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Rhetorical Analysis Of Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods

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Man and nature has always had an imbalanced relationship. Since the dawn of mankind, humans depended on the unpredictable being that is nature in order to survive. Gradually, however, the environment has been manipulated by people, to fit their needs for survival and personal satisfaction. Presently, the relationship between man and nature has been drifting further apart with a growing disconnection between the two, as shown in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. Through the use of rhetorical devices like anecdote and pathos, Louv brilliantly develops his argument about the separation between people and nature. Louv’s use of an anecdote helped to show readers just how far mankind has taken advantage of the outside, to the point where …show more content…

Louv invites the reader to reminisce on their childhood of looking out of the window when on a car ride. Using the words “we” vulnerably makes a connection between the author and audience, allowing them to both remember the times when “We actually looked out the car window.” This allows the reader to appeal to their inner child, and reflect on the wonder and fascination that was felt when looking through the window and seeing the vast landscape. With his expert use of imagery, Louv efficiently manages to evoke feelings of bittersweet nostalgia, where readers can’t help but look back at a time where people actually payed attention to the outside world, and was not deterred by technology. Describing the time where “In our useful boredom, we used our fingers to draw pictures on fogged glass as we watched telephone poles tick by” and closing it all off with “We considered the past and dreamed of the future, and watched it all go by in the blink of an eye.”, surely evokes the reader to think about how much has changed over time, sadness when seeing the potentially bitter truth with disengagement between people and the environment, and brings an important feeling of wanting future generations to gain the experience of looking out the window and letting the imagination

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His experiences as a child in the car with no distractions influenced his mind to grow strong and healthy. As a child, he would draw on the fogged glass and count cows and telephone poles. He believes this helped him appreciate what he saw on long car trips instead of being preoccupied and completely missing those things. Being able to appreciate beautiful nature grows the visionary area of the mind, which is much needed, especially in children. Richard Louv’s rhetorical devices in his essay, Last Child in the Woods, efficiently get his points across.

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He employs a reminiscent tone to appeal to the emotions of the readers, making them, too, yearn to relive their childhood days of family car rides. Louv writes, “In our useful boredom, we used our fingers to draw pictures on fogged glass as we watched the telephone poles tick by. We saw birds on the wires and combines in the fields” (lines 62-65). This imagery paints a picture of the nature one sees as a child and helps the reader relive the experience. Louv ends the piece with the statement, “We considered the past and dreamed of the future, and watched it all go by in the blink of an eye” (lines 71-73).

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The passage Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv was written because of his stand on the separation between people and nature. Through crafty thoughts and examples he mainly directed it towards parents of our generation. No doubt that he thinks that all this new technology is changing our childhoods in a bad way. For example children of these days are plugged in most of the time to a screen of some sort. This is decreasing our children's knowledge of creativity and taking in the beauty of nature.

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For example, he uses the experience of Elaine Brooks in describing the severity of the separation. Brooks recounts an experience with a salesperson whereby the “salesman’s jaw dropped… when I said I didn’t want a backseat television monitor” (29-31). The personal experience from Brooks highlights how common backseat technologies have become; the resulting consequence involves an increasing disengagement between man and nature, which comes at a risk of valuable visual connections. In addition, Louv addresses the counter argument in his rhetoric. He concedes that “true, our experience of natural landscape ‘often occurs within an automobile’”

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