Reflection
Rhetorical Analysis
Did your father really try to kill you? Why would a father ever want to kill his son? These are questions readers of “My Dad Tried To Kill Me With An Alligator” have. This story draws readers in by the title alone because you don’t know what’s going to happen. It takes place in both past and present of a boy who went fishing and dropped his father’s fishing rod in the ocean. Then being forced by his father to get it in the “alligator infested” water. Years go by and the father passed away, the son is grown with two daughters of his own. He brings his daughters out on the lake near where his father died and the story is left with a cliffhanger. The speaker at first was not agreeing with his father’s parental action but as time went on the speaker might have realized it wasn’t how it seemed.
There are moments in the story where the speaker is trying to convince us a couple of things. This is where the speaker,the boy, is using the rhetorical device Pathos. In the beginning the speaker described himself as different because he liked to write poems, being concerned with the life of the mind and reading, and the origins of the Latin vulgate [“My Dad Tried To Kill Me With An Alligator”]. At times the boy thought he was so different from his father,he would think they weren’t related. Towards the end of the story the boy is grown up and with two daughters of his own. He brings both of them to the lake and he gets a little nostalgic, he thinks back to when he was little and it’s here where he gets a bit of a realization. Since growing up and becoming a parent the boy realized he learned more from his father than he thought.
Throughout the story there were pictures displayed that helped emphasize the emotions of the characters, which this goes hand in hand with pathos. One example was when the boys were asking their dad to borrow the boat. The picture is of the two boys, the younger one looking more scared and timid, while the older seems to be more confident and tough. It shows how different the boys are from each other especially when it has to do with their father. The other image shown in the story is a fish which is the reason how the rod got lost in the water. The picture shows that it’s kind of scary, so you would know what type of water the boys went into when they went to get the rod. The last picture is towards the end of the story in present time,where the boy is all grown up with daughters of his own. Its showing how the daughters are concerned and scared of what is in the water. But their father on the other hand looks more concentrated and focused, he’s thinking back to when he was a little boy.
When the speaker was a little boy he didn’t seem to think his father was good at doing his job. He questioned his father’s abilities because of the way he felt he was being treated. But as the years passed and his father was no longer with him the boy came to a realization. It wasn’t until he had his own daughter where he realized that maybe his father was looking out for him in his own kind of way.
There are moments in the story where the speaker is trying to convince us a couple of things. This is where the speaker,the boy, is using the rhetorical device Pathos. In the beginning the speaker described himself as different because he liked to write poems, being concerned with the life of the mind and reading, and the origins of the Latin vulgate [“My Dad Tried To Kill Me With An Alligator”]. At times the boy thought he was so different from his father,he would think they weren’t related. Towards the end of the story the boy is grown up and with two daughters of his own. He brings both of them to the lake and he gets a little nostalgic, he thinks back to when he was little and it’s here where he gets a bit of a realization. Since growing up and becoming a parent the boy realized he learned more from his father than he thought.
Throughout the story there were pictures displayed that helped emphasize the emotions of the characters, which this goes hand in hand with pathos. One example was when the boys were asking their dad to borrow the boat. The picture is of the two boys, the younger one looking more scared and timid, while the older seems to be more confident and tough. It shows how different the boys are from each other especially when it has to do with their father. The other image shown in the story is a fish which is the reason how the rod got lost in the water. The picture shows that it’s kind of scary, so you would know what type of water the boys went into when they went to get the rod. The last picture is towards the end of the story in present time,where the boy is all grown up with daughters of his own. Its showing how the daughters are concerned and scared of what is in the water. But their father on the other hand looks more concentrated and focused, he’s thinking back to when he was a little boy.
When the speaker was a little boy he didn’t seem to think his father was good at doing his job. He questioned his father’s abilities because of the way he felt he was being treated. But as the years passed and his father was no longer with him the boy came to a realization. It wasn’t until he had his own daughter where he realized that maybe his father was looking out for him in his own kind of way.