The Gentleman's Agreement Rhetorical Analysis

Using appropriate syntax, foreshadowing, and other creative literary devices in his story “Gentleman’s Agreement”, author Mark Richard convinces readers to believe a particular father is cruel and hateful and that he will certainly follow through with his threat of nailing his son’s hand to the wall when he discovers that his son has disobeyed him. From the story, the reader gathers that the little boy likes to throw rocks. His father, a firefighter, swears that if he throws another rock that he will nail his son’s hand to the wall. While the boy wants to obey his father’s command, his playful nature and lack of self-control gradually lead the boy to forget about his father’s threatening message. Much to the audience’s disappointment, the last

rock he launches into the air collides with his head and his mother rushes him to the doctor. When he is at the doctor’s office, all of a sudden a bat appears in the room and terrifies everyone present. The story then jumps to another scene where his father returns home, badly burned, from fighting a fire. He shows his son all of the bills and what he has cost him by throwing rocks, which costs the father more than he can afford. The story follows them out to an old shed where the disciplinary action is presumed to take place. The father reaches into the tool box as the boy regretfully raises his hand into the air, but the father takes out a pair of pliers and begins to remove the boy’s stitches from his head.
Throughout the entire story the author presents a connotation that he wants his readers to have about the father, which he develops using choice unpleasant words.

The language Richard uses every time the father appears in the story is always negative. In the beginning of the story, he starts about the father’s appearance saying, “His father in his dirty, roughed-up denim, of all days to come home, mud and ash, machete on the hip and the snake pistol, timber boots laced with wire that wouldn't burn, the blackened shanks of ankles, the boot soles cracked by heat and desperate shoveling, his father footprinting crazy mazes of topography across the clean wooden floors.” All of the adjectives used are harsh. This allows for the audience to feel that he is a rough and tough sort of man, the kind of man that you do not want to upset, not out of respect but out of fear. Using these choice words, the author immediately turns readers off by the father and leads them to believe that he will certainly show no mercy toward the boy if he disobeys the

rule.
It appears as though the author is also trying to leave a hint about the ending of the story. He wants to give more reason to believe that the father will nail the child’s hand to the wall by false-foreshadowing. The clinic the child is taken to has a bat infestation. His mother crashes the family minivan into the side of the building, because she can’t see out of the broken windshield, and causes the bats to stir. One bat somehow makes its way into the towel that is wrapped around the boy’s injured head. When the doctor unwraps the boys head and reveals the wound, the bat falls to the floor and starts flapping around the room terrifying everyone. The only reason that the author would include this in the story is for symbolism and/or foreshadowing, since the bat(s) don’t actually move the plot toward the resolution. Knowing that the majority of people have a bad connotation toward bats and based on the boy’s mother’s fearful reaction to the bat, one can conclude that the author is foreshowing an unhappy ending to the story when the father finds out what the boy has done. Later on in this story the father reveals to the boy that his disobedience has created many expenses. The father cannot afford to pay for all the damage his son has done, and the punishment, which was represented be the bat, follows shortly after he shows his son his paycheck and the bills. Another reason that this moment could be symbolic of the ending is that the story states that the bats at the clinic are black. Two weeks later when the child’s father returns home from fighting a forest fire, he is black from the burns he received, therefore relating him to the bat mentioned earlier.
To add to all the reasons the audience should believe the child will have his hand nailed to an old shed wall, readers come toward the end of the story as the father and his boy are on their way to the old shed.

They stop for a moment to observe some paperwork which includes the bills the father owes to the doctor for repairing the boy’s head, and the bills for replacing the car windshield and broken windows. The other paper the boy sees is the check his father received from fighting the forest fire. The father reveals, with toolbox in hand, that he can hardly even afford to keep the child, much less pay to have his stitches removed. At this point, readers may gather that this father is not happy about losing so much money because of his child’s poor decision. There has yet to be any reason given as to why this boy will not receive his punishment as was

promised.
Yet, the ending of the story contradicts all clues given by the author. The boy even expects to be punished as he willingly offers his hand to his father. Against what we assume about the father, he pulls out a pair of pliers and gently snips away the boy’s stitches.
Throughout the entire story, Richard brilliantly leads his audience to expect that this rock-throwing boy will do what he does best and receive the dark punishment his father swears to carry out. By the negative syntax, foreshadowing, clever symbolism, and context clues, readers experience a bit of nail-biting suspense only to be pleasantly surprised by the ending. One can’t but be a little shocked at the father’s tough love, though they can appreciate his mercy even if the child may not have gotten what he deserved. Ultimately, Richard shows his audience that a gentleman’s agreement may include terms of mercy.