Rhetorical Devices In Enrique's Journey

Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario is the story about a boy in Honduras whose mother left him to pursue a better life in America. This story encompasses the coming of age period of Enrique’s life and many of his experiences can be related to by other children, even in different situations. Nazario develops an interesting novel that both documents the journey of Enrique to the United States but also creates a dramatic tone like a fiction novel would have. Through her diverse use of rhetorical strategies, Nazario was able to explain the positive and negative effects of family relationships through the life of Enrique. She does this by utilizing different literary devices, most evidently, nomos, in which she relates with the story and also opens

She does this by being very detailed in her documentation of Enrique’s journey which allows the audience to see the more trivial things that end up building to the extreme situation that Enrique was eventually thrown into. The smaller ordeals that Nazario cites portrays Enrique’s life in a more relatable way in which others can see the positive and negative effects that family relationships can have in the coming of age process. Through this relatability, the audience is able to establish a connection with Enrique’s life which allows Nazario to emphasize how family relationships can have both positive and negative effects on someone during the coming of age period. Nazario makes this connection when she documents Belky stating, “On Mother’s Day, Belky cries quietly, alone in her room. She struggles through the celebrations at school. Then she scolds herself. She should thank her mother for leaving,” (p. 24) from which Nazario takes a severe circumstance of Belky not seeing her mother and making it relatable by showing Belky’s guilt for feeling resentment toward her mother when her mother is making grave sacrifices to care for