On Immortality Rhetorical Analysis

As human beings one of the things we feel we never have enough of is time. Well what if there was a way to acquire more time by prolonging your own life? The answer to this question is what author Susan McCarthy discusses in her essay “On Immortality.” McCarthy uses several types of appeals to persuade her audience that prolonging human life poses many different complications and moral questions that have yet to be answered. One of the most effective appeals that she uses in her essay is logical appeals because they are based on things such as human evolution and facts. McCarthy uses these appeals to point out that extending a human being’s life may not be as easy as one two three, and what happens after we accomplish this goal, do we stop

These questions make the reader think about the information that was presented to them and decide for themselves what the answer should be. In her opening paragraph McCarthy introduces her essay by talking about extending human longevity and eventually becoming immortal without stopping to think if we should or shouldn’t. She ends her paragraph by asking “Is that a perfectly good thing?” (544), by placing this question in the opening paragraph she is getting the readers mind engaged in her essay to start questioning the things their reading. Later in the essay McCarthy starts to ask questions regarding evolution, again these are rhetorical questions. In one instance she is discussing the topic of immortality and what were to happen if we really did achieve it and asks “If we stop dying will our species stop evolving?” (548) This question is harder to answer than just simple yes or no which is why it is so engaging to the reader, it really makes them think about what all the possible outcomes

This example is another way in which McCarthy is logically appealing to the reader, she is presenting them with facts about getting older that are hard to ignore. In the essay McCarthy brings up “The fact that we spend such a huge proportion of our health budget in the last few months of our lives.”(549), by telling the reader this she is really putting into perspective how expensive getting old is. As a reader it brings to mind several questions about how we can afford to live longer lives. Would we continue to get older and just take longer to die? If so would we work longer to be able to afford to live longer? These are just a couple that come to mind but the point is, that pointing out facts like that is very effective. Again McCarthy presents the reader towards the end of the essay with the fact that “Everybody dies eventually” (549), which may not seem like a big fact that would blow the reader away; but in an argument about possibly becoming immortal it brings the reader back the fact that we indeed cannot live forever. Having that statement towards the end of essay is almost a final reminder to the reader before they finish reading that immortality is not