John Biewen, the author of Scene on Radio for his series, ‘The Land That Never Has been Yet’ made this series to talk about different historical events that relate to U.S. democracy. Biewen retells events about democracy in the United States in his own insight that they are glories and full of flaws. Episode 2 of this series recounts a specific historical event with the purpose of interpreting how U.S. citizens used their hardship as an opportunity to demand a better life. This historical event is Shay’s rebellions. Throughout the episode, John Biewen uses different rhetorical modes like example, narration, and ethos to broad out his insights of this event. These modes help his interpretations become more effective to the listener or reader …show more content…
Readers and listeners need know what he is trying to say about Shay’s Rebellion is true so he quotes directly from Henry Knox and George Washington to start off the podcast with a primary source that could start off that credibility. A few pages later of the conversation between these historical names John Biewen says, “Shays’ Rebellion. If you grew up in the U.S., you may have heard about it in high school History class, and your textbook might have said that it helped move the framers to write the Constitution. But if you’re like me, you couldn’t say much more about it than that” (Biewen 6-7). In this quote we can see that Biewen is trying to relate to us in a way to build his reliability with people like him who have heard of Shay’s rebellion from textbooks but didn’t know much context about it other than that. After questioning what this event says about democracy in the U.S., John Biewen introduces us into his insights of Shay’s Rebellion that textbooks don’t include, he was able to effectively construct this because of his ethos. His ethos supports his effectiveness into relaying his purpose to the readers or listeners because we can trust that his interpretations are correct and helps us understand the concept of democracy