Week 3 John Hart

As I have been reading through Eating Animals, I have been becoming more and more aware of the rhetorical skills used by Foer, thanks to TYFA. Chapter Six of TYFA talks a lot about the effect ethos has on an audience and how powerful a person's character can be in terms of getting others to take his/her side. As Eating Animals progresses, I have found myself becoming more and more open to some of the ideas that Foer is conveying. This is rather surprising to me because I am not a vegetarian, nor do really support the cause of vegetarianism. But, Foer has spent much of the first two chapters of this book winning me over and gaining my trust, and he's doing so through using ethos. Obviously, I'm not the only person in the world reading this book, but he has an understanding of what his audience is and he's playing to that audience. Because of this, he is able to shape his rhetoric around us. So, he is using two very important tools of rhetoric to make his point; ethos and assimilation. He becomes one of the audience members. He isn't preaching from his ivory tower. He puts himself on our level to win our trust and to gain ethos. So far, he's done an excellent job of achieving this, as I still have genuine interest in continuing to read this book.