Analysis Of Margaret Talbot's Article On Neuroenhancing Drugs

In Margaret Talbot 's article about neuroenhancing drugs, she uses tone, appeals, and evidence from various sources. Talbot also utilized stories from past students that had used these drugs to enhance their academic performance, along with their work ethic, because they felt they needed an academic aid. Throughout this article, Talbot is trying to inform our society of the effects of neuroenhancing drugs, as well as get her point across about how she feels about this issue. She uses evidence from past college students that displays her opinion on the use of these drugs for nonmedicinal use. According to her writing, the use of these drugs is becoming more widespread than it should. In my analysis I will focus on how Talbot uses these strategies

She uses many logical appeals to charm the readers’ sense of reasoning by relating some of the key points in her story to the average college student. She includes valid appeals like “Since in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible” (para. 1), or “Alex recalled one week during his junior year when he had four term papers due” (para. 3). Margaret provides a lot of examples from Alex as to why students should be taking these drugs. They are becoming more and more widespread because school has only continued to get more difficult for incoming generations. The stress and despair is wrecking the hope of our society, making them feel as if they are only drowning in work every day of the week. More so, these just lead to damage amongst the minds of the college student, which is very negative to our society. They feel the need to take Adderall to better themselves academically and to help their state of mind. The image that society is illustrating by taking these drugs is that one cannot do anything on their own, that they need some kind of substance to help them. Talbot successfully displays the negative impact on students by providing these quotes and stories that degrade the character of any scholar. Margaret accurately describes the harmful effects of the use of Adderall by providing so many logical appeals that any student could relate to. Any of these appeals provided have the ability to convince her audience that neuroenhancing drugs only cause negative effects as opposed to being beneficial. Talbot seems to have a good background of knowledge on the subject. After all, people wouldn’t be reading her article if she didn’t seem