Rhetorical Analysis Of Life Pass It On

The writer asserts the idea that it makes sense to become a registered donor and, thus, attempts to persuade the readers to register as well by agreeing with him. The writer executes this by utilising a substantial amount of statistics, anecdotes, as well as a constant form of informal language in the essay, ‘Life: Pass It On’, for the purpose of creating a more personal and, thus, a closer, relatable, relationship between the writer and the reader. The facts used create a more persuading stance for organ donation registration as the writer’s own anecdotes begin to accentuate this necessity. Most importantly, the casual manner of approaching the reader provides the writer with the ability to connect with the readers in a way that makes them

These, being rhetorical questions, create a very compelling argument for the necessity for the registration as the readers would start to feel as if they, mostly being Americans, have become hypocrites. The answers to these questions are expressed by the writer through an anecdote of when he first registered as a donor at the age of 18 years old. By successfully showing the writer’s own stream of consciousness, the writer is able to show the fear that urge those other 55% of Americans not to register. For example, the two ‘surreal’ rhetorical questions - ‘When I die? When not if?!’ - suggest the panic the writer must have had of ‘knowing [one’s] own mortality’. Furthermore, the fact that, compared to the majority of the population, the writer is still young implies that the writer’s decision must have been even harder as, with still more than 60 years of life to go, the writer had to understand that ‘[one] will die when [one] dies’. This obvious yet mature thoughts during the writer’s own personal and first experience of registering as a donor successfully compels the reader to do what the writer simply asks of by creating an air of empathy for the writer