Literary Analysis Of Elizabeth Kolbert's 'Spoiled Rotten'

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Staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999, Elizabeth Kolbert, in her essay, “Spoiled Rotten”, distinguishes the differences between child behaviors of children of other cultures to children of America’s culture. She establishes a forthright tone in an attempt to educate and instruct the readers about how American children are more spoiled than those of other countries. Kolbert’s purpose is to further develop her idea, by using ethos, pathos, and logos, that modern and societal children have become spoiled through their adopted habits such as when their parents: raise them to be dependent rather than independent, strain from using restrictions, and worry more about their child having a strong college education than being a well-rounded, skillful …show more content…

A follow up instance would be of a boy named Ben was told that he needed to leave the house with his parents, but he could not get his feet into his sneakers due to his laces still being tied. He proceeded to shout to his father that he needed to untie them for him. The father asked if he could ask politely but then the young boy just yelled for the father to put them on him (the young boy) and tie them (Kolbert 2). Each of the previous instances appeal to the readers’ emotions since they allow the audience to either be submerged in guilt or disgust. Guilt can be evoked by reading one or both of the examples, because perhaps the reader has a child or children who act similarly. While if the reader does not have a child or children, then, they can experience emotions such as disgust—being that children should not conduct themselves in such …show more content…

She continually established her work and the work she was critiquing as credible by giving notice of many professionals like; Carolina Izquierdo (the anthropologist), Elinor Ochs (Izquierdo’s colleague), Sally Koslow (a former editor-in-chief of McCall’s), Madeline Levine (a psychologist who lives outside San Francisco, specializes in treating young adults), along with a few others. However, Kolbert’s use of pathos was the most prevalent. Her topic of “American children being spoiled” does stir up a lot of emotions. Anything about children is typically deemed as a sensitive subject, and anything sensitive usually rattles up some rather diverse

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