Visual Rhetoric: Nine Cigarettes

Visual Rhetoric When you think of smoking what do you think of? Most people smoke because it helps release stress. Little do they know they're decreasing their chance of living a healthy life each time they smoke a cigarette. Is your life worth living for or do you want to decrease it every time you inhale a cigarette.
There are nine cigarettes lined up next to each other from tallest to shortest. The image shows the original cigarette before and after it has been smoked multiple times. The first cigarette is the tallest. It has not been lit yet and it is still in its original form. The next eight cigarettes show the different stages of the original cigarette after it has been lit and smoked multiple times. The first three cigarettes …show more content…
The image communicates that point by using the cigarette image symbolically to represent a person’s health. The nine phases represents the person’s health as it starts out well and gradually decreases as they continue to smoke. It is also symbolic in a way that the image uses nine cigarettes which could have ties to the old saying that “A cat has nine lives”. Each of the nine cigarettes get shorter over time as they are being inhaled, representing a person using each of their nine lives and eventually dying. As the image shows, the first cigarette is unlit and has not been inhaled yet. It represents the person at a healthy stage of their life before smoking a cigarette. The last cigarette has the strongest representation. It shows the end result of what happens to that person as they continue to smoke, which ultimately costs them their …show more content…
Some anti-tobacco campaigns focus their attention on the emotional aspect of their image by showing what smoking cigarettes has done to some people. They use people that have either had some sort of lung cancer, or a senior citizen laying on their deathbed telling people not to smoke. This image is different. It does not focus on the raw emotional aspect to persuade the audience, but rather focuses on being direct with the audience. Even the message included on the image is straightforward. It lets people know that every time they smoke a cigarette, they are putting their health and lives at risk. The argument is also effective because the image is so simple, but delivers a very powerful message. The simplicity of the image and the direct precision of the words below the image appeals to even the youngest of audiences, as they are able to comprehend the message of this