, group, or event that is inherently interesting but even more interesting when thought of as symptomatic of a trend in society or a period in history. Think of a dominant impression that expresses the essence of your subject and support it with sensory and vivid details and examples.

Use the following tips to help you complete the assignment: 

- Narrow your topic to a single person, group, or event. Focus on the dominant impression for your subject. Include examples and details that support that dominant impression.

- Organize your essay logically. Description essays are typically organized in spatial order or in general-to-specific order or specific-to-general order, but you can use any organization pattern that works best.

- Use sensory and vivid details and examples to help your reader visualize your subject.

- To expand the essay, you might imagine something surprising that could happen involving your subject in the near future. Continue to support your dominant impression with vivid details and examples.

2.The Mexican-American author Richard Rodriguez has written in a narrative essay that he grew up in a home in California in which Spanish was primarily spoken. He gradually learned English and later became a prominent writer and essayist. However, he also felt that his success in America had cost him a high price—his alienation from his past, his parents, and his culture.

Write a short essay about an experience—yours or that of someone you know—that taught you something important. 

Think about an important experience in which you learned something about yourself. Then, use the following tips to help you complete the assignment:

- Limit your focus. Narrow your topic to one experience and your thoughts about that.

- Organize logically. Most narrative essays use chronological (time) organization, the order in which events occurred.

- Include specifics. Use specific examples and, if appropriate, sensory details to help readers to understand how and why you learned what you did (your main point).

- To expand the essay, you might write about the effects of what you learned. Did it change your life, even in a small way? Did it have an effect on others? Are you a different person now because of what you learned? Why?

3.Visit the website of a public figure or candidate for public office whom you respect. View the website as an illustration essay. Look for the examples that this person uses to express why he or she is right for the job. The video clip that you watch, the snippets of speeches that you hear, the paragraphs that you read—these are all illustrative examples in a job application. The person wants to get or keep that job and the examples are intended to enlist your support. 

Now, as you look over the website again, think of yourself as a candidate for a great job, and as you review that person’s supportive examples, think of the examples you could use to get the job you want.

Write a letter to ask for a job you would love to have. Write your application letter as a short essay that includes relevant and convincing examples of why you are the ideal candidate for that job. Then, as you prepare your examples for the assignment, keep in mind the following points:

- Target your examples. Select the examples that express the qualities that make you the right choice for the job you’d like.

Organize logically. Most illustration essays use order of importance, so place your least important example first and your most powerful example last.

- Be specific. Support each of your examples with specific and relevant details from your past and current activities, education, and character—and make sure that all of the details are relevant to the job you want (your main point).

- You might want to expand this piece by writing more fully and in greater detail about each of your examples. Throughout your writing, use details that always reinforce your point—why you are the right person for the job you are seeking.

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It is the year 26 B.C.E. and the Roman Emperor Augustus has ordered that a new city be built. Roman engineers knew exactly what to do. Best-selling author David Macaulay explains and illustrates the process they went through in one of his books. We watch them develop a master plan, use precise tools to lay out the boundaries, and systematically construct the city. Macaulay shows how they built a house, a road, a bridge, an aqueduct, a public bath, and the city’s forum and central market. This is process on a large scale, yet everything is still done step by step.

Think about some of the processes that you have wondered about. How do San Francisco’s cable cars work? New York’s subways? How is a dam constructed? A car built? How does the Internet work? Research how something works or how something is done or made. Then, write a short essay explaining the process.

Use the following tips to help you complete the exercise below: 

- Focus in. Narrow your thinking to one process that you would like to know more about.

- Organize logically. Most process essays use chronological (time) order, so write the steps in your process in the order in which they occur.

- Give your reader both a road map for the process and a sense of what the reader will be able to do by the end of the essay.

- Be specific. Use details to make the steps in your process understandable, interesting, and meaningful to your readers.

- To expand the essay, you might write about why you are interested in this process and how it affects you and others. Is the process important to people's lives? Is it something that few notice and hardly anyone cares about? Is it useful to know how this process works or is done?.

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In Mark Twain's memoir, he relates his experience as a steamboat captain on the river. In an often-quoted excerpt that some people have called “Two Ways of Seeing a River,” Twain presents a stark before-and-after contrast. He says that when steamboating was new to him, he witnessed a wonderful sunset:

 

A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal . . . the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver. . . .

 

But after Twain had, in his words, “mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet,” he says he would have viewed that sunset quite differently:

This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody’s steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the ‘break’ from a new snag. . . .

 

Twain laments, “No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river.” 

 

 

Think of a fantasy, dream, or perception you’ve had of something or someone that changed once you became very familiar with the object of your fantasy.  Write a short compare-and-contrast essay about how, in your gaining knowledge of a thing, person, or experience, you lost something as well, comparing or contrasting your “before” dream-like fantasy with your “after” close familiarity with the reality. 

 

 

Use the following tips to help you complete the assignment:

 

- Limit the topic. Hone down your thinking to just one person, thing, or experience.

- Determine your purpose for comparing and contrasting, and make that your thesis statement.

 

- Organize logically. Most compare-and-contrast essays use either point-by-point or subject-by-subject organization. Plan or outline your body paragraphs before you write based on the method of organization you’ve chosen.

 

- Make it detailed. Look at the kinds of details Mark Twain uses, and then call upon specific sensory details of your own.

 - To expand the essay, you might examine a fantasy or dream you currently enjoy, and then compare or contrast that with how your perception of it could change if the fantasy became reality. Would what you gain in familiarity outweigh your loss of the dream? In what ways?

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Think about the “ultimates” in your life—the ultimate movies you’ve seen, concerts or sports events you’ve attended, meals you’ve prepared or eaten, challenges you’ve met, or any other parts of your life that truly stand out. Write a short division essay about three or more “ultimates,” the “best-evers,” of your life; divide your life into its ultimate experiences.

 

Use the following tips to help you complete the assignment: 

 

- Limit your topic. Focus in on three or more “ultimate” experiences you’ve had and what links them together in your mind.

- Organize logically. Use the method of organization that works best for your purpose. You may want to move from least to most, from worst to best, in time order, or any other order that makes logical sense.

- Use vivid details. Clarify to the reader why you are using the order you’ve chosen by using specific, sensory examples and details. Help your reader to join you on your “ultimate” experiences.

- To expand the essay, you might write about three more “ultimates” that you hope to experience in the future. Would any of these build on your previous “ultimates?” Would they be activities that people who know you would expect of you? Would they be different from anything you’ve ever done?

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Stephen Crane was only 24 when he published a Civil War novel in 1895 that was praised for its realistic battle scenes. Crane had never seen a battle when he wrote it. The story is about a young private on the Union side, Henry Fleming, and his encounters with situations requiring courage. In his first battle, it looks like the Confederates are overrunning the Union soldiers, and Henry is so frightened that he deserts his regiment. Ashamed, he comes across retreating soldiers from other regiments and one accidentally hits Henry on the head with his rifle. Henry later rejoins his regiment and is treated like a hero because of his seeming wound. The next morning, the regiment goes into battle again, and this time Henry, relieved that his cowardice has not been noticed, acts with great valor. He picks up the regiment’s flag from a fallen soldier and, though unarmed, he leads a terrifying yet successful attack on the enemy. He has discovered his own capacity for courage.

 

Courageous acts are not limited to battlefields. In fact, most of them occur in the midst of daily life, and many go unnoticed except by those who are affected by them. Think about the courageous acts you have done or seen. Write a short essay defining "courage." Base it on an act of courage that you or someone you know performed.

Use the following tips to help you complete the assignment: 

 

- Limit your topic. Hone in on just one courageous act or perhaps a related series of acts.

- Organize logically. Most definition essays use order of importance, so place your least important example first and your strongest, most intense example last.

- Specifics. Make examples do your defining. Make them detailed, vivid, and sensory so that your reader can also experience the act of bravery.

- To expand the essay, you might tell how the person you wrote about was affected by the courageous act. Does courage have to be physical bravery? What other kinds of courage are there? Is courage always rewarded?

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Morgan Spurlock directed and starred in his 2004 documentary film that demonstrated cause and effect. The film records a 30-day period during which Spurlock eats only at a certain fast-food chain’s restaurants. As a result of this diet, Spurlock gained 24½ lbs., experienced mood swings, and had fat accumulation to his liver. The film was nominated for an academy award, and, according to an epilogue added to the film’s DVD, the restaurant chain discontinued its Super Size option six weeks after the movie’s premiere and began to emphasize healthier menu items.

 

Write a short essay about a situation that concerns you and that has clear causes and effects. It can be a situation you have experienced or learned about.

Then, use the following tips to help you complete the assignment:

 

- Limit your topic. Focus your thinking on a single situation with clear causes and definite results.

- Organize logically. Consider the purpose of your cause-and-effect essay, and use the method of organization that works best for it. Cause-and-effect essays are typically organized in order of importance, in spatial order, or chronological order.

- Be specific. Use understandable explanations or examples with specific, vivid details to help your reader to experience the situation.

- To expand the essay, you might imagine that the causes had been different than what they actually were. How would that have affected the results? Again, use examples and details to flesh out your imagined causes and effects.