Blog #1 – Rhetorical Strategies

· Foreshadowing - “I had other things to worry about” (pg 14)

· Metaphor - “‘You’ve got to get right back in the saddle”’ (pg 15)

· Metonymy - “We were always doing the skedaddle” (pg 19)

· Figure of Speech - “‘Try not to look down on those other children”’ (pg 39)

· Personification - “The wind shrieked through the compartment” (pg 49)

· Repetition - “‘I guess we could eat less,’ I said… We did eat less” (pg 67)

· Rhetorical Question - “‘Am I not allowed to give my daughter a sock?”’ (pg 77)

· Simile - “No one met my eye except Dad, who was grinning like an alligator” (pg 77)

· Allusion - “Lori, who was bring The Wizard of Oz, objected” pg 89)

• Didactic - “‘It was like that time I threw you into the sulfur spring to teach you how to swim,’ he said. ‘You might have been convinced you were going to drown, but I knew you’d do just fine’” (pg 213)

Jeannette Walls relates her moving story of her disarrayed past through the use of many rhetorical strategies. These strategies serve to give a stronger meaning to the words put on the page. Because the story is actually a memoir, and not a fictitious story made up in the mind of Walls, many of the strategies – especially those used in dialogue – seem almost unintentional. However, there was such a wide use of rhetorical strategies that it simply could not have been an accident. The strategies not only get across the author’s message, but also aid in the development of each of the characters. For example, Jeannette’s father uses didactic in many different instances, creating his characteristic of the creative and intelligent father always teaching his children lessons. When I read the book, I was surprised at how much symbolism there was for a memoir. The rhetorical strategies at use in Walls’ writing serve to make apparent those symbols, many which would not have been able to be written were it not for the specific rhetorical strategy used in the instance.