Beautiful Boy Rhetorical Analysis

In David Sheff’s book “Beautiful Boy” he utilizes descriptive diction, allusions to other works, and vivid imagery to recreate the experiences he’s gone through during his son’s addiction, times in recovery, and relapses.

Throughout David Sheff’s book, he incorporates detailed diction in describing his environment, past, and the people around him as to allow the reader to be able to imagine what he had seen during this course of his life. As the father of a drug addict, Sheff had also had his own experience with drugs, in which he describes this experience with words and phrases such as “I heard cacophonous music like a calliope”, “[The brain’s neurotransmitters flood with dopamine], which spray like bullets from a gangster’s gun” and “I felt

Sheff references Kurt Cobain’s suicide note saying “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” This seems to comes to represent what seems to be Nic’s ending unless he gets the help he needs. Nic was on a path that was seeming to lead to death by overdose, in which he would “burn out” instead of being able to “fade away like an old soldier”. Kurt Cobain is referenced again when Sheff states that he “wants to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him.” This gives insight as to how the musical stylings of Kurt Cobain seem to be a trigger for David Sheff’s memories of his addict of a son. These references illustrate the emotion that is being felt by the author while making connections to the life of a famous man who was a great influence on Sheff’s

As a teenager, Sheff’s son is described as “muscular, a weightlifter” with “stringy hair and a world-weary visage and languor”, giving readers the ability to imagine a good portion of Nic’s physique. Sheff describes his son, during his drug use, as being “frail, ill, and rambling -- a barely recognizable phantom.” The choice of words make it easy to be able to picture the state of Nic’s physical appearance compared to that of his younger, pre-drug abuse, self. There is another instance in which illustrative vocabulary is used to describe the clothing Sheff remembers Nic wearing in everyday life, such as “I imagine him wearing a worn-out T-shirt, his pants sagging and dirty, a black belt with metal studs [and] Converse sneakers, and his long curling hair pushed back out of his eyes.” The imagery used in this sentence allows readers to vividly picture all the aspects of what Sheff himself was picturing. This aspect of writing, imagery, helps convey the experiences that have been lived by the