Rhetorical Analysis Assignment Sheet (due Oct 12th midnight Write a 900 word rhetorical analysis of “My Friend Dahmer” by Derf Backderf, focusing on ONE aspect of Rhetoric: Topic, Author Credibility, Audience, or Purpose, and only one of those. The essay should focus on analyzing the comic’s rhetoric (words) but you may also include analysis of art ONLY if it relates to a point of rhetoric or if you choose the topic/genre/style/medium option or when you discuss audience. The majority of your analysis though should be on words for Audience. The best essays will have no summary and will analyze, discuss how the words work, how techniques work. A rhetorical analysis of this work should analyze one the following:
1 Author credibility and authority- ethos- how does the author establish his credibility in the work as someone who knows what he is talking about and as an effective author of this topic – this can be examined in a number of ways- the author’s education, work experience, success in his field, the thoroughness and validity of his research, and some other ways as well like how he reveals information about himself in the comic and what info he chooses to reveal and not reveal. The best will contain all of these points.
2. Audience- pathos -When analyzing audience, one should consider who the primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences are and how the author writes for these audiences. In what ways did the author consider his audience as he crafted this book? This is similar to literary analysis in that you did when you analyzed the author’s techniques he used and how he used them and why he used them. pathos
3. Topic/genre/style/medium- logos pathos In what way is a comic a successful medium to deliver this history of Dahmer to an audience. If I chose this as a topic for the essay I would include some elements of purpose and audience as well. This will require you to do more art analysis as well as an analysis of the narration and dialogue to determine whether this was a successful genre/medium to deliver this information.
4. Purpose-logos pathos ethos In what ways does this comic effectively express the author’s purpose for writing and drawing this story.
5. There are hundreds of minor rhetorical strategies that make up the above 4. They are available on the video I posted. The above represent the four big ones that we will be focusing upon.
