Francine Prose: A Rhetorical Analysis

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The intended audience of the article is high school teachers and other influential school leaders, including superintendents. Francine Prose wants to make an impact on the lives of high schoolers by inspiring high school employees to better the reading lists for English classes. Prose is also targeting the readers of Harper’s magazine, where this article was originally published. In targeting both of these groups, Prose’s message can be effectively relayed. The main topic of this essay is written so that teachers and students will benefit from reading it, and can also be inspired to change their novel choices and attitudes toward English classes. Since students usually have no problem expressing their minds on certain issues, targeting them …show more content…

Prose also wants to inspire schools to get students to read better novels. She places the blame on adults who make best-books lists, and who are to lazy to teach complicated books to their students. Prose writes, “We hear that more books are being bought and sold than ever before, yet no one, as far as I know, is arguing that we are producing and becoming a nation of avid readers of serious literature” (Paragraph 4). This shows that there is a problem in American classrooms, and measures must be taken in order to correct this, or reading might vanish in the future. Prose also states that, “One can see why this memoir might appeal to the lazy or uninspired teacher, who can conduct the class as if the students were the studio audience for Angelou’s guest appearance on Oprah” (paragraph 12). Prose blames the teachers for the mediocre novels being read in schools. She implies that if the teachers put more time and effort into their teaching, then better books could be taught in class. Prose also placed blame on the books for influencing the way teens write. Prose asks, “Where do students learn to write, inaccurate similes?” (paragraph 13). Since most students learn to write based off of other people’s works, the books that are read in schools should be advanced enough to create better writers out of the

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