Rhetorical Analysis Of Superman And Me

In The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie shares with his audience his story of when he learned to read at a young age through a Superman comic book. Through stories and memories of his childhood, he explains how Indian children on reservations were expected not to try in school and fail in the non-Indian world. In order to successfully portray his ideas, Alexie uses many rhetorical techniques and ideas. By using these techniques the audience is forced to look more into the writing instead of just being given the direct meaning of what Alexie is trying to share.
Many of the techniques that Alexie uses allow his writing to improve in sophistication rather than be a simple story of an Indian boy that learns how to read. In the beginning of this essay, Alexie uses forms of ethos in order to improve his credibility in the eyes of his audience. Since Alexie is telling his audience that he remembers learning from a book from when he was three years old it is kind of hard to believe. He
He begins to use the third person while explaining how he could read at a very young age which was not praised as though a child would be in most other societies. Indian children who succeeded in school were “simply an oddity” and children in other societies “might have been called a prodigy” (13). This comparison of children from both cultures provides the audience with a clearer idea of what it was like growing up on a reservation with not many things expected of you. This message is also improved by the use of third person by Alexie. By using his own life as an example, “ [a] little Indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly” (13) allows the audience to better understand the struggle he went through. if Alexie would have used somebody else's story it would not have been as strong of a