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My Rhetorical Reflection Of A Goodbye Letter From My Mother

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My rhetorical artifact is a goodbye letter from my mother to me as she prepared to travel across the country to visit my grandfather. To understand the rhetoric used in this letter, one must first understand that my mother never travels without my entire family beside her, so this trip was out of the ordinary. The tight bond that my family shares combined with the lack of independent travel my mother does, creates a letter that is based nearly entirely in pathos. Because my mother was planning to be away for an extended period of time, she used pathos to ensure that my family and I felt her love despite her absence and that we would all follow through with the tasks she had asked us to do. Throughout my mother’s letter, she constantly employs the usage of pathos to get the point across that she loves my family and I. My mother uses phrases that appeal strongly to human emotion such as, “mommy loves you” and “you are my sissy”. My mother may not have consciously knew that she was employing pathos, however, she knew that her audience wanted to hear her tell them that she loved them since they wouldn’t be hearing it for a while, so my mother gave the audience what they wanted. Throughout my journals, I analyze the repeated usage of pathos and through my analysis I discover more in depth how and why pathos is used so often.
Journal One My rhetorical artifact is a goodbye letter from my mother as she prepared to leave for a week to go across the country. The exigency of this artifact comes from the fact that my mother, whom is the bond that keeps my household in order, would be leaving my family for a somewhat extended period of time. My mother needed to provide the barest, most basic set of instructions to follow that would ensure that our household would remain in order, and I, being the eldest in the family, was next in line to be in charge. This letter provided me with the daily reminders that my mother keeps intrinsically, just on paper. My mother’s letter also provided me with a heartfelt, long lasting goodbye. My mother returned after only a week, however, with this note, I was left with the words of love that my mother wrote on paper for me. I come from a tight knit family, so for my mother to

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