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Tattoos In Helen Day's The Power Of Ink

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Responding to contemporary social issues, Helen Day's blog entry titled 'The Power of Ink' discusses the significant loss of sentiment be meaning in tattoos today. Addressed towards bloggers of young demographics, she attempts to persuade her readers to revert their mindset on the outlook of tattoos.

Beginning in an affable yet stern tone, the writer establishes her contention with bold words to capture the audience's attention and alert them of the arguments to come. She establishes her piece with anecdotal and historical examples. She asserts that tattoos today lack any significant meaning as opposed to earlier times in history. Her pun on describing the 'power of ink...diminish[ing]' like 'tattoos' may catch readers off-guard, opening …show more content…

Her utilisation of Aristotle's 'pathos' is heavy as she attempts to persuade readers on the significance of tattoos. She alludes to historical evidence by explaining the atrocities and experiences that the Jewish prisoners faced in World War 2. Her connotation of phrases such as 'cruelty' and 'horror' attempt to demean the commodity of tattoos today via adjusting her reader's emotions to match her own, thus adjusting their views and perceptions. The writer is emphatic in describing the implications of tattoos and how some have signified ownership and brutality. She attempts to juxtapose and question readers by allowing them to compare what they have and don't have, definition. Once readers recognise that their tattoos (if they have any) lack as much as Day's implication, they may feel lowly or unworthy and may regard Days as a more highly intellectualised person. Thus gaining some form of respect. Her emphasis on the significance of definition is also exemplified on her second image, which depicts a photo of a tattooed person and a caption. The caption states that parents shouldn't let their kids have any 'tattoos before [they]'re thirty.' This defines the importance of meaning, as parents are stressing to their children that they must think about the sentiment of their tattoo before 'pay[ing] some hack to needle it into [their] body.' Bloggers may have experienced

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