The Great Influenza Rhetorical Analysis Essay

In the excerpt from The Great Influenza, author John M. Barry writes about scientists and their research. He uses rhetorical strategies such as imagery and rhetorical questions when he is describing the scientific research that the scientists are doing. By doing this, Barry characterizes the scientific research perfectly and the reader is able to understand the life of a scientist more. Barry uses imagery in the excerpt to allow the reader to understand the life of a scientists and how they do their job. “All real scientists exist on the frontier. Even the least ambitious among them deal with the unknown if only one step beyond the known. The best among them move deep into a wilderness region where they know almost nothing, where the very best tools and techniques needed to clear the wilderness, to bring order to it, do not exist.” (para. 4) By using imagery, Barry is able to bring the reader into the minds of the scientists and to understand how they think and live their day to day lives. It causes the reader to understand Barry’s original statement, that for
He uses imagery when he is depicting the life of a scientists and how they must go into the wilderness region “where they know almost nothing” (para 4) and must start from scratch to find the answers they are looking for. He also uses rhetorical questions in paragraph 5 to allow the reader to get a deeper understanding of the second-guessing of oneself that scientist's do daily. Being a scientist is not all about coming up with one theory and proving yourself right the first time. But it is about failing, then trying again, and then failing again. It is about failing and second guessing yourself so many times that you want to give up but still persisting in order to succeed. Barry was able to depict all of that in a small amount of