Rhetorical Analysis Of Live Free And Starve

In Chita Divakaruni essay titled “Live Free and Starve”, she smartly uses the audience’s emotions about child labor to first bring the issue into the spotlight, while at the same time presenting her strongest arguments against the bill to ban import items made by children in bondage using personal experiences. Her first argument against the bill is based on economic reasoning. Ms. Chita wills her audience to question their high moral ground in light of extreme poverty and dreadful standard of living which is the foundation of child labor in the first place. Secondly, the article also questions the usefulness of such bills, which in her mind are only passed so that liberals can give themselves a thump on the back rather than to addressing the real issue of child labor. The article, the way it uses emotions, is brilliantly placed in Salon magazine which generally has a large female readership and maybe persuasive to that particular audience, …show more content…
Her description of the struggles and the working conditions of a child laborer forces the audience to confront their emotions on the issue using phrases such as “They aren't even allowed to stand up and stretch”, the swiftly drawing attention of the reader to the fact that they are only viewing the issue from the prism of their own beliefs and values with the clever reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, highlighting the ludicrous idea “that someone could actually prefer bread to freedom”. In my opinion for rhetoric to be truly persuasive the writer must on be on some common ground with the audience and that is the most interesting part about the article. Even though Chita’s is writing an anti-bill article, she goes to great lengths describe the awful nature of child labor, expressing sympathies with the children and narrating their stories in order to let the audience know that she is on their side and feels the same way about the