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Rhetorical Analysis OfThe Three-Legged Who Carried Me?

Decent Essays

In the narration, “The Three-Legged Who Carried Me,” Laurie Lambeth uses rhetoric to make an effective argument. Lambeth begins with describing her own life, then her dog, Patou’s life, and finally to how both of their lives were intertwined in more ways than one. Within her narration she argues, “All creatures who persist are whole” (Lambeth, paragraph 24). By using narration, diction, and compare and contrast throughout her article, she is able to strengthen her argument in order to persuade readers that despite all hardships one may endure, all those who continue on are whole. In her article, Lambeth opens with a memory of the last moments of Patou’s life. Lambeth writes, “I knew what she meant about wholeness; it was a belief in an embodied afterlife. Born with four legs yet living the last years of her life with three, Patou must have seemed to some incomplete. But in that moment I had to question the idea” (Lambeth, paragraph 3). After putting Patou down, the doctor made a comment on how Patou would be reunited with her other leg and would be whole again. After hearing this, Lambeth questioned the idea of Patou’s life being whole or not. This is a perfect example of how Lambeth’s personal experiences and thoughts add to the overall purpose. When revealing to the reader that, after the end of Patou’s life, she still considered her whole even with three legs, she not only made her argument stronger by directly providing an example, she made it stronger because it was a

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