Rhetorical Analysis Of An Evening With Mr Quentin Crisp

In the video “An Evening With MR QUENTIN CRISP (1980)”, the main speaker Mr. Quentin Crisp begins the speech by allowing the audience to acknowledge that the ideas he is presenting are different from world-wide standards and are not accepted by the mass. As he says: this is “consultation with psychiatrist madder than you are” (Mr. Quentin Crisp).
The first idea that Mr. Quentin presents is the negative aspect of freedom. He believes that “extensive freedom makes people miserable” (Mr. Quentin Crisp). To prove the argument, his home country United Kingdom is used as an example. The people mentioned in the speech are capable of identifying that their lives are miserable, though are not capable of making a direct connection between the reason and the result (freedom and miserable life).
Besides the low reasoning, the speaker is complaining that people of England are not capable of comparing the past with the present which according to him is the reason for the miserable life at the moment.

People in the past had much less freedom which allowed them much less disagreement and complaining. At that time, everyone demanded for more freedom. After accomplishing it, the freedom of choice and speech that is rapidly implemented into our lives encouraged disagreement and created the “misery”.
Despite outlining the negative aspects of the present society, Mr.

Quentin Crisp is also giving a solution to the rising problem. According to him, the first step towards a better life is creating “system begins with each of us trying to decide what it is that makes him the way he is” (Mr. Quentin Crisp). After understanding yourself from the inside (interior), only then you are allowed to look for the external definition of the personal identity. Second step is to acknowledge what other people say about you. That is where the person is capable of developing his negatively reflections of himself. The two sides of understanding yourself (own interior and other people’s opinion) are connected into one bigger picture which is the answer the question of existence. However, in order for people to survive together in the community, they need to adapt and show the others what they want to see. Your true you might not be what present people accept; therefore, adaptation to it is

required.
Mr. Quentin Crisp admits that taking away freedom from people is too late now: It is part of who the people are. Hence, different approach needs to be taken in order to demolish the earlier mentioned “misery”. The speaker came up with two different rules to accomplish that.
First, human beings should be paying less attention to the domestic works that take up reasonable amount of time and make us stressed. What he suggests is to stop following the social norms and start doing what is actually important and necessary to you: “who you truly are!” (Mr. Quentin Crisp).
Second rule is to never live up to someone, but rather put those people down to your level. Reaching up to be like someone is a process of become less and less of who you truly are; therefore, staying within your boundaries allows you to keep your own identity.
The speaker ends his speech with an advice that other people talking about you negatively is not necessary a bad thing. Someone talking about you has to be taken as an improvement of who you are and what needs to be changed.