Rhetorical Essay In Sherman Alexie's Superman And Me

The excerpt from Mary Oliver’s “Building the House” serves as a way to describe what happens during the poetry writing process. Although Mary Oliver believes that writing poetry is hard work, she uses extended metaphor, juxtaposition, and point of view to describe the writing process in comparison of building a house, which shows that Oliver sees poetry as something that involves mental labor which is a different challenge than physical labor .

Christopher Reeve uses diction and detail to appeal to the emotions of the audience. The major purpose of this speech was to convince the audience about the importance of passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reeve was an actor who was well known for playing the role of Superman. In 1995, Reeve was thrown off a horse and was paralyzed. Since then, Reeve has felt disabled people are treated. Reeve uses some great diction and details to convince the audience like,”One in five of us has some kind of disability.”

The key rhetorical device that Alexie used was pathos in order to cause the reader to feel some emotion of pity, sympathy, and sorrow. This is used towards the middle when he explains the struggle he had to face at a young age when teaching himself how to read and explains how others thought of Indians with this capability, he then writes, “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indian alike. They wanted me to stay quiet

Alexie goes on to demonstrate how his passion for reading influenced his childhood. He describes that, before he could even read, he would recognize what a paragraph was. Alexie explains, “I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words” (Alexie 279). Then, Alexie further explains how he correlated other things in his life as paragraphs, such as the reservation in respect to the United States or the individual members of his family. He goes on to clarify how he found the Superman comic and viewed each panel, with text and illustrations, separately as its own paragraph. Alexie states that while reading the comic he says, “Aloud, I pretend to read the words” (Alexie 280). He knew these paragraphs together told a story and even though he could not read, he used the pictures to assume what the narrative was saying. With these details of his early beginnings of learning to read, the reader can further establish that his family’s economic status had no

While Alexie states his voice by using metaphor, he emphasizes the meaning of reading repeatedly in his essay. He stresses how he strives to read variety of books, and he records that,” I read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes… I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs” (18). Alexie lists out all the material he has read with the same sentence structure, yet he does not conclude all these things in one sentence. He exemplifies his passion to reading, for he tries to save his life. Due to his parallel repetition, Alexie impresses the audience by these

What would you do if you could not read? What problems do you think you would come across? After reading Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” and Sherman Alexie’s piece, “Superman and Me”, these are a few questions that a reader might ask themselves. Sherman Alexie and Malcolm X are both great writers. This was not always the case though. Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie taught themselves how to read. Alexie at a young age Malcolm X, as a young adult. After they learned to read and write they wrote for many reasons and about many topics. When reading these two essays, you can see that there are many things that are significantly the same as well as having some differences all throughout the text. These similarities and differences include the pathos in both essays, and the ethos that Alexie has that Malcolm does not have pertaining to the subject of their papers. In Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” and Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” they are both trying to persuade the reader that something needs to be done and why.

In the beginning of the essay, Alexie talks about how knowledge is a power that opens a window to success by using an anecdote about his personal experience with knowledge. As Alexie talks about his childhood in the beginning, he says, “We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food...” (Alexie). When Alexie discusses the conditions his family lived in, he is setting this frame of pity that makes the reader understand that education wasn’t the first thing on their mind, but what they we’re going to eat next. Later on in the beginning, Alexie explains how his father surrounded him with books and how his love for books started. His love for books was sparked from the love his father had for books. Alexie states this when he says, “...My father loved books...I loved my father...I decided to love books as well...” (Alexie). Alexie also explains how he didn’t understand at first when he first picked up a book but soon learned that “The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose...this knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs...”(Alexie). This could be seen as a power because although he doesn’t understand, he’s learning how to understand what he’s reading and this could count as one of his first steps to success. As Alexie explains his personal experience with knowledge, he proves how he is an example of

In the scholarly essay, “The Approximate Size of His Favorite Humor: Sherman Alexie’s Comic Connections and Disconnections in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” the author Joseph L. Coulombe, writes about the humor used in Sherman Alexie’s short stories. Coulombe argues that in Sherman Alexie’s stories that humor is essential for character development and the creation of bonds between these characters.

Among all of the information on the United States education system, one documentary rises to a status above most others: Waiting for Superman. Released in 2010, the documentary is still relevant, and perhaps the most well-known work on the topic of education in the States. Not only does Waiting for Superman provide information and an argument for change, but its renown is proof that Waiting for Superman uses highly effective persuasive techniques and rhetorical strategies to deliver information and to push its argument for change.

Rhetorical Superheroes may be all around the world, but if you take a deeper look at all of them, some might stand out as a little more “super” to you. When I think about Rhetorical Superheroes, there is one off the top of my head that is important to me. His name is Jason Ren and he is currently a student at Harvard University. He was someone who made an impact in the community I group up in through powerful language expressed by his actions volunteering and helping others. I was fortunate enough to know Jason personally as he was a good friend of mine who I played soccer with for many years. We would hang out a lot and have shared many good memories with each other.

Educational systems in America are impaired, and the very educators that are meant to teach are the one’s pulling it down. That is the apparent message that Davis Guggenheim attempts to convey in his documentary “Waiting for Superman”. He uses many strategies to get his message across. Some of these include cartoons, children, and those reformers that are attempting to pull the system out of the ditch that it has found its way into. He makes his point very well, and uses facts and figures correctly. He does leave out some of the opinions of the opposing views, but it does not take away from his point that the educational system in America is in need of repair.

1. In the comic book Alexie reads, Superman is breaking through a door. The point of this paragraph was to show us that the little Indian boy was breaking through a metaphorical door when he began trying to read. It is important to remember this at the end because Alexie talks about wanting to break through other kids’ doors to get them to read even though they are very stubborn. To most Indian children, Alexie is a superhero, like Superman, saving lives by breaking through to others and allowing children to read.

Sherman Alexie, author of Superman and Me, uses choice diction, syntax, and both literary and rhetorical devices to communicate to his audience the struggles he and many other Indian kids living on a reserve face in their education.

During the first grade Alexie was being bullied, but during this bullying session. He had finally had enough. “But the little warrior in me roared to life that day and knocked Frenchy to the ground, held his head against the snow, and punched him so hard that my knuckles and the snow made symmetrical bruises on his face.” Here Alexies use the rhetorical strategies the act to portray his experience with Frenchy, the bully. Then in ninth grade year, he uses a profound apostrophe, he starts off telling the reader about how he is at his high school dance. And that ‘s just after that he played in a basketball game inside of a humid and dry gymnasium. While at the dance he passed out during a slow song and his white friends began to revive him. A teacher then ask them what he had been drinking saying, “they start real young”. Alexie then ends his paragraph pronouncing, “ Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers.” This was a pivotal point in Alexies life with both stories. When Alexie realized this I believe it put him on a path where he could be his own person without having to worry about how others would classify him

The documentary Waiting for Superman uses several rhetorical strategies and appeals in order to effectively get its purpose across to the audience. The purpose of the documentary is to persuade people that public schools must be changed drastically for the better. Which would ensure that a multitude of students, if not all students, would be given better chances to succeed in life at the correct and required academic levels. This message is efficaciously relayed to the audience, which is comprised of anyone who is part of the school system, whether that be parents, students, principals, superintendents, presidents, or anyone else who can and is willing to make an effective change to the school system. The message delivered in the film is very