Arm Wrestling With My Father Analysis

What is the point in even writing a story about a father and son relationship? The relationship between a father and son can vary depending on the person, but “Arm Wrestling with My Father” is a wonderful example as to how a father and son form their own connection. Brad Manning enlightens the reader on how Manning and his father formed their own connection. Unusual to some, but to Manning it is the form of bond he gets to have with his father which is very special. Brad Manning really shows off this father and son relationship by using the following elements of rhetoric; the purpose, thesis, audience, methods of development, and the language his writing.
The key to understanding what Brad Manning wrote is to find out why he wrote it in the …show more content…
Another important thing to analyze is who he is directing this essay towards. The original intentions of this essay was actually for a freshman composition, but the tone of this essay appeals to any father and son. The reader instantly looks at the relationship they have with their own father, and compares it the relationship shown in the essay. Manning also uses the common stereotype that men usually communicate more with physical type behaviors. Manning and his father solely showed their relationship by playing sports, arm wrestling, and other things deemed manly. At the end of the essay Manning actually expresses this by saying “Ours had always been a physical relationship, I suppose, one determined by athleticism and strength. We never communicated as well in speech or in writing as in a strong hug, battling to make the other gasp for breath. I could never find him at one of my orchestra concerts. But as my lacrosse games, he would be there in the stands, with an angry look, ready to coach me after the game on how I could do better.” (Manning) The audience for this essay was supposed to be the professor, but anybody that reads it instantly feels like they become a part of the …show more content…
There was one particular moment where manning uses a simile to compare the final arm wrestle. Manning said the following while flashing back in the story, “It was like the thrill I had once experienced as a young boy at my grandfather’s lake house in Louisiana when I hooked my first big fish. There was that sudden tug that made me leap. The red bobber was sucked down beneath the surface and I pulled back against it, reeling it in excitedly. But when my cousin caught sight of the fish and shouted out, “It’s a keeper,” I realized that I would be happier for the fish if it were let go rather than grilled for dinner. Arm wrestling my father was now like this, like hooking “Big Joe.”(Manning) That quote is a really good example as to how well Manning was able to use figurative language to efficiently describe the