A Rhetorical Analysis Of A Fish Hook

This photo is a representation of the helplessness that a smoker feels when they are trying to quit. The fish hook represents addiction and the subject is "hooked" so to speak. The photographer appeals to not only the emotions of the audience, but their logic and their trust. The man is dressed in a collard shirt in an attempt to symbolize to the reader that the everyday man can be addicted to nicotine. The use of a common man boosts the credibility of the photographer. If the photographer were to use a junkie or a drug addict, a negative connotation would be portrayed toward the smoking population. This would cause a reader disconnect because the smokers would view themselves as better than the addict represented in the photo. Furthermore,

As stated previously, the use of the common man is a building block for the credibility. However, the use of a male subject does not identify with a female audience. Due to that, the NHS loses a little bit of credibility with the female population. It could sometimes leave women to move toward the idea that only men smoke that much and can get that addicted to cigarettes. Furthermore, the use of the metaphorical term "hooked" is not only identifiable with the audience, but most humans can relate to how helpless a fish is when it is hooked. The publisher, the National Health Service, also greatly increases their credibility by putting their logo at the top right corner of the photo, as well as a "smokefree" logo in the bottom right hand corner. Even to an un-informed audience, these seem to be legitimate organizations who stand against bad health and

The audience that is being targeted knows that smoking is bad for their health. Logically, why would someone do something five thousand times per year that is bad for their heath and their future. This is the thought process that the NHS wishes to evoke. They want to reason with the audience and let them know that they are repeatedly destroying their body day by day. The fish hook symbolizes a situation that someone would never be able to get out of by themselves. The NHS hopes to prompt the smokers to ask for help by showing them that they are in a position of helplessness. The fish hook symbolizes addiction, and to be released from either situation, the subject must get help. The NHS is attempting to give the reader perspective of the situation that they are in. To strengthen the logical appeal, the NHS could have shown a statistic of the percentage of smokers who are able to quit without any sort of help. This would shock smokers into the understanding that they must get help if they wish to become unhooked. Also, the NHS could have used stronger statistics, possibly with percentages of smoking addicts or numbers of smoking deaths to persuade the audience to act quickly and call