Thursday, October 1, 2015

Logos in The Feminine Mystique

     In addition to strong appeals to pathos and ethos, Betty Friedan also utilized logos as a rhetorical tool to persuade her audience that the feelings of unfulfillment amongst women, living within their expected gender role as housewife, was an issue that both existed and needed to be addressed promptly. A major component of Friedan's persuasive power in The Feminine Mystique was her use of thoughtful organization and structure in her writing. The first section of this excerpt focused on making the reader aware that the general unhappiness amongst housewives was a widespread problem even if was not frequently spoken about. To do so, Friedan referenced statements various women has made about their current mental state including "I feel empty somehow...incomplete" or "I feel as if I don't exist". By placing the thoughts of real women experiencing the discontent firsthand, Friedan fortified her argument with tangible evidence. In the following section, Friedan widened the issue to a national scale. She explained how "if we continue to produce millions of young mothers who stop their growth and education short of identity, without a strong core of human values to pass on to their children, we are committing, quite simply, genocide, starting with the mass burial of American women and ending with the progressive dehumanization of their sons and daughters." This potent analogy equating feminine capabilities not being met to genocide very clearly demonstrated how urgently a change needed to be made.

-Taylor Rezeppa

7 comments:

  1. I really liked how you managed to use direct quotes form the source to support your argument. I also thought you did a great job at elaborating on each point of your analysis which made your post much more effective. However, I would recommend that you should revise your post as it has a few minor errors such as using the word "except" instead of "excerpt". Aside from these errors, I thought your post was very effective.
    ~Micah Plotkin

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    1. Thanks for that catch! I went back and edited a couple typos.

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  2. I liked how you organized your post based on the order in the which Friedan had made comments. However, i think your writing could be made stronger by using less of the really long quote, and instead adding more analysis. In addition, i believe that when Friedan was talking about real life examples, she didn't use quotes from real people, rather an assumption she has about the thoughts women may hold.

    -Sam Jacobson

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    1. I could see how the part with the real life examples was a bit misleading..I went back and revised that sentence. Thanks for the input!
      -Taylor Rezeppa

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. You did an excellent job of dissecting the appeal to logos made in the excerpt! I think the author certainly employed logic and reasoning as her main tool to get her point across, and you managed to capture the essence of said point very effectively. I also really liked your use of quotations, and would personally disagree with Sam J about the use of that long one at the end. I thought that quotation illustrated the author's main idea perfectly, and you definitely had sufficient analysis. Great job!
    -Agustin Aguerre

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