Analysis Of Garrard Conley's Boy Erased

People who have gone through conversion therapy face 8.9 times the rates of suicide ideation, face depression at 5.9 times the rate of their peers and are three times more likely to use illegal drugs and be at high risk for sexually transmitted infections (Stafford). Conversion therapy refers to the pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual's sexual orientation using psychological or spiritual interventions (Stafford). Garrard Conley spent almost one-third of his life in a conversion camp called LIA “Love In Action”. The book focuses on Garrards struggle to be accepted by his parents and how far his parents will push him to change.

Religion affects the way people think, act and perceive their surroundings. When Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley was moved through his own experience at a conversion camp to inform others of his torture that the L.I.A. has caused him. The four stanzas in the passage are significant to the overall book because the stanzas provide a great understanding of the book as a whole. The four stanzas provide a detailed layout of what happened up to Garrard going back to Dr. Julies. Just in the four stanzas 5 tense changes occur, these tense changes provide little summaries of the series of events that unfolded throughout Garrads young adult life. Garrard gives himself credibility by saying what he has done leading up to the visit to Dr. Julie. Like when Garrard talks about him eyeing the Brewer twins in the front aisle and how he thought that the grape juice “blood of christ”, would actually turn to god's

Garrard uses circular reasoning when he lists off the people that affected his life and restates connections between his life and other people (Chloe, David, Charles, and Dominique).

The sixth section shifts its tense back to Garrard being at Dr. Julie's office. Garrard uses rhetorical questions at the end of section six “How can I repay this gift? How can I ever repay these people and the god these people worship and the god I still seem to worship?”. Garrard uses rhetorical questions to stimulate the reader's mind into thinking about the questions? Garrard wants the audience to think over what they read and reflect on it.

Garrard Conley wrote Boy Erased: A memoir to help other young adults come to terms with what they have experienced throughout their journey of questioning their sexuality, how that has affected them and what they can do to accept it. The rhetorical analysis is important to this passage because just from 82 lines of text, the purpose of the entire book can be picked out, one rhetorical strategy after another. Finding the purpose of the passage is important because with the purpose of the passage, then you can find the author's purpose and figure out why they wrote their paper and then connect back to the overall paper. The big picture of the paper would be the connection of the “dark gift” to Chloe, David, Charles, Dominique, Garrard contradicting his views