Rhetorical Analysis Of The Ways Of Seeing By John Berger

In 1972, John Berger’s essay entitled the Ways of Seeing was one of the most significant post modern text during that time. In this essay, the author mainly focuses on how people see media, like art, is different the way it was interpreted before. It is clear that the author, John Berger, is addressing this essay to an academic audience to inform them on how people interpret that today’s media generation is different from the past generation. Through his essay, Berger tries to inform the importance of the topic to the audience using the strategies of Logos, Ethos and Pathos.

One of the strategies John Berger uses is Pathos. There were many instances in the essay, one example was when the author writes “When we “see” a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we “saw” the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history.” (Berger, 122) which clearly tried to associate the discussion of the audience’s emotion regarding about on how we would put ourselves in the shoes of people

from the past history. By using emotional example, Mr. John Berger effectively tried to let the audience see the media the way they want to see it from their own perspective.
In addition, the Mr.

John Berger gave another rhetorical strategy, Logos, in which he writes “The painting maintain its own authority. Paintings are often reproduced with words around them.” (136) By supporting these statement, Mr. Berger mentioned and provided different paintings from artists and how the history behind each art can change the perspective of others. He tries to engage the audience on how art, paintings, can influence each individual and how the each can interpret and approach from their own prior knowledge. He stated that the use of camera can only shows the world the way the lens can see it and that it can produce fresh perception. According to Mr. John Berger, images does not worth the same value of an original art. Each individual only look at the images not knowing the prior knowledge of what it exactly meant in the history from the past. Every artwork has its own uniqueness. Inventing the camera, has definitely change the way people understand and interpret

things.
Lastly, another strategy which the author, John Berger, mentioned was the Ethos, in which he writes "If we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that hill we can be seen. The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of spoken dialogue. And often dialogue is an attempt to verbalize this-- an attempt to explain how either metaphorically or literally, "you see things" and an attempt to discover how "he sees things". (120) which he clearly tried to associate the discussion of art regarding about the credibility of each individual in this visible world. The way photographers can see is depends on the subject the photographer wants to capture an image , while a painter decides depending on the stroke he makes or the color he wants to use for the his painting. Every individual will look for the relation between things and themselves to understand and appreciate the work of art .