Rhetorical Analysis: The Kingdom Of Ice By Hampton Sides

Hampton Sides’ use of rhetorical devices in the book The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette establishes the contrasting tone of the dreary location the ship is in to the optimistic, celebratory tone the men on the ship possess. Sides uses grim diction such as “trapped” and “beyond” (Sides 357) to reveal how the ship has no hope in moving in the frozen ice. He explicitly states “sixteen months” and “thirteen hundred miles” (Sides 357) to emphasize how long these men have been stuck in the ice, unable to move even a foot. The author follows with contrasting syntax by including opposites in multiple sentences: “Though coal supply had dwindled alarmingly, the ship remained snug and warm” and “A few dogs had