The Clan of One-Breasted Woman Essay Example
The Clan of One-Breasted Woman Essay Example

The Clan of One-Breasted Woman Essay Example

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  • Pages: 3 (595 words)
  • Published: November 9, 2022
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The Clan of One-Breasted Woman by Terry Tempest Williams is a story that describes the tale of the family of a young girl that has struggled with cancer. Terry says that her mother, grandmother and her six of her relatives had mastectomies. Only two survived, she and her aunt and they had to go through a series of chemotherapy radiation (Williams 121). Looking into the story, it is evident that elements of persuasion are substantially used. Whenever a writer writes a story, he or she does not place the ideas and events anyhow. The art of writing is intricate and a timely process.

The writer needs to convince the reader of his beliefs and opinion thus writing goes beyond facts and data. In writing, there is the element of the rhetoric device which is presented in a triangle. The tria

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ngle consists of three primary structural terms that should be illustrated well in a story so that the reader can comprehend the content of the story and trust the writer. They comprise of the ethos, pathos, and logos. For a writer to be persuasive, he or she must embody every point of the rhetoric triangle. If he applies pathos and ethos and leaves out the logos, then the story becomes meaningless and irrelevant. Therefore, it is essential for the writer to go through his or her story and add substantial evidence and facts that link the events together.

Logos could be described as the rational appeal. It is the logic of the argument itself. Williams has structured her story in a manner that the readers can understand her argument. She says they are Mormons living in Utah. Therefore

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their religion beliefs kept the women of the family in line with eating healthy foods that way it is not logical to say that cancer was genetic, hereditary getting pregnant after 30 years or eating fatty acids in her family. Williams supports the argument that the radioactive fallout from the Nevada test site caused cancer in her family. On the other hand, pathos relates to the ability of the writer to make his or her argument appeal to the emotions and feelings of the reader (Williams 123). Williams achieved this through her ability to use diction to create emotion in her story. When she describes her mother’s endless and unsuccessful fight with cancer the reader feels the pain she went through. Besides, she starts by saying she is 54 years old the age her mother died of cancer. She also explains only one aunt and herself had survived and had to go through the agony of chemotherapy radiation.

Ethos relates to the ability of the writer in presenting himself or herself as a trustworthy person. Terry Williams has achieved this aspect by proving that she had been living a lie, and the residents of Utah had been drinking contaminated milk from contaminated cows and from the contaminated breasts of their mothers resulting from atomic bomb testing done in Nevada on 27 January 1951 all the way until June 11, 1962. Williams rejects the ideology that residents of Utah developed cancer due to an unhealthy lifestyle and clearly explains that the atomic emissions tested in Nevada caused contributed a great deal to the development of cancer among the population of the Utah (Williams 126). Conclusively, Williams has

managed to be persuasive in her story. The audience or the readers want to read the story and can easily understand her argument and blame for the government for making her belong to the clan of one-breasted women.

Works Cited

  1. Williams, Terry Tempest. "The clan of one-breasted women." Psychological Perspectives (2008).
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