My rhetoric analysis is on an open letter to Starbucks after the author discovered the company’s involvement with Planned Parenthood. I found the letter through a link on Facebook, as all great pieces of literature are discovered. Some background knowledge may be needed about the accusations being made towards Planned Parenthood, although the author goes into lots of detail explaining these accusations, which are that Planned Parenthood is taking highly developed fetuses from the abortions that they perform and selling them. This open letter is written to the Starbucks Corporation, but it is an open letter, so the audience also includes patrons of Starbucks. The purpose of the letter is to get Starbucks to stop subsidizing Planned Parenthood …show more content…
However, the letter has another purpose, which is to persuade readers of how awful Planned Parenthood is and to encourage them to join the author in boycotting Starbucks. The ethos of this letter depends on the whether or not the reader Planned Parenthood and their opinion on the accusations being made toward the company. Personally, the letter’s ethos decreased for me because of its overuse of pathos and underuse of logos, but if the reader already disagrees with Planned Parenthood, the letter will have a large amount of ethos. Pathos is this letter’s main way of persuasion through fear mongering. Vivid wording is heavily used such as ‘monstrous organization’, ‘exterminating human lives’, and ‘inhumane butchers’. Even the letter is signed off with ‘Disgusted, Megan Fox’. Not only this, but words are emphasized through all capital letters, exclamation points, and italics. Another use of pathos in the letter is the author describing an abortion doctor chuckling as she rips off a baby’s legs, which is supposed to make the reader feel disgust and outrage for Planned Parenthood and