Rose Bachtel's Television: Destroying Childhood

Appeals: Lacking In Essays Getting the attention from the audience is not the most important feature in an essay…keeping the attention of the audience is. Rose Bachtel, author of Television: Destroying Childhood, has a difficult time with this very complex technique called appeals. Bachtel writes about the downfalls of children watching television and claims that there should not be televisions in households (even though she admits to owning and watching a television). When trying to communicate her frustrations of televisions in households, Bachtel seems to lack reasoning appeals, ethical appeals, and emotional appeals (also know as logos, ethos, and pathos). Logos is reliable when the author uses logic or reasoning to support his or her claim. Bachtel uses the logos technique once in her essay when she is giving a solution to the “problem.” Bachtel exclaims, “Parents should not keep a

This appeals to the audience’s needs, values, and emotions. Although this may be relatable to parents who do stick their child in front of a television for hours, it is very unappealing to the average reader. Bachtel does attempt to make her essay relatable to all by adding in a personal testimony, but adds in that she still uses a television. Bachtel could have improved the pathos of her essay by adding in some “frightening” facts about children who watch too much television, or a real story about a child who watched too much television. Of course, they still need to support her claim, but it is need to spice up her essay. To avoid an essay that does not keep the attention of the reader, an author needs to add in logos, ethos, and pathos. Without these three appeals, we get an essay much like Rose Bachtel’s. Television: Destroying Childhood does state why a household should not have a television (and states why one may have a television), but it lacks the essentials on an