Rhetorical Analysis Of Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods

Since the beginning of time, all of mankind has depended on the land for basic survival-such as the “Bare Necessities.” However, man began to stray away from “al-naturale” by finding any way to control nature and use it to their advantage. Therefore, over time, the relationship between man and nature grew despondently, just as Richard Louv emphasizes in his excerpt, the “Last Child in the Woods.” Louv stresses that the loss of nature will hit home in present and future generations by using an anecdote, rhetorical logos, and a sense of nostalgia through pathos.
The excerpt begins with researchers at the State University of New York experimenting in order to select the multiple colors that appear on a butterfly’s wings, very intriguing. This news brought Matt Richtel to believe that it is “time for nature to carry its weight,” sponsorship-wise, in the advertising world, but the utter popularity of “simulating nature or using nature as ad space ‘demands that we acknowledge, even respect, their cultural importance.’” How can one claim all the goodness nature brings, such as the incredible view, but not declare every bug, animal, plant, and piece of dirt that comes with it? Knowing that Americans believe that nature is “not even worth looking at” provides the …show more content…
Not only does Louv take this stand, but also do we, for his writing style in the end paragraph includes the reader by taking them into the future to tell their grandchildren what we used to do-look out the car window. “We” saw the birds, counted the cows and horses and coyotes, stared at the horizon and rain, imagined our cars driving alongside us, and “considered the past and dreamed of the future, and watched it all go by in the blink of an eye.” Louv struck the hearts of readers by playing on their emotions and leaving it at that, for when a reader is touched, the reader is