A Priceless Lesson In Humility Rhetorical Analysis

Reading essays from NPR’s This I Believe series, I found that many of these essays would be acceptable for students to use as an example in there essays. Among these essays there was an essay that caught my attention that can fully help students understand what goes into writing a strong essay. It was an essay which teaches the author a lesson in humility. “A Priceless Lesson In Humility” by Felipe Morales is an exemplary example for English 1301 students to read as it shows a variety of writing techniques that can help students improve their writing. For example by reading Morales’s essay, it shows how he uses writing techniques to help develop a strong essay which students can learn from reading his composition. By reading this essay, English

1301 students can clearly see how Morales uses dashes to make his claim clear, provides his personal experiences, and uses cause and effect which is a rhetorical mode that helps develop Morales paragraphs.
Morales’s essay can help students fully understand how to use dashes.

His essay demonstrates dashes to emphasize material at the end of his sentence. The dashes that he uses in his essay for example, “I also saw a lot of our fellow citizens on the street — unfortunate ones, like panhandlers and homeless folks ” creates a greater effect so that the reader should pay more attention to his material. He creates this so that the reader can focus more to the certain sentence to focus on what he’s trying to say. Students will notice that Morales knows how to use dashes “to make a separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parenthesis” ( ). Morales also uses dashes to explain why he acted with prejudice, “I acted with prejudice — I judged another person simply for what I assumed she had to be” ( ). The dash that he uses in this sentence makes it have a greater effect to emphasize his realization and explaining why he had acted with prejudice. Finally in the middle of his essay, he demonstrates a dash for the reader can give his sentence a pause to emphasize that it relates to what the reader has just read in an interesting way: “I remember a time, at age 17—I was a busboy, and I heard a father tell his little boy that if he did not do well in school, he would end up like me”. After giving these examples that Morales uses in his essay, students will have a better understanding in how to use dashes to make there writing have greater effect

to the reader to clearly prove there point.
Morales demonstrates a good example of personal narrative to help prove his point. He uses a rhetorical mode “to get the reader to "identify" with the writer on some level, and thereby ultimately agree with the writer”. He effectively uses this mode to help develop his point by giving the reader a sense of his past and how that changed him to the person he is today. Morales mentions how he acted with prejudice because he thought the blind woman was asking for money but in reality she wasn’t, she was just asking for help finding the post office. Morales draws back from his past to help prove his point that he believes in humility. He mentions how he’s an immigrant and had many humble jobs which he knows what it’s like. After explaining about his past he uses that to help support his point and relating his past to the encounter with the blind woman “she reminded me of my belief in humility and to always keep my eyes and heart open ”. Morales essay has a great personal narrative to communicate with the readers using literary devices and compositional techniques. His technique is beneficial to students as they can have a better understanding in how to use personal narrative to make their point stronger.