It’s hard for me to start this particular cover letter, as I struggle to think of anything we really went in-depth on. I will clarify that I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault; of the six-day phase, two of them were spent outside of the classroom, so only a bit over half of the phase was actually spent in class. Consequently, phase 2 felt just a bit less fulfilling than phase 1 had.

That said, it’d be wrong to say I left this phase empty handed, as that most certainly wasn’t the case. Back in phase 1, The main thing I really struggled to understand was exactly what rhetoric is. I understood that it was something one might use to support an argument of theirs, but beyond that, my understanding of the word was rather vague. Thankfully, phase 2 happened to be just that! It was here that, with the assistance of worksheets, lessons, and texts that made use of rhetoric, we covered more or less everything that I was still confused about

It’s thanks to the content in phase 2 that I can now more easily recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations. Now recognizing instances of rhetoric comes more naturally, after having practiced it with a whole analysis essay about it. Having this know-how is beneficial for sure, as I can not only deliberately use more rhetoric in my own arguments, but also recognize it in the arguments of others, and address it appropriately. This’ll help improve my debating skills immensely– which I had already been working on up until this point.

Atop that, I can not only recognize rhetoric in arguments now, but I can also explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Knowing that there is, in fact, rhetoric in a text isn’t enough to do anything with it; being able to analyze and understand it is the other half of the journey, and thankfully, I feel as if this phase has prepared me for that too. In our readings, and in our assignment for this phase, we not only had to identify instances of rhetoric in an article, but also sniff out the most important ones, and explain in our own words what the author is trying to say in them, and to who. With this skill, I’m able to break down not only an article to its most basic components, so to speak, but a movie, show, or any other medium of storytelling/argument. The analysis of “Finding Nemo” was a great example of this, taking what most might just view as an inconsequential, family-friendly movie, and dig a little deeper into it to weed out themes and messages that the writers subtly slipped into the story.
Something else I learned that wasn’t so directly related to rhetoric, but still fairly important to understanding it, is the author’s intended audience. Knowing who the author is directing their message towards can help analyze their rhetoric, as you understand what might be driving them to make such arguments. For example, an article about the generational gap may be directed towards an older/younger generation of readers, which means its rhetoric is more likely meant to enlighten them of the opposing generation’s struggles, and to help them sympathize.

Ultimately, I guess this was a rather short, yet still sweet phase. It took the one writing technique we covered in phase one that I wasn’t confident in, and dealt with that rather quickly.

The reading that I’ve decided to write about is “Ghosts of the Future,” By science reporter Sarah Kaplan. This article for the Washington Posts speaks of climate change, and why we should try to do something about it as a species. More specifically, it’s about Kaplan’s own trip to the Burgess Shale, a place in British Columbia where she lays witness to and interacts with a plethora of fossils. Having more insight into these creatures’ stories– where they’re from in our planet’s history, how they died, and how long they lasted, puts into perspective the weight of life, And how we as a species are on our own path to extinction. She states that we are not immune to the effects of climate change, and that as such an influential species, we should not be apathetic to the environmental issues that we’ve accelerated, and instead try to revert them. To get this point across, Kaplan uses many instances of rhetoric, looking both to the present and back billions of years into our planet’s history in order to emphasize that humanity isn’t as grand-standing as many would be led to believe, and that we’re just a few accidents too many away from premature extinction. It’s a problem that the general public needs to hear of, and one that Kaplan doesn’t sugarcoat. It’s here that I not only hope to shine a light on her message by citing and elaborating on the article, but to also emphasize her point with words of my own.

Kaplan’s article, and by extension this analysis, are directed towards your ordinary teens and young adults of society. Obviously, this is a news article, so it’s going to be directed at the demographics that are actually likely to keep up with the Washington Post, though it still goes deeper than that. While the governments and corporations of the world are the ones responsible for most of the climate change that goes on, they benefit from and listen to the public more often than not– which is why it’s important to educate as many people as possible about climate change, and the history of our planet. That way we can reasonably predict what consequences may face us in the future. With such knowledge, we can demand that the establishments which serve us and provide us goods make the required changes.

Kaplan begins her article by shining a light on a misconception that some ordinary people may have, through use of a simile. Be it, their egos, or their ignorance, some people may be led to believe that the human race is too big to fail; that there’s no urgency to what we do, and that we’ll all be ok if we just stay put. Kaplan tackles this misconception a few times during the article, and it starts at the very beginning. They compare the history of the Earth so far to a single day; life is created before dawn, oxygen fills the atmosphere around noon, so on and so forth. To quote Kaplan on this comparison, “It isn’t til 9 p.m., about half a billion years before the present, that we see the first complex, multicellular beings. Scientists call this juncture the ‘Cambrian explosion” — the moment when billions of years of bacteria gave way to the rapidly evolving beings we know as animals.”

Kaplan uses this rhetoric to detail how minute we are in the planet’s history, and how if we want to last, we’re going to have to work for it. To put it in Kaplan’s own words, later in the article; “Trilobites died out during the end-Permian change mass extinction, when gigantic volcanic eruptions raised temperatures, acidified the oceans and killed off some 90 percent of life on Earth. By comparison, our species seems like little more than a hiccup in the steady march of geologic time. Homo sapiens has existed for just 0.06 percent of the time trilobites survived. Given the environmental crisis we’ve created, it’s unclear how much longer we’ll be around.” With how large of a ratio that is, there’s no saying that such a disaster won’t happen in our lifetime, especially with how our behaviors have been accelerating climate change. In using this simile to demonstrate how temporary humanity is, she is likely trying to instill a sense of urgency in the reader; the same urgency that, as stated earlier. It supports one of the major themes of the articles that life is fleeting– and that includes humans.

 Many average folks are missing for one reason or another. As such a dominant species on Earth, it’s easy for anyone to fall into the trap of believing that we’re set for the future, and that nothing bad can happen. The fact of the matter is though, humans are an incredibly infant species in the grand scheme of things, who haven’t been around for nearly as long as some other species that are still on the planet to this day. There’s still plenty of opportunities for our time to be cut short by environmental disaster– especially with how taxing our way of life is on the planet. 

Another profound piece of rhetoric found in “Ghosts of the Future” would, ironically enough, be at the very end. Where the comparison at the beginning was a look into the Earth’s history to predict the future, the end of the article is dedicated to the present– what’s going on right now, and how it only fuels Kaplan’s concern. She begins by stating that our planet is built on a cycle of new life being born, only to be wiped out later on, followed by life once again emerging from the remnants. In her words, “The world we love, the very fact of our existence, is contingent upon that process. Change is why we are here. And change will happen again.” With this reminder in place, she proceeds to detail a plethora of environmental concerns that are currently going on in the modern day, and how despite humanity only having been around for a laughable amount of time, we’re already beginning to experience some of, if not the fastest climate change that Earth has ever witnessed. Species of all shapes and sizes, from whales, to lichen, to bugs, are growing ever more endangered at breakneck speeds. Carbon emissions produced by human civilization are altering the climate as we know it, and in a way that no other species in the planet’s history could even try to emulate. Kaplan cites the U.N Secretary, and his warning that Earth is speeding towards the point of no return, and follows that up with perhaps one of the most impactful lines of the whole article: “The biggest source of cumulative greenhouse gases in history — the United States — refuses to cooperate on climate change mitigation at all. Meanwhile, unprecedented wildfires have burned millions of acres in Australia, Venice is underwater, hundreds of Bahamians are still missing after Hurricane Dorian devastated the island nation in August. Like the creatures of the Cambrian, humans are entering a world utterly unlike the one in which we evolved. Our species may not die out, but life as we know it cannot go on.”

Though harsh, this line serves as a wakeup call for the audience. While they may not be feeling the impacts personally, human beings just like them are suffering the consequences of the rapidly shifting climate, losing both their land and their lives to natural disaster. The point of this rhetoric is to tie the whole article, which had mostly been about extinct species up until this point, of why they should care, and the signs of climate change that can be seen here and now across the globe.

Though both instances of rhetoric are fairly dreary in their own rights, painting the image of a grim future, the point of “Ghosts of the Future” is not to fearmonger; rather, it’s to inspire. The rhetoric stands to enforce what will happen if we don’t take action– but this is to support Kaplan’s ultimate message of how we should take action. Should we just sit around and keep living as we always have, humanity won’t be long for this world, but Kaplan believes that, as the only species in the planet’s history to have such an immense impact on the environment, it’s our responsibility to slow down the climate change that we’ve accelerated. We have the brain capacity, and Kaplan herself gives suggestions on what to do, such as putting a price on carbon, and developing renewable resources, so the methods are there. We just need the willingness to change, which is what her many instances of rhetoric in her article were hoping to convince the audience of.