David Eggers Use Ethos Pathos Logos For Life And Career Readiness After College

Life and career readiness after college are concepts that have recently come into question when looking at post-graduate success. Most colleges and curriculum coordinators believe that the course of study at their institutions prepare their students for life after college. Others think that much of the time spent during these formative years is wasted at parties or just being generally idle. As he believes that many college hours are wasted and that college graduates need volunteer experience to help them succeed in life after their studies, writer David Eggers supports adding community service requirements to college curriculums across the country. The author is very convincing in his arguments, as he utilizes logic, emotion, and credibility to win over the audience. First, logos is the portion of a piece of persuasive literature that provides logical reasoning as a way of coaxing the audience to believe a certain way. Logical arguments include the use of facts and statistics. In David Eggers’s article, he uses logos when he explains a current government program in the state of Michigan, which requires the 90,000+ students enrolled in state …show more content…
Pathos is definitely the most frequently and best used rhetorical device used in this article. Emotional statements abound throughout his writing. For example, in one portion of the article, Eggers tells the reader about an opponent who suggests that forced volunteerism negatively impacts those being served. The author responds, saying, “First of all, that's putting forth a pretty dim view of the soul of the average student. What, is the unwilling college volunteer going to throw food at visitors to the soup kitchen?” (Eggers). He uses emotion to show that most young people do not necessarily feel that volunteering is nothing more than an obligation. He then follows up that statement with a rhetorical question, which emphasizes the absurdity of his counterpart’s