Analysis Of Catherine Deveny's Essay

Reduce Greed! All the problems will be solved, Retail Therapy. This is the attitude that author Catherine Deveny, was addressing in her article “Spend, spend, spend. Its no way to happiness” Deveny employs conventions such as repetition, metaphors, rhetorical questions and personal anecdotes to persuade the reader that consumerism is destructive to our lives.

To convey the dangers of consumerism to her audience, Deveny employs repetition and metaphor throughout the text. Repetition is used in the title of the text itself telling readers to ‘spend, spend, spend’, which implies instant gratification, the emphasis on the ‘spend’ shows the pressure and time restraints that could be seen in the consumers eye. Later on in the first paragraph the author uses the “nothing new,

Rhetorical questions are exploited throughout the text to engage the reader to think about the key points that the author is explain, “How would it soothe those wounds of feeling unloved, unappreciated and unhappy? How you had to have it”. Deveny is asking the reader how spending money and buying unnecessary things is going to make you feel better or happier. “Does anyone else want to slap half the people around you and say…” this shows the impact that something that may seem small can have on daily lives. Personal anecdotes are put to use in the text in order to give a personal effect to the reader something that they can relate to the author with, “Someone handed me $300...” “10 times as much sitting in my bank account.” “Because I could see it, feel it, smell it.” These examples connect with the reader more they are only creating a bigger problem because greed is destructive not productive. By employing the conventions rhetorical questions and personal anecdote the author has provided evidence and strong reasoning behind why consumerism is destructive to our