Child Labor Rhetorical Analysis

Child labor, seen today as frighteningly atrocious, was prevalent during the early 20th century, and the lack of empathy among the people at the time are exemplified throughout Kelley’s piece. Fueled by humankind’s innate greed for money, and thus, the recruitment of these children and it’s obvious selfish needs was illuminated by Kelley as she exposed the wrong-doings of the everyday people through her use of first person point of view. Moreover, the aforementioned lack of empathy associated with allowing child labor to take place is made painfully obvious through Kelley’s use of rhetorical devices ranging from repetition to suffocatingly concise syntax. With this means of instilling a guilt-like response from the audience, the rhetorical …show more content…
Employing short sentences along with anaphora, Kelley explicitly reveals the direness of the situation. “We do not wish this. We prefer to have our work done by men and women. But we are almost powerless.” This also evidences a shift in the author’s tone towards the situation. From a largely desperate, cynical tone to a tone of helplessness and sympathy, Kelley prepares the audience for the revelation of her call to action. Knowing that she needs the audience members to keep an objective, unsentimental state of mind, she reassures and sympathizes with her audience in a calming way: this is necessary as the call to action is a more business-like manner. Additionally, these shots of short sentences are effective in that the information presented within these sentences are needed to be blatant; thus creating a parallel between syntax, content, and speech delivery that leaves an impressionable, unforgettable impact on the audience. To Kelley, it is necessary that listeners pick up on this point to bring them towards an emphatic call to action. The use of these sentences also provide the speech with a layer of complexity upon the aforementioned atmosphere of guilt. Furthermore, the air of the situation is cleared when Kelley leads by mentioning petitioning and says she “shall use this power in every possible way” showing her accountability as a speaker. The …show more content…
Each one of the aforementioned is presented in a light of logos, as it’s hard to deny the authenticity of her claim. While the fact that child labor is heinous is common place knowledge, Kelley uses imagery to depict the situation in order to truly spur a massive movement. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s point in “Small Change,” Kelley recognizes that a collective group simply needs a strong enough motivational and inspirational spur to create an entire reform movement, and she takes this fact and paints images that depict the direness of the situation. The audience, from the imagery, themselves, gets placed in the “textile mills” or “shoe factories” or “offices,” places notorious for ill-conditions during the twentieth century. These images, while simple, explode a picture into the audience member’s minds where they can picture the cobwebbed corners and dust covered machines. Furthermore,images filled with sympathy such as “a girl of six or seven, just tall enough to reach the bobbins” shows how unfit and wrong the situation is. Another effect of these meticulous descriptions is that it empowers the audience to feel the sound waves of Kelley’s description and transpose it, in their mind, and put themselves in the girls’ exact situation. The little girl, an image supposedly connected with pretty neon dresses and chasing