Commentary 2 Chelsea Goossens

Starting from the title, you state that you wrote about Susan Sontag’s “9/11” and “The Day After” articles, for a correct rhetorical critique essay title you need to have your title reflect the content of your analysis.

I enjoyed your introduction; it provided just enough background information on the 9/11 attacks for the readers. You gave a really strong thesis that identified your position on Sontag’s article with telling how she had an “overall misuse” and “lack of attentiveness,” for the appeals of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. I think your introduction was really good and had all the important points you needed.

Starting off with your examples of Sontag misuse of logos, you start off your paragraph with a good transition word. Then you provide a quote to show how she tried to guide her audience to think negatively about the government and media, well done. Also, you provided some words she used like “unanimity” and “unanimously” to attract in her audience, but I think those would go under ethos more then logos. However, you made a good point about her word choice being “stylishly appealing” to overlook that Sontag does not give any facts for her case.

Next, your paragraph on pathos appeal did not have a lot of detail. You took some great examples out of the article to show her emotion of anger and forcefulness, but you should explain those words more and tell the readers how or why they fit under the pathos appeal.

When you wrote about Sontag’s use of the ethos appeal, you did a good job explaining how she builds a bridge with the readers through her use of inclusive words “our” “we” and others. I thought it was good how you said her inclusiveness was negative at the end from her quote “But lets not be stupid together.”

You did not mention the appeal kairos, which is not required. Although, you could write about how Sontag strongly misused it by writing this article way to fast.

For your next half of the essay, you wrote about Sontag’s other article “The Day After.” I liked how you wrote about this article, because you gave the readers a different view of Sontag using the appeals. You took some important quotes out of her redeeming herself with the use of pathos.

Overall, I thought you wrote a great rhetorical critique. There were only a few minor errors with punctuation and grammar that can be easily corrected. I like how you organized your appeals and ended with the second article. My only problem would be fixing your title and being a little more specific when explaining the point and critique of your body paragraphs.