Rhetorical Analysis Of Caught In The Widow's Web By Gordon Grice

Gordon Grice’s essay “Caught in the Widow’s Web” focuses on the black widow spider, and Grice’s fascination with the creature. The writer says his fascination first began to develop when his mother demonstrated how to effectively recognize and deal with the dangerous arachnid when he was a young child. Throughout the essay Grice uses a perplexing and grim tone to effectively portray the spider. While Grice doesn’t blatantly state his motives for writing, he uses carefully chosen diction to further give clues as to what his genuine purpose is. The basis for Grice to write this essay is to demonstrate that no matter how kind we wish the world was, there will always be evil and pandemonium in the world that defies reason.
Grice incorporated quite a few modes of writing into his essay. One of which being narrative writing. Grice applies this mode into his essay when he says “Her flashlight beam found a point halfway up the cement wall where two marbles hung together -one a crisp white, the other was a shiny black. My mother ran her stick through the dirty silver web around them” (para 7). This is narrative writing because he is narrating the event that occurred. Along with narration, the author also uses description. The writer states “ Black widows have the ugliest webs of any spider, messy-looking tangles in the corners and
Grice uses an abundant amount of imagery in the piece, one example is when he states “Her abdomen swelled to the size of a largish marble, its glossy black stretching to a red-brown.” (para 5). Along with imagery he also incorporates similes into his work, “Their antenna as stiff as a gargoyles horn.” (para 2). Grice uses these literary devices to help further captivate the reader and also the way he uses imagery and metaphors helps set a mood for the entire essay. By doing this Grice makes his purpose more clear and