Enduring Thanksgiving

As many of us were catching up with family this past Thursday, there was one man who had a different experience. As Will Boast describes in his article, he spent this Thanksgiving at his girlfriends house, and he also went into describing how he has recently seen the holiday as something to survive, not something to appreciate. Growing up, his mother had died from cancer, which eventually caused his brother and father to fight non-stop. Later, his brother died in a car accident, which left just him and his now alcoholic father alone at the Thanksgiving feast. After that, he simply went around with friends and ate at seven different houses in seven different years. This story seems aweful, as Boast is unable to spend this one holiday that is thought of as one that is meant to be with family with anyone but a relative. For myself, I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving with family, either with just my own or with the entire extended family with cousins and uncles and everything of the sort. To me, it just seems like a god given right to be with family, but I guess not.

Boast employs numerous different rhetorical strategies in this article. He starts off with a historical example, describing the Pilgims and the true start and meaning of Thanksgiving itself. This is effectively able to lead into the story that he is about to tell. Going on, he takes a first person point of view in describing his life story on each and every Thanksgiving holiday, and by doing so takes a pathos approach as there are many examples of his own emotions throughout the article. When talking about his mothers cancer, he shows a great amount of emotion which is able to translate the true meaning of the story that he is telling. All in all, the pathos appeal within his story is able to successfully illustrate his idea of surviving Thanksgiving.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/opinion/enduring-thanksgiving.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss