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Lepore's Essay 'Richer: Accounting For Inequality'

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In the essay “Richer and Poorer: Accounting for Inequality,” written by Jill Lepore, and published in The New Yorker in New York in 2015, the author raises awareness to the educated middle class about the many inequalities in the United States and the various causes and effects of such an issue. This writing was a proficient example of a job well done as far as the author’s use of rhetorical strategies is concerned. Jill Lepore was very effective in using logos, ethos, and pathos to serve her purpose of motivating the enlightened working class to make a change.
Dr. Lepore accentuates her impeccable use of logos in this excerpt from “Richer and Poorer: Accounting for Inequality:”
Between 1975 and 1985, when the Gini index for U.S. households …show more content…

His father, currently in prison, never had a steady job. David’s parents separated when he was a little boy. He bounced around, attending seven elementary schools. When he was thirteen, he was arrested for robbery. He graduated from high school only because he was given course credit for hours he’d worked at Big Boppers Diner (from which he was fired after graduation). In 2012, when David was eighteen, he got his girlfriend pregnant. “I’ll never get ahead,” he posted on his Facebook page last year, after his girlfriend left him. “I’m FUCKING DONE.” (Lepore 4)
One cannot deny an argument that reaches them on a personal level. This is precisely Dr. Lepore’s intention when using vivid descriptions of past events. The author connects with her readers on another level by tapping into the limbic system of the brain and touching their emotional center. This provides for a coercive argument.
As one can distinctly see from the above examples, Jill Lepore leaves no question in her readers’ minds as to whether there is a gap in equality in this nation. Through analytical facts, intimate stories of persons having experienced such inequality, and references to credible sources and information, Dr. Lepore makes evident the problem within reach. She does not hold back in portraying the asperities of the aforesaid matter and connect with the educated middle class of America to gather an audience willing to make a change in this

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