Barbara King Rhetorical Analysis

Barbara J. King introduces her argument with a very serious and riveting story about a mother dolphin in distress over the corpse of her baby and uses this anecdote to grab the audience’s attention, appeal to their pathos, and intrigue the audience to continue reading. Her argument is an ambiguous case because even though the two topics of animals and mourning over a loved one would each seem to be honorable, a large portion of the audience she is targeting either doesn’t know or have not formed an opinion with the subject that animals can mourn as well as humans, while others simply disagree with her. Therefore, she must have this kind of introduction to try and win the attention of her readers.
King uses the testimony of experienced researchers …show more content…
The repetition of stories about the death of babies, or other loved ones, and the disturbance it causes to the family will make every reader who is an animal lover cringe and emotionally connect to the story. The argument is constantly being supported by anecdotes and research statistics from multiple different resources, which in turn provides a wide variety of credible information. Then she ties it all back together by making direct comparisons to the way humans feel and react to loss and the key similarities in the way animals experience loss as …show more content…
She discuses the fact that when two animals are keenly attached but then separated, they might not be experiencing grief at all but rather a strong emotion due to their connection. This is conflicting with the whole argument that she has put forth thus far by saying that they are not actually experiencing grief just something similar. This part should have been left out in order to keep from supplying the opposition with more to strengthen their