Rhetorical Analysis Of Worth The Wait Rick Reilly

Have you ever pulled a muscle or broken a bone? Were you on crutches? Were you not able to walk at all? Imagine feeling like that every single day of your life. Living with cerebral palsy, a disease that limits your body movements, is like that everyday. Rick Reilly, columnist for Sports Illustrated, writes about a teenage boy, Ben, who suffers from cerebral palsy in the article “Worth the Wait.” In the text, Reilly explains the events Ben overcame during cross country races he competed in for his local high school, Hanna High. It’s hard to imagine running with a disease that seizes up your body, leaving it hard to walk, let alone run. Ben achieved his goal of finishing every single race he was a part of by trying his best every minute of every

His goal is to highlight the issues Ben faced and how he never gave up on anything he was presented with. He used pathos by giving his descriptions a sense of pain, relating to what Ben had to go through on a daily basis. Reilly intensifies Ben’s hassle by saying that Ben has to “drag along that stubborn left side, pulling that unbending tire iron of a leg around to the front and pogo-sticking off it to get back to his right.” Reilly used logos to emphasize how tough it was for Ben to compete in cross country races with his cerebral palsy. In doing so, Reilly is magnifying how strong Ben is to persevere through all of the tests he is faced with, rather than giving up on his dreams. Cerebral palsy is a very crippling disease that makes it nearly impossible to walk, let alone run. Many people would just give up on their dreams rather than pushing through as Ben did. This displays how easy it is to give up on something, even if it means the world to you, just because it’s hard. Ben didn’t do that. He had his sights set on finishing his races all throughout high school, and he did that by never giving up, even in the hardest moments. These appeals assert how challenging it can be for one to overcome hardships while also conveying how

Reilly integrates painful words while explaining Ben’s persistence throughout all of his cross country races. Reilly achieves a painful type of diction by stating that Ben has to “drag” his body along like an “unbending tire.” Once Ben is almost complete his race, Reilly states that his face is “red and tortured” and that he finishes “bloody and bruised.” Reilly embodies painful diction to connect Ben’s struggle to run with his everyday battle of fighting his cerebral palsy disease. The fact that Ben has had this conflict his whole life illuminates how persistent he is to put himself into a situation where he has to use his body in ways that may be painful and very challenging. When Reilly says that Ben has to “drag” his body along, he is using both the denotative meaning and connotative meaning. Reilly is implying that Ben’s body doesn’t work by itself so he has to physically drag it to continue on. Reilly’s use of painful diction establishes that Ben is as tough and driven as they come. He finishes every single race he takes part in by pushing through and trying his absolute best until he gets where he wants to be, whether it takes an hour or ten