Essay one

You will compose a piece of epideictic rhetoric, praising or blaming a person. YOU ARE TO PRAISE THE PERSON!!! That person can be anyonefamily member or friend, living or dead, famous or relatively unknown. You will probably find it easier to write an essay that praises your subject rather than blames him/her, but you are free to write a paper that does either. Just bear in mind that rhetoric that blames a person can make the speakers/ writers ethos (credibility) more difficult to establish.

For this first essay, I would like you to adopt a non-academic style that you would expect to hear from a speaker delivering a speech. Speeches generally are not read verbatim, so your essayshould read with the kind of ease that one expects in spoken discourse. The style of your rhetoric is, of course, going to be more inclined toward pathos than logos, stirring your audienceto a new degree of feeling for/against your subject. Seek to inspire deep feeling in your audience, but bear in mind that too much pathos, or unwarranted appeals to pathos, can have the opposite effect. Audiences know when the emotion is cheap.

When drafting this essay, keep in mind that praiseworthy or blameworthy deeds are those for which one is responsible. In other words, you cannot praise or blame someone for circumstances or experiences beyond their control. Was this person a victim? Victimization can free one from guilt, but a victims suffering is not necessarily praiseworthy. Was this person endowed with an exceptional nature? Giftedness is not deserving of praise; neither is its absence deserving of blame. Did this person have advantages we might associate with time or place? Good or bad fortune, by definition, are not within ones control. Your paper should focus on those things that we would consider to be the result of ones free choice, for only free people can exhibit virtue or vice. Finally, highlight the deeds or acts of the person being praised/blamed. Try not to speak directly of the persons character; instead, speak of those acts and deeds that embody it. Occasionally you will have to name a virtue/vice, but try to do that as little as possible.