AOW #7: Ghosts

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/opinion/why-i-don-t-believe-in-ghosts.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=2 

This piece goes everywhere at once. They start with talking about how they don’t believe in ghosts – which is what the article is titled – but then they continue on to talk about the writing process. They then discuss the difference between reasoning and imagination and how those two paths of interpretation vary completely and how they both ask for different things. Then, they talk about how you must stick with that you.re good at with writing and morph the other weaker parts around the stronger and known argument.

The author of this piece is Philip Pullman and he is writing for the New York Times. First of all, the author is credible because he has not only written several articles for NYT, but he’s written several books as well. He is also an “award winning author” because of one of his books called His Dark Materials.

The context could be either temperal or causal. It could be temperal because he is somewhat reacting “in the moment” by writing an article written abound his immediate reactions to ghosts. However, the context can be causal as well because in order for him to have a reaction, it takes some time to generate it.

The main purpose for this piece was to basically, just get his opinion out in the open for everyone to see. However, the more specific purpose would be to give his opinion on something Halloween based and prove that he is right – which gives him a wider appeal and audience base because it is Halloween. Also, he has a less popular opinion (that ghosts aren’t real) which gives his purpose

The audience would obviously be readers of the New York Times. Based on that, the audience is most likely older teens and adults.

In this piece, they used many rhetorical elements like syllogism, repetition, and pieces of the classical argument and the rhetorical triangle as well. Syllogism/enthymeme was shown in the beginning when he was talking about fantasy versus reality. He was saying that fantasy is fake and that reality is real. Then he goes on to say that fantasy is childlike – and gives examples like elves or hobbits. Then he assumes the “therefore” and says he writes realism because “fantasy is a lesser form than realism”. Repetition was shown through the repeated diction. He repeated words like: tyranny, tyrant and despotic and despot. They also introduced the rhetorical triangle through ethos when he was talking about his world-renowned book and referring to it all throughout (gives him a sense of superiority). Also, the classical argument was represented within his piece when he introduced the “they say – I say” in his refutation. He said that “they” say that ghosts are real, BUT he says that they aren’t and then he goes into his refutation and sites examples and reason why.

I believe that this author did not achieve his purpose because I was not convinced that ghosts are not real. Even though he was just expressing his opinion, it seemed as if his purpose was to persuade people that his opinion was right. However, I was dead set in my ways and he didn’t do much to get me out of those beliefs!