In an excerpt from her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich brings to her readers' attention the problem of a too-low minimum wage through her use of descriptive language. In the introduction, it is stated that Ehrenreich "considers language a weapon" (240), and this is shown in several of her phrases:
- "[T]heir floors are cleaned only with the purest of fresh human tears" (241).
- "That's not your marble bleeding,...it's the worldwide working class" (241).
- "Here, sweat is a metaphor for hard work, but seldom its consequence" (242).
These three simple quotations are extremely poignant, appealing to the rhetorical device of pathos (the appeal to the emotions of the audience). The language Ehrenreich uses evokes strong language of hard work and suffering; it creates empathetic characters, appealing to the readers' sense of justice.
In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes, "It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity" (Bk. I, Ch. 1). In other words, Aristotle believes that while pathos does have a small place in the rhetorical tradition, it is the most base of rhetorical devices - that it is dishonorable to manipulate an audience's emotions too much. Does Ehrenreich do this? In her appeal to pathos, does she overstep any boundaries?
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I think that you bring up a great point when you talk about Aristotle's Rhetoric. When you somehow bring too much emotion in a writing you are taking the risk of creating too much emotion to your reader. I think that in a sense, Ehrenreich does over step those boundaries. She places herself in the shoes of those minimum waged workers, and speaks on her ideas and emotions as that person. This is her stepping a little too far into her research and creating a bias.
Staples in a sense does the same thing. I feel that he steps into that realm because he has experienced what it feels like to be feared just because of the color of his skin, not anything based on his credentials or personal merit. I am not saying that they are wrong for doing this kind of research or writing about it, but it does evoke a strong emotion, because he has personally been in this situation and does not know what it feels to be the other person, the white woman who fears her life.
In both of these cases they are writing about their experiences in a situation, on the one hand they are they same. But Staples lives this in his everyday life, he has no choice but to feel the way he feels because he cannot change who he is; he can however change some of his movements (which he states has helped to put some people at ease). Ehrenreich placed herself in the situation, playing this persona and having control over certain aspects of her research.
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