Cortez 1

Oscar Cortez
Professor Ogbara
English 1A
March 1, 2015
Rhetorical Analysis
In her essay What Is Poverty? Jo Goodwin Parker defines poverty in many ways. This
essay is one of her personal essays that portray living in poverty. She describes the hard time that
she and her three children face just to have normal daily activities such as sleeping, washing
clothes, and eating. The way of life that Jo Goodwin Parker lived was not uncommon, and many
other families experienced the same hardships. The article contains stern and caustic tone
throughout the article, and paints the picture showing the author being angry towards the
audience.
Parkers tone throughout the article causes readers to feel many emotions. She begins the
article with a stern and harsh tone by being demanding. She starts off with You ask me what is
poverty? Listen to Me (Parker 1). This is the first sentence, and the tone is already direct
towards the audience, making them feel uncomfortable from the beginning. She goes on by
explaining how she is dirty, smelly, and had no proper underwear. Then later, her tone starts
making the audience feel the guilty. Parker says You say in your clean clothes coming from
your clean house, Anyone can be clean (Parker 1). Even though this quote is not so direct, but
it makes the reader feel guilty for having the opportunity to have clean clothes and a clean home.
Adding to her tone, Jo Parkers lack of rhetorical appeal also makes the reader feel
uncomfortable, and with the lack of ethical appeal, makes the article seem one sided. In reality,
she actually experienced poverty, but the actual audience is being slightly thrown off because of

Cortez 2
her exaggeration of personal experience. She may not always be giving us the full picture of
what really happened. If she had used more facts about poverty, the audience could have given
more trust towards the writer and believed that the article is not just a one-sided article.
Jo Parker also utilizes emotional appeal that it actually makes the reader feel angry. The
excess use of emotional appeal causes too many emotions to appear in the audience. The
audience begins to feel pity, guilt, anger, and sadness in this one article. By using the stern tone,
harsh images and rhetorical appeal, she arouses too many of the readers emotions. Parker also
does an excellent job of engaging the reader, but is little extreme that causes the reader to feel
uncomfortable while reading the article. Her tone is confrontational and attacks the reader in a
negative way. Her writing paints the picture of harsh images of her actual experience of poverty.
The amount of emotional appeals causes the reader to feel uncomfortable, and if Jo Goodwin
Parker used more logical appeal, she would have proven that the article is not one sided.
Everyone is life has bad choices and live through harsh time, but always have a way to make it
out.
Jo Goodwin Parker, uses a stern and caustic that causes the audience to feel emotion. The
description of the