Analysis Of On Compassion

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Homeless Encounters: Hand in hand sympathy in Barbara Ascher’s “On Compassion” Statistically, over 670,000 Americans are homeless with a growing number. 48 million people go to bed hungry every night. Although we do provide shelters and opportunities in America, millions of people are homeless worldwide. Even on a more minor level there are still hundreds homeless within hometowns. Everyday we encounter the homeless whether by seeing them holding their personal signs at stoplights, confronts with beggars, or viewing them from afar under bridges. In her essay titled “On Compassion”, writer Barbara Ascher uses rhetorical techniques detailing some of her personal homeless experiences within the city life, Asher does effectively use logos, pathos, …show more content…

She says he has “gray, bushy eyebrows” and smells of “stale cigarettes and urine” (Asher 41). Apparently his urine scent takes over the small, overheated room. Instead of being kicked out, the owner of the shop approached him with a steaming coffee in a Styrofoam cup and small bag of an unidentified offering. He accepts the offer and leaves the café. This details a common value of compassion at its finest. At the end of the essay, Asher implies that true compassion is learn through “adversity that becomes sofamiliar that we begin to identify and empathize with it” (Asher 42). The author believes one is not born with compassion but is felt after experiences and learned. Writer, Barbara Lazear Asher, uses the quintessential use of persuasive appeals to inform and persuade the reader. Her purpose to illustrate compassion through observation and experiences is acknowledged and thoroughly detailed throughout the text. “On compassion” uses an ideal amount of logos, pathos, ethos within the essay drawing from life in the city. Barbara’s account of experienced kindness is felt and understood to the reader. The acts of sympathy and compassion are clearly detailed within the text. Asher imposes her attitude on compassion through figurative language welcomes in the idea of

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