Oates v Emerson
Emerson V.S Oates
Compare and Contrast:
Different views on Nature In class out of the three essays we read I choose to do a compare-contrast between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and Joyce Carol Oates’s essays. I choose these two because they both had different feels towards nature. Oates is against nature and Emerson is about becoming one with nature. Even though both have different meaning, both Oates and Emerson successfully uses rhetorical strategies such as appeal to credibility, emotion, and logic to support their claims on nature.
In Emerson’s “From Nature” he uses credibility when he refers to god. He states that “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing…I am part or particle of God”. Emerson is basically saying that he is one with nature. He is persuading the reader to think this. Emerson relates to his audience through the feelings that nature by its self can inspire. In Oates “Against Nature” she uses credibility at the very beginning of her essay by stating, “I was lying on my back in the dirt…staring up at the sky…”By this statement you get an image in your head of what’s occurring. Oates uses credibility again in her essay when referring to “Edmund of King Lear”. In both of their essays, Emerson and Oates effectively use credibility to support their claims.
In Oates essay she uses emotion when mentioning something quite gruesome. She states “…the raccoon…tearing at his own belly with his teeth, so that his intestines spill out…” Another example is when she mentions that she has “paroxysmal tachycardia” and that it just so happens to be “fatal”. You cannot help but to feel bad for her. Is this the reason she doesn’t enjoy nature since her condition can attack so unexpectedly? In Emerson’s essay he uses emotion when states that “but none…owns the landscape”. He is saying that anyone can enjoy nature. Next he says that "In the woods, is perpetual youth". This is emotion because Emerson mentions childhood, and this is something that people remember.
Compare and Contrast:
Different views on Nature In class out of the three essays we read I choose to do a compare-contrast between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s and Joyce Carol Oates’s essays. I choose these two because they both had different feels towards nature. Oates is against nature and Emerson is about becoming one with nature. Even though both have different meaning, both Oates and Emerson successfully uses rhetorical strategies such as appeal to credibility, emotion, and logic to support their claims on nature.
In Emerson’s “From Nature” he uses credibility when he refers to god. He states that “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing…I am part or particle of God”. Emerson is basically saying that he is one with nature. He is persuading the reader to think this. Emerson relates to his audience through the feelings that nature by its self can inspire. In Oates “Against Nature” she uses credibility at the very beginning of her essay by stating, “I was lying on my back in the dirt…staring up at the sky…”By this statement you get an image in your head of what’s occurring. Oates uses credibility again in her essay when referring to “Edmund of King Lear”. In both of their essays, Emerson and Oates effectively use credibility to support their claims.
In Oates essay she uses emotion when mentioning something quite gruesome. She states “…the raccoon…tearing at his own belly with his teeth, so that his intestines spill out…” Another example is when she mentions that she has “paroxysmal tachycardia” and that it just so happens to be “fatal”. You cannot help but to feel bad for her. Is this the reason she doesn’t enjoy nature since her condition can attack so unexpectedly? In Emerson’s essay he uses emotion when states that “but none…owns the landscape”. He is saying that anyone can enjoy nature. Next he says that "In the woods, is perpetual youth". This is emotion because Emerson mentions childhood, and this is something that people remember.