He is effective on his play on emotions and SE Of metaphors but struggles to give evidence that supports his hostile claims. The article starts out by describing a scene that would make any man’s heart pound, “If a stranger batters your door down with an axe, threatens your family and yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he wants…. ” By involving your family and yourself he makes an undeniable connection that forces readers to involve their own emotion. He uses this to manipulate a set up for his argument that we should feel the same way about defending our homelands.
It is effective in making he reader to feel an obligation towards his cause. His comparison gives us no choice but to feel like we have to be on his side. Furthermore, Edward Abbey is successful in his use of logic to manipulate the readers mind. As he continues to drive home the point that the wilderness is our home to protect, he states, “An Englishman home is his castle; the American’s home is his favorite forest, river, fishing stream, her favorite mountain or desert cannon, his favorite swamp or woods or lake. The reason why this metaphor is effective because adjust simply makes sense.
By constantly relating the topic jack to us, he makes it a very personal matter. This is important because in order to get people to take action you have to make them care about your cause. Abbeys main focus is to instill this passion into his readers. In his quest to do so he neglects to give credibility to his statements. Although he does a good job of tugging at the reader emotions and using metaphors that make perfect sense the ethos of his argument are lacking. In the article he talks about how the government is doing little to help the wilderness and says that they are only concerned about the money they obtain.
He writes “Cheered on, eternally, by Time, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal, actively, encouraged, inevitably, by those jellyfish government agencies that are supposed to protect the public lands, and as always aided and abetted in every way possible by the compliant politicians of our Western states… Who would sell the graves Of their own mothers if there’s a quick buck in the deal, over or under the table, what do they care. ” Saying this, he does not give examples of what they have done to make him feel this way towards them. He doesn’t even go as far as quoting someone more credible who shares his pinion or his view.
Without this needed support his argument doesn’t have any real value. In conclusion, Edward Abbey’s argument falls apart from his lack of credible evidence. A good argument has a unity of ethos, logos, and pathos. If he would have been as strong in the ethos area as he was in the pathos and logos area, he would have had a more compelling argument. The problem is that he got so carried away with his passion for the subject that he neglected to find substantial factual support to back up his claims. Overall, Abbey is passionate to a fault.