Mcteague Rhetorical Analysis Essay

The author uses many literary elements in this passage, but the specific devices used to communicate the narrator’s attitudes toward McTeague include detail, diction and tone. The attitude towards McTeague seems to be a feeling of superiority because the narrator hints that McTeague doesn’t have much on the inside and is a very simple man, with low ambitions. Through metaphors the narrator is able to show his strength and size, but also lack of intelligence. Most of the times the tone is only apparent because of the helpful diction or detail, and elicits the narrator’s attitude.
The author uses subtly connotative language in the first paragraph to delineate McTeague, and also show how simple and dull he can be. Words the author uses to describe McTeague’s physical attributes are “immense, slowly, enormous, covered, hard, angular”. The author could have used more connotative words such as fat instead of immense, or beastly instead of enormous but then different tone would have been conceived, and for at least the first paragraph the author didn’t intend for the tone to be harsh. The way in which the author describes McTeague’s looks and not his …show more content…
The speaker starts to make cruel but still realistic comparisons about him, now without using dull descriptions but stimulating analogies like “Altogether he suggested the draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.” The mean diction of “stupid” shows that the narrator’s tone towards McTeague isn’t very pleasant. This is why the attitude from the speaker towards McTeague shifts, from passive superiority to assertive power. He uses words like obedient and docile to show that McTeague is dependent and controlled, much like that of inferiority. The superior attitude of the narrator emerges and so does the true character of