Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Episode Six Of Derry Girls'

Rhetorical Analysis Derry Girls, created by Lisa McGee follows the main character, Erin, and her four friends as they grow up in Northern Ireland, nearing the end of a period known as the Troubles. The Troubles is a phrase used to recount the religious and political conflicts taking place in Northern Ireland, lasting from the 1960s to the 1990s (Imperial War Museums). In “Episode Six” of Derry Girls, Erin gets the opportunity to become the school's newspaper editor, causing her to recruit her friends as the staff. Conflict occurs when Erin is unsupportive of her friend Clare as she comes out as lesbian in the paper. However, peace is restored, at the school talent show, where Erin and her friends encourage Orla, Erin’s cousin, during her performance.

McGee’s reliability stems from Derry Girls being directly based on McGee’s actual teenage experience growing up in Northern Ireland, during the nineties. For example, Mcgee describes the small town of Derry as a place “Where everyone knows your business. We grew up in this really scary, violent time, yet no one locked their doors. It doesn’t make any sense”(Blake). This quote gets the author's main point across by showing that even with the extreme events happening in Ireland at the time, the lives of ordinary people in Derry continued. The show’s different character viewpoints reduce any chance of bias and create trustworthiness in the audience. McGee explains in the Los Angeles Times, “We grew up on different sides of the fence, but here we are making this show.” and that “I think of ‘Derry Girls’ as a cross-community project,”(Blake). Having contributors from different backgrounds provides the audience with multiple perspectives of what was happening in the context of the episode, producing a dependable story of the real events. For example, in “Episode Six” we see the outlooks of both the teenagers and the parents while the Omagh bomb was