The article “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” by Francine Prose uses a variety of rhetorical devices to prove the purpose of the article. The purpose of this article is to inform people how the book students are being told to read are affecting the young readers because they aren’t being taught good. To make her purpose clear to the reader the author appeals to ethos, pathos, logos, usage of shifts, repetition and to prove her point.
The author Francine Prose wrote this article for other parents and teenage students. She wrote this because she was not happy with the reading lists that were given to her sons in school. Throughout the article she discusses the levels of literacy in different schools and how the students are taught the books. Prose doesn’t agree with the way of teaching because she believes “High school students - even more than in college - is where literacy tasted and allegiances are formed: what we read in adolescence is imprinted on our brains” (Prose). She feels that students need to be taught better so that their chances at liking reading improve. The main tone is critical and harsh because she does not agree with the education system now.
Francine Prose uses the appeal to ethos, pathos and logos to…show more content… She uses shifts when she changes subjects and starts talking about a different thing. She goes from talking about culturally diverse texts to “my own two sons, now twenty-one and seventeen, have read (in public and private schools) Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Melville” (Prose). She doesn’t only use shifts with the subjects but also with the tone. Her tone goes from questioning to critical. Prose also used a lot of repetition. Throughout the text she repeats the names of the same books to prove her point giving actual examples. She mentions To Kill a Mockingbird, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She also repeats that high school students aren’t being taught
