Rachel Cusk's Essay 'The Age Of Rudeness'

1203 Words3 Pages

I tend to find myself at war with how honest I should be with people. For me, everything is either a bold face lie or a ‘yes that dress does make you look fat.’ My choices are limited to either lying or being rude. I also have a this problem with reading people, whether a person is giving me the hard truth or a rude comment oftentimes alludes me. It turns out, I’m not alone with questions on blurred lines between truth telling and rudeness. Regretfully, similar minded people don’t always say things the right way. Rachel Cusk’s article “The Age of Rudeness” exhibits an effective use logos and ethos when establishing the author’s point about how rudeness, and other verbal transgressions, and the responses that follow are signs of problems in …show more content…

Especially if the author is trying to make a point criticizing human behavior which would, more than likely, cause the author to appear hypocritical. Cusk immediately notes that she can easily be seen as rude and haughty for calling another out for being rude since she can’t prove that she wouldn’t act the same if she was in the rude party’s situation (Cusk). She notices her own biases when recalling the incident with a rude flight attendant, admitting how her recollections focus on his allegedly ugly appearance and how it seems she was the only one offended by his yelling (Cusk). She also recounts a time when she herself was rude to others and, alternatively, how her mother used to be rude to her (Cusk). She shows the audience that she is human too, and that actually becomes an important factor in some of her other arguments. Like how she argues that may cases of rudeness are a result of people forgetting that those they are rude too are just as human as they are and don’t always deserve to be treated harshly. She says this as a self revelation during her treatment of the retail worker and her parents’ treatment of her. She recognizes that she is flawed and will forget her own values from time to time, but that actually increases her worth as an author for this piece. Her effort to both humble herself as a part of a problem and to show that she was the receiving end of the problem is something that the piece would not be able to function as effectively

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