Birds And Bees Ben Stein Analysis

In the article, Birds and Bees, No Let’s Talk about Dollars and Cents, by Ben Stein, he successfully makes his point to inform his son that he needs self discipline to create human and financial capital to have a more stable life. The young boy has been living large his whole life and his father wants to help him keep it going by having self-discipline to make smart decisions so he doesn’t live in fear and insecurity. Ben Stein uses many anecdotes to get the point across to his son and the readers of the New York Times that people are capable of coming from nothing and turning into something with the willpower to make smart choices. With the use of anecdotes and repetition all throughout the letter, it allows Stein to utilize logos, pathos,

Stein shares, “My father was the first Stein in all history, as far as we know, to have accumulated any real capital. He did that by getting a fine education at Williams College and then at the University of Chicago. He was a stone genius, and among his many aspects of genius was that he knew that he must regularly convert his human capital - his intelligence and education and connections - into financial capital: namely, savings.” By using this story Ben Stein uses ethos because he is a credible source in the situation. He shares this story in spite of trying to prove a point to his son Tommy, that his grandfather started a very important task in life by working hard and saving while he could in order to be successful and for his family to have the opportunity to be successful as well. Stein is very effective by sharing this story to make the point to Tommy that he needs to work hard and continue the

“The common denominator of all of these bits of advice is the invaluable capital of self-discipline: the self-discipline to learn good work habits, the self-discipline to acquire education in a field where there is a market for your skills, the self-discipline to make connections and be a good friend, the self-discipline to do a good job at your work, the self-discipline to learn about investments, and self-discipline to save.” Stein purposely repeats himself to get the point across that without self-discipline having a successful life is