Rhetorical Analysis on Essay

January 11, 2012

ENG 102-42: Intermed College Writing

Rhetorical Analysis on Essay

A Rhetorical Analysis on My Second Home, A Narrative Essay

In a recent narrative essay I completed for my last college semester entitled, My Second Home, I discussed my attachment and experiences with a historical village in Kentucky called Shaker Village. My purpose for the piece was to convey to my audience--the professor of my English class---why I held certain fond memories for Shaker Village, as well as to describe the physical attributes of the location.

Since my genre was narrative, I wrote my essay in first-person, which allowed me to convey my deeper thoughts instead of the aloofness of a third-person party. This lead to my stance being poetical and serious, since it revolved around a desire to inform the reader of my own introspective emotions at the time when I walked Shaker Village's grounds. In a passage such as the following, I wanted the reader to grasp both my inner thoughts and understand the context I wrote it in: “I remember sitting out on a bench in the middle of one of the Village's outlying fields[...]Why I had never recognized before that silence could be forgiving and cleansing, instead of lonely, was suddenly a complete mystery to me, and it crossed through me that I would be content to remain in this state of reflection for dozens more sunsets to come, continually lost in the last threads of evening.”

For the media of My Second Home, I used a computer to type and edit it, and then printed it out on a hard copy for the professor to read.

My Second Home encompassed all aspects of genre, audience, media, stance, and purpose in different ways as I shared my personal memories and thoughts on Shaker Village, KY.