How Does Barbara Lazear Ascher Use Rhetoric In On Compassion

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In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay titled “On Compassion, Lazear describes her various encounters with the homeless in order to create her argument concerning the origins of compassion. In her argument directed at an open-ended audience, she interprets compassion abstractly and portrays empathy as the building block to compassion; meaning, to be a more tolerant society, one must first learn empathy to understand and demonstrate true compassion. When analyzing Ascher’s rhetoric, her meticulous use of diction and rhetorical devices reveal a developing skeptical. Namely, Ascher’s use of rhetorical questions, a first-person narrative, and a careful selection of detail convey her initial skeptical attitude toward her subject of compassion. The most

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