Rhetorical Analysis Of Zeitoun

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Rhetorical Analysis of Zeitoun—Kenneth Cygeirt—Sept. 20 There's nothing tricky and nothing sly about the telling of Zeitoun. The author, Dave Eggers, looks at it square on. There is no sense of manipulation or deception. That's not to say, however, that Zeitoun isn't filled with a novelist's touches – the chosen detail, the impeccably controlled pace and tone, and little dissonant grace notes. Zeitoun is a story of frustrating incompetence and infuriating abuses of power. In Eggers’ masterful construction, the reader never forgets that this story is not something imagined by a fiction-writer, but something experienced by two particular people at a real place and time, not so long ago. By addressing a wide variety of the U.S.’s population…show more content…
Eggers uses even just the little events that may not mean much separately, but combined, they explain and paint the big picture. For example, Eggers illustrates to the audience that the levees are breached, the city floods, and the family splits when Kathy and the kids evacuate and Zeitoun decides to stay behind and look after their properties. But the ravaged city where he remains is curiously almost idyllic – beautifully quiet, submerged under water that is clean, translucent, "green and clear, it was like lake water" (85). This changes of course. Eggers quickly transitions from the “green and clear” water that covers New Orleans to dark, murky, and contaminated water. This relates back to Eggers’ incorporation of “no sense of manipulation or deception.” Eggers doesn’t only portray the good side of what happened before, during, and after Katrina hit; Eggers portrays both aspects of the event, both good and bad. Eggers wants the readers to grasp the full concept of what really happened before, during, and after Katrina hit, and the way he does that is by allowing the readers to see how the disaster progressed over

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