Professor Wohlstadter
English 103—11:10
17 April 2014
Singer 's Poverty: A Case of Logics, Emotions, and Values Imagine you have just picked up your paycheck from the office. As soon as you leave the office, all you can think of is paying your bills and spending the rest on items you fancy. Perhaps you wish to buy a new TV, or a new pair of shoes, or a watch that everyone already seems to have except you. On your way to cash it, you stop by a café and a little boy asks you for money to eat. You tell him that you have no spare change (you used a credit card) but you decide to buy him some food so he can eat. Having helped this boy helps you feel like you did the correct thing, and many would argue you did. However, Peter Singer …show more content…
would say that you need to do more than just that.
Peter Singer is the author to the “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” article. Singer 's essay argues that there is basically no reason why Americans should not be donating their extra money to those in need. Singer addresses the urgency to donate by appealing to the reader 's sense of ethos, pathos, and logos. Peter Singer uses logos when he explains how the money people use on luxuries can be money people could donate to save a child 's life. Then Singer uses an estimate to emotionally induce people to donate money to save children. According to Singer, "an American household with an income of $50,000 spends around $30,000 annually on necessities...donations to help the world 's poor should be as close as possible to $20,000" (77). Here, Singer tells American people to donate every single dollar that they spend on luxuries to those in need since Americans don 't need the excess money they have while the needy do. Singer’s use of logos here is ineffective in …show more content…
persuading the audience to donate money by telling the audience to live a simple life so that those who are in need can live a better life. If Singer approached this issue by suggesting a lower donation “average” he would have the audience more open towards sending donations. Small amounts of money needed for a donation make a family feel like they can spare that money in order to help the poor. Large quantities of money often cause a family to turn away from donating since the quantity is too high. For example, Singer earlier in the essay states that "$200 in donations would help a sickly 2-year-old transform into a healthy 6-year-old" (75). Here, Singer proposes that everyone donates $200 since that is the amount necessary to save a child 's life. By applying pathos, Singer is able to hook the audience with the image of a "sickly" child that will greatly benefit from the donations. Singer 's choice of wording stirs the audience 's feelings by projecting an image of a sickly and unhealthy child. Singer could have easily said a skinny child instead of a sickly child, but that would not have the intended effect. Singer applies pathos in his essay through the use of analogies. One of the analogies Singer uses to hook readers into donating money is the story of Bob. Bob is a man who bought a Bugatti to ensure his retirement will be comfortable and worry-free. One day, he is face-to-face with a decision—either he saves a child, or he saves his Bugatti (and his retirement). Bob decides the latter and the child dies and Bob lives a comfortable life after retiring. Singer goes on to discuss whether Bob should have saved the child or not. Here, Singer uses the ad hominem fallacy, which is an unfair attack on a person 's character, by saying that the people who don 't donate their luxury money to children in need are not people of moral. According to Singer, people should not go on vacation, buy new cars, or use money on luxuries since that money could be used to save a child 's life, which in Singer 's eyes is invaluable. Singer also uses the slippery slope fallacy, which is the exaggeration of future consequences of an action, with the intent of making the audience donate. According to Singer, if people don 't send their savings overseas to children in need, those children will die and it will be that person’s fault since that person had the opportunity to save those children. Bob 's story also serves Singer 's ethos by Singer application of rhetoric. Singer is effective in using both, pathos and ethos, as well as some rhetoric strategies (such as slippery slope and the ad hominem fallacy) to induce donations to children in need. Peter Singer’s use of ethos is somewhat limited in this article, as he only uses ethos twice. The first time Singer uses ethos is when he proclaims himself to be “…a utilitarian philosopher…” (74). Peter Singer uses this as a way to present himself as a qualified expert authority on the wrongness of poverty. However, his statement does not fit in since there are people who don’t know what the word utilitarian means. Besides, this leads the reader to ask the following question: “how do I know that you are a utilitarian philosopher?” This then brings up more questions about the credibility and authenticity of the paper and of Peter Singer himself. The second time Singer uses ethos is when he paraphrases a passage from Peter Unger’s book, Living High and Letting Die. Singer paraphrases the story of Bob, his Bugatti, and the child on the tracks. However, as analyzed earlier, Bob’s story consists mostly of pathos. Therefore, Singer’s credibility can, again, be questioned. Singer’s lack of ethos weakens the essay since there is no reliable credibility towards Singer. For the most part, Singer is very successful in persuading the reader to donate money.
His use of rhetoric is very persuasive; however, towards the end, Singer 's approach to donate every penny in excess causes the whole essay to fall apart because he alienates the audience by trying to make them sacrifice themselves for children that they will most likely never meet. Singer is very effective in using pathos to persuade readers into donating money for the needy, but his use of logos is not very clear since he semi-contradicts himself with the statistics. Singer’s essay mainly consists of the use of pathos. Through pathos, Singer is able to manipulate the audience into thinking that the only solution to world poverty is his solution. By using pathos this way, Singer is able to call everyone who disagrees with him a monster or a heartless person. Singer’s use of pathos is his best and strongest way of persuading people to donate. Singer’s use of logos is his second and last best effort at persuading people to donate money to children in need. Singer throws out various statistics about the United States since it is one of the few countries that can boast their donation ability and by choosing the U.S., Singer is able to increment the effect of pathos on the reader. Finally, Singer hardly uses ethos to establish his point, this causes him to appear less credible and less argumentative. Ultimately, this helps bring down the whole structure of the
essay.
Works Cited
Singer, Peter. “The Singer Solution to World Poverty.” 1999. Advanced Composition and Critical Thinking Course Reader: War and Peace. Comp. Jason Wohlstadter. Modesto Junior College, 2012. 74-77. Print.