“My Son and the City” by Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Essay Example

A rhetorical analysis is a piece of writing which examines the devices used by a writer in order to express a certain idea and to persuade the audience into accepting it.  In this paper, I will look upon the following rhetorical elements used by Marie Myung-Ok Lee in writing her article, “My Son and the City:” the subject, the thesis, the purpose, the audience, the persona, the ethos and the analogy. Though authoritative testimony is also important in such analyses, they were not used by the author in this article.

The writer’s subject is expressed in the first sentences of the article. The writer uses a hook to introduce the audience to her subject, namely, the challenge of moving from Providence to New York with a child who has “serious medical challenges and developmental disabilities” (Lee).  The author explains that in Providence, the family had the help of friends and of a medical organization. This would all change once they would be in New York, on their own.

Moreover, she explained that “whenever J had a meltdown, we could just jump in the car and go home. What would this scenario look like in New York?” (Lee). This rhetorical question establishes the direction of the article and settles the ground for the following discussion. Her purpose then is that of showing how a family with a child who has emotional medical and emotional problems would manage to adapt in a crowded and indifferent city.  In the first part of the article, the author depicts her fears and her questions before moving and in the second part, she describes her actual experience as the family moved to New York.

The audience for her article is all those who have children with similar problems and think about relocating. Moreover, it is directed towards all those in her family, all her friends and acquaintances who distrusted their ability to adapt to the new environment. Finally, her article is meant to raise awareness concerning children with autism and other developmental disabilities and their emotional response to change and to new situations.

Her persona is defined by her situation, as a mother to a child with special needs.  She is an educated American woman who considers the wellbeing of her son and the possibility that the change would be beneficial for him, However, she is not only a mother, she is also a career woman and an active person who is attracted to the business and diversity of the big city: “my husband and I had rare career opportunities that had suddenly presented themselves” (Lee).  Her persona is also that of a writer and this is one of the reasons why she considered moving to New York despite the fears related to her son’s condition. Lee tries to show the audience that, although a mother who worries about her son, she is also a career woman who refuses to let the condition to establish the direction of the family. She and her husband decide to take the risk of moving to New York with their child but they do not do so in lack of awareness.

While establishing her persona, the writer also establishes her ethos. In depicting the way in which she helps the woman with a son or grandson who resembles her own, she does not behave as the bystanders who resume at commenting the situation: “I shoved through the crowd. “My son’s like that,” I said to the woman, quietly. “If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you.””(Lee). She is able to help the woman because she is experienced in dealing with children with problems. She is then the right person to assess how her son will respond to the challenge of the city and does not make the decision recklessly.

The case of the woman pushing the stroller, which she encountered during her visit in New York, serves as an analogy for her own situation. The old woman with a disabled child seems alone and helpless and does not have anyone to call for help. While in Providence, she could call her friends or “jump in the car” and leave. However, in New York, she would have to face the same challenge as the woman.  Her fears are reflected in her rhetorical questions: “I couldn’t help thinking: was this our future?” and in her confession “I worried about what she would do as he became bigger and stronger — and what I would do”.  However, she later rejects those fears and reminds herself and the audience that J is unique and any comparison between him and another boy is irrelevant.

In the second part of the article, the author depicts her actual experience with her son in the city. In doing so, she tries to convince the audience that she made a good choice. She describes the incidents that affected her son positively in order to demonstrate that the choice was a good one: “while I feared New York would be overstimulating for him, at the same time, there was so much interesting stuff to look at” (Lee). Also, she shows that even meeting threatening persons was a good thing for her son, because it learnt it to distinguish among different types of individuals. The conclusion is that moving to New York was not in fact as problematic as she thought it would be and that her son, against all odds, adjusted with ease to the life in the city and even improved at a cognitive level while being there.

Thus, by identifying the rhetoric devices used by the writer, we could easily discover her purpose in writing it, that of demonstrating how a child with developmental disabilities with can adopt to the life in the city and that this change could be beneficial for their children. Also, the purpose of the writer was that of sharing an experience with the audience. Thus, the article was as much a confession as an argument in support of an issue.

Works Cited

Lee, Marie Myung-Ok. My Son and The City. Opinionator. 2012. Web.