Both Sherman Alexie and Francine Prose utilize various rhetorical strategies throughout their essays to captivate their audience. However, Alexie and Prose present and use these rhetorical strategies in different ways. Prose’s essay contains different components of literary devices than Alexie’s essay. For example, one of the rhetorical methods Prose uses is to take on a certain identity to build her credibility and to strengthen her argument. While Alexie also takes on an identity to fortify his argument, it is a completely different identity than Prose. The authors both appropriate a distinctive style and rhetorical devices into their essays, which in turn create strong arguments, captivate the audience, and reveal the writer’s true thoughts and feelings.
As stated earlier, Alexie uses numerous rhetorical devices in his essay, Superman and Me. A few of these being: repetition, parallelism, and flashbacks. Alexie poses repetition throughout his essay when he writes, “I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” (111) and, “I am trying to save our lives” (112). He repeats these phrases many times, but each time with different pronouns and verbs. Not only the repetition of his essay reinforces his argument, but also the pronouns and verbs he chooses to use and change. The way
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In the essay, Prose incorporated breaks between paragraphs. These breaks symbolize a new topic being brought into the light. These breaks strengthen her argument and desire for change. The audience becomes more captivated as more evidence and opinions are revealed. Prose’s writing style in this essay also contains the titles of multiple books that are often read in high schools across America. This component of her writing style gives her audience information to take in and formulate opinions on. These components also add value to the purpose of her essay and add to her