Salman Rushdie Rhetorical Devices

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A mind provoking essay that embodies the fear and concerns of this new entertainment era, author Salman Rushdie highlights the defects within our society, the vain and egotistical side, using personal anecdotes, logos, and pathos to further illustrate his point. Salman Rushdie commences his essay with A personal anecdote, establishing just about how much importance this new wave of entertainment means to him. Noting that he would not be able to recognize these new celebrities, even if they were right in front of him. Doing this, the author accentuates the importance or lack there of, these people and the shows have to him. The author goes on to say that he has maintained his “purity” by not enveloping himself in those shows, insinuating that …show more content…

He starts by adding that if one wants to make headlines and appear on the cover of a magazine, you cannot simply just kill one person or two, you have to execute a massacre; even genocide. Even more thought provoking ideas are brought up, like the idea that in years to come, we may well be willing to watch actual people die on our television screens. If we are so willing to watch people ` Chavez 3 stab each other in the back week after week, who knows if we will acquire a taste for the real thing (Rushdie 200)? The finale point brought to attention was the eerie connection we all have to the brainwashed Winston Smith, noting how we love big brother just as much as he did. His use of pathos and allusion (to George Orwell’s 1984) was well executed, leaving the reader pondering many things. This essay showed a wide variety of rhetorical devices that led the reader to fully grasp the author’s idea, and at the same time interpret it as their own. It conveyed many emotions and ideas that were best conveyed with the usage of logos, pathos, and personal anecdotes. Whether or not you agree with the author, one thing pretty evident. Things have changed, maybe not for the

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