Rhetorical Analysis of “Monsters and the Moral Imagination” Many people believe monsters are imaginary creatures that are seen in movies or even for others, it could be a serial killer that was heard about on the news. Stephen T. Asma wrote “Monsters and the Moral Imagination” which “first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in October 2009” (Hoffman 61). Asma, who is a professor of philosophy, examines how different individual’s perceptions of a monster can be different depending on the era or even events happening around them. In “Monsters and the Moral Imagination,” Stephen T. Asma wrote a nonfiction, persuasive article for an educated and possibly specialized audience to examine how the idea of monsters have changed over time, what could be the motivation to create them, or even how life experiences could change an individual’s perceptions. Asma shows that his article was written for an educated or specialized audience by his continual use of complex vocabulary, as well as the place of which the article was first published. Asma did an excellent job convincing his audience using emotion, logic, and ethics. Besides his use of logic, there is a large amount of pathos in his writing, which makes the reader perceive that he is writing to a skeptical audience. For example, describing how in modern films, such as Frankenstein, “we dramatize the rage of the monstrous creature…then scold ourselves…[for being an] intolerant society”(61). “The liberal lesson of monsters