Amanda Norton

Professor James Benton

IS 401
15 March 2016
The Message of Racism:
The use of Rhetoric in Literature to Send a Message of Racism
Introduction
Integrative learning is a necessary step for students in the process of understanding how
to incorporate their two minors in helping them solve a complex problem. Solving a complex
problem can be difficult but with the right tools and research the student is able to help educate
themselves and readers on such complex problems. With the use of Rhetoric and English studies
authors are able to send messages that can help their readers to better understand their
perspective. It is often not realized that authors are using rhetoric in their literature. Therefore,
the more knowledge that they have on the discipline the better chance they have of
understanding another way to persuade their reader to acknowledge and understand their
message. It has often been said that all works of fiction have a bit of truth to them whether it be
an idea, emotion, feeling, or event that brings that truth to the novel and the message within the
words. This means that because a work of literature is fiction doesnt mean that it wont have the
ability to send just as strong of message as a work of nonfiction.
Curricular and co-curricular experience
Throughout my time in college I have taken many English and Rhetoric classes. I have
also taken a few business classes and even an anthropology class that had to deal with language
and culture. Each of these classes has been helpful in my developmental process in

understanding my minors. My English classes taught me how to take a piece of written work
and analyze the meanings of these works. I have studied the works of authors from Britain before
the 1800s to American authors before 1865 and after that time period. I have taken literature
classes that focus on women rights, gender, and certain periods of time throughout history from
all different types of authors. Some are fiction and some are nonfiction but they all serve to send
messages to the authors audience and serves as a way from them to reach a large audience of
people.
I have analyzed messages that authors of works were possibly trying to display to their
readers. Literature has been used as a way to send messages to a mass amount of people for a
long time. Everything that has been written in a sense was meant to be a messagehistory is
recorded so that we look back upon it and possibly learn from the mistakes of the past. These
pieces of literature protest to authors that are trying to send one message or another. Sometimes
the message is indirect and depends upon the readers perspective and other times the message is
clear. In the course I took for British Literature after 1800s I studied Bram Stokers novel
Dracula was clear in reading the novel that one of the messages that it sent was that women
should not be open to sexuality. I wrote a short paper on how feminist/gender are applied in this
novel called Gothic and Atrocity; It is demonstrated in the novel by the character Lucy who
has many admirers that she can choose from but later becomes one of Draculas vampires. One
thing that must be kept in mind is that this novel was written in the Victorian times. Where men
wanted to make sure that a good woman should be noble, sweet, and have modesty (Gothic
and Atrocity). In my English/Literature classes I have also learned how to write more effectively.
One of the required courses for my English Studies minor was that of grammar, which not only

will help me in the future to be a better teacher but it also helped to be a better writer and refresh
my memory of all the uses of grammar.
My second minor is called interdisciplinary writing & rhetoric, which has just recently
been changed. Through these courses I have learned that rhetoric is a discipline that many dont
know about or have a great understanding ofit is a complex discipline. It is considered to be
the art of persuasionthe ability to have the audience understand the authors perspective. In
Sharon Crowley & Debra Hawhees book Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students they
state, An ancient teacher of rhetoric named Aristotle defined rhetoric as the power of finding the
available arguments suited to a situation (Crowley & Hawhee 1). Aristotle is considered one of
the greatest philosophers and creator of rhetoric. In these classes of rhetoric he along with others
are studied to help students understand what their visions, theories, and ideas were of rhetoric. In
todays world I think that many authors use rhetoric without full knowledge that that is what they
are using. In my English Study classes rhetoric isnt often mentioned but because of it being my
second minor I have begun to see it used in English courses. With this art there are many
different techniques and terms that are used. However, the ones that I see implied most often in
the use of literature are those of pathos, logos, and ethos.
Ethos, pathos, and logos are three different kinds of intrinsic proofs, which are a
statement or statements that are used to persuade the audience. Ethos is the rhetors character or
creditability. Pathos is the author/ rhetors ability of appealing the audiences emotion to help
persuade the audience to understand their prospective. Then there is logos which translates to
logicit has also been associated to reason. It would be considering how logical or reasonable a
message is to the reader for the cause. This is often the hardest one of these intrinsic proofs for

people to understand. These methods and many others are used to help make more effective and
persuasive writers or speakers.
After taking courses on rhetoric I have realized that it is used in so many different ways.
It isnt just something that is taught in college but used in every day life. I often see it used in
commercials and advertisement. I worked at a grocery store for three years while going to
college and I noticed that they use rhetoric in their slogan Grocery outlet bargain marketThe
store is attempting to persuade their audience or customers with this saying that the product at
Grocery outlet is cheaper than the product at other stores. This is a form of advertisement and it
is also seen in any commercials for the store. The goal being to use words or images to bring
about emotion, logic, or to display character to persuade the audience of their messagethat
they have cheaper products that other stores.
Connection to other academic experience
As part of my rhetoric minor, I took a philosophy course: Critical thinking and an
anthropology course: Language and culture that have both been important to my knowledge in
both of my minors. The critical thinking course taught me not only how to think critically but
how to apply it in my writing. It has also caused me to think out of the box a few times to truly
be able to analyze certain works. This course came in very handy when analyzing works for any
of English Studies classes.
Anthropology: Language and culture is of a completely different discipline than both my
minors but it was an elective that I took to help meet requirements for my rhetoric minor. In this
course I learned just how important language and culture are to rhetoric and literature. Each of
those things can effect what the author is going to write about, what dialect they will use, and

how they will attempt to persuade their audience. Before taking this course I didnt realize how
our environment/culture affects our perspectives. Sometimes we have to take a step back and
attempt to understand anothers culture and dialect to understand the meaning behind their
messagesurprisingly this has helped me a few times when reading literature that involves
different culture than mine. This is also one of the courses that I am going to use to help bring
insight into the complex problem for this paper of racism.
Complex problem
Racism is a real world complex problem that can be addressed with concepts and insights
from both English studies and Rhetoric. Literature for many years has had the ability to share
messages to a wide spread of audiences. It has the ability to help someone understand a deeper
meaning in a message because writing goes into a broader description with words that can cause
the reader to relate to the authors message. Rhetoric is attempting to persuade an audience into
believing the authors message. It is logical to consider that these two disciplines have been
continuously combined throughout time and even sometimes without the knowledge of the
authorthis reason is why I chose to use racism as my complex problem.
In one of the English courses that I am taking now, which is multicultural literature/film,
the objective is to analyze novels written from different cultural aspects. Throughout the first
four books we read I noticed that racism is also an issue in the novels that we have been reading
in the course. This wasnt obvious to me until we read Albert Camus The Stanger and Kamel
Daouds The Meursault Investigation. The Stranger is about a French man that kills an Arab
man for no apparent reason and The Meursault Investigation is about the family of the Arab
man that is killed in Camus novel and how they lack justice for the crime that happened to their

family. It questions many aspects on Camus novel and if it truly deserves the popularity that it
has gained. Camus never names the dead man in his novel; he only calls him an Arab. Daouds
novel addresses this aspect and brings up how tortuous this would be for a family that wasnt
allowed to bury or correctly mourn because their loved one was never named and they have no
proof that it was their loved one. In The Stranger it seems to be demonstrating how an ordinary
person could have to face something of the absurd.
In The Meursault Investigation it seems as though the character Meursault is convicted of
not being sad of his mothers death at his trial instead of for killing a man. The Arab man
doesnt seem to have held any importance at all during this novel and it seems to come down to
the fact that he doesnt hold importance because he is Arab. Daouds novel focuses on getting the
recognition for the Arab man that in his novel is named Musa and to display the suffering of
the family. The suffering would have still been horrible for the family but maybe if the law in
Camus novel would have done more to recognize that the man had an identify and a family it
would have been more bearable. The examples in these two novels are fictional but the message
that they are sending is very real and complex. There are two more novels that were assigned in
this course as well that take on a more nonfictional roll towards the complex problem of racism.
Claudia Rankines Citizen: An America Lyric is a novel that has short descriptions of
events that describe racism in its purest form in America. It delivers the prescriptive of these
people who are attacked physical or mentally because of the color of their skin. It is not always
intentional but more often than not it is. It is so bad that being suspected of something is often
forefront in their mind. And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is
only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description (Rankine 105). This is a quote from a
part the book called stop-and-frisk where a person is pulled over for no reason other then they

are black and the suspect that they are looking for is black. This is a small example of how
racism can often be simple and something the other person may not even realize to be racism. In
this novel and the next one focuses on racism towards African-Americans but I understand that
racism is something that all races face. I am using examples to help bring insight to the issue of
racism and to display how authors use their books to help spread messages on the matter as well.
Depending upon the readers perspective each of the novels in one way or another has the
ability to spread the message of racism. Ta-Nehisi Coatess memoir Between the World and Me is
written as a letter to his son. In the memoir he is attempting to not only educate his son on the
American history of slavery but also on the current crisis of race that is damaging to all people.
In the memoir he gives some readers a different perspective of what it is like for him in a black
body and what it is live within it. Like Rankines novel it helps to give readers an idea on culture
and the way other people are treated because of race. These novels help to share ideas and
concepts that can be found in common genres of literature. These books can be effects because
they certain aspects of rhetoric such as logos, pathos, and ethos to share their message, concept,
ideas, theories, etc.
Each of the authors use intrinsic proofs in novel that help to build descriptions that the
reader can then find logical connections to the authors message and can help shape the character
of the author. In authors descriptions they can paint images for the readers that can often bring
about certain emotions from the reader. An example of such descriptive wording from Between
the World and Me:
And I am afraid. I feel the fear most acutely whenever you leave me. But I was afraid
long before you, and in this I was unoriginal. When I was your age the only people I

knew were black, and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid. I had
seen this fear all my young life, though I had not always recognized it as such (Coates
14).
In this passage it was clear the fear that he had always felt and how he had learned the fear from
others around him as he grew up. It seems that as Coates got older and had a son of his own it
became easier for him to identify the fear that he felt. Another ways that authors like Rankine use
pathos is by using images in their novels that have an emotional effect on the reader. Especially
with the history of slaverythere are many pictures out there that can help the author send their
message of how bad slavery was and still is in many aspects.
Without the concept of race there wouldnt be such a thing as racism and there is no need
for it to exist if more people accepted and were taught as children that all human beings are the
same in the fact that they are all human. America has come quite a long ways from where it
started on the issue but it can be considered that America has come so far because parents began
to teach their children differently. In Language, Culture, Communication written by Nancy
Bonvillain she write about Lev Vygostky and his view on childhood developments, For
Vygotsky, the driving force motivating language acquisition are the social needs of children as
they expand their interactions with others (Bonvillain 154). It is clear that most things in life
are taught to children in the same way that language is by mimicking the adults and other
children around themthey learn from actions and behaviors. Therefore it is logical to assume
that hate is something that is taught to children and so is love and kindness. Racism is a form of
hate that is being taught and was taught more fiercely in the past.
Historically racial categories have been used strategically to divide ranks and control
populationsthus making race an issue that doesnt need to exist. It should be easier to

eliminate race as an issue in todays world that is striving for equality for all. Coates writes in his
memoir, And the history of civilization is littered with dead races (Frankish, Italian, German,
Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purposethe organization of people
beneath and beyond the umbrella of rights (Coates 115). In this quote he is stating that many
races have suffered because someone else thought that they had the right to rule over them and
discarded them when they felt that the race no longer served a purpose. There where many
different types of races that were victims of slavery and miss treatment. Even though it isnt an
easy task and it will take time Americans need to stop using actions of the past to justify their
hatred for today and come to the realization that we are all human and we all live and die. We
need to embrace each other and let our knowledge and intelligence guide us instead of the
concept of race.
Connection to disciplinary assumptions
In English studies there is an important theory that works towards understanding the
messages that authors are attempting to send to their audienceLiterary theory, which is the
ability for the reader to understand their mindset and how it influences their values and
judgments about a text. According to Charles E. Bresslers book Literary Criticism, literary
criticism involves our analysis of a text, literary theory concerns itself with our understanding of
the ideas concepts, and intellectual assumptions upon which rest out actual literary critique
(Bressler 8). Being able to use literary criticism to its full potential is to understand literary
theory because with the knowledge of literary theory there is a chance the reader will be able
make a connection with the message that the author is attempting to send to the reader. In a very
real sense, literary theory causes us to question our commonsense interpretation of a text, asking
us to probe beneath out initial response (Bressler 9). Essential literary theory is meant for the

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reader to figure out why the authors works bring about the reaction that they do. Thus bring us
into literary criticism, which is analyzing the text. To analyze a text is to think about what the
message is and what the author wants the reader to take from the message and why, which can be
done with some help from the rhetoric.
Ideology is a concept in rhetoric that is an important factor in understanding why we
believe in the ideals that we do. It is what our experience have brought us to believe is true, right,
or even good. Crowley and Hawhee explain ideology best in this passage:
An ideology is a coherent set of beliefs that people use to understand events and
the behavior of other people; they are also used to predict events and behaviors.
Ideologies exist in language. They are sets of statements that tell us how to
understand ourselves and others, and how to understand nature and our relation to
it as well. Furthermore, ideologies help us to assign value to what we knowthey
tell us what is thought to be true, or right, or good, or beautiful in a community
(Crowley & Hawhee 11).
Ideologies give authors a sense of understanding for what they will need to write about for their
attended audience. It is also similar to literary theory because in each of these the reader and
author must understand their own mindset and what makes them think the way that they do.
However, for the author they have try and use this knowledge to help them inform or persuade
their audience to understand their ideologythat is why it is important for readers to be ably to
identify why an authors work can bring out the reaction that it does.
Insights through integration

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Integration of English Studies and Rhetoric seems to have been happening for a while
now. I didnt notice the connections in my two disciplines until I wrote the rationale and plan of
study for Integrative Studies 301. The idea to connect the usage of logos, pathos, ethos, and
ideology to an authors message such as race didnt become clear to me until I was reading
Between the World and Me. This is when I understood how these two minors could integrate
together to help limit or at least send a message to a real world problem that is happening right
now. It is a work in progress but the use of rhetoric in literature has helped to spread the message
and have helped others to have a new perspective on the matter.
Rhetoric was originally intended to be for speech and to help students to become more
effective speakers, but as the written word begun to develop and became just as important, if not
more, it began to be applied to teach students how to be more effective writers as well. Thus
intertwining the two disciplines together but as more time went on the rhetoric was less
recognized in literature. Many readers did understand the methods of building character,
emotion, and logical reasoning in a written work or how it had originally started. Understanding
just how connected rhetoric and English studies are helps to bring forth new insights on many
different matters such as racism. However, they arent the only two disciplines that help to do
thisanthropology can play a huge role as well understanding a persons culture and ideology.
Problem solving implications
With complex problems such as racism I believe there isnt a way to necessarily solve the
problem. The best solution is for authors to continue to use rhetoric and literature to spread
messages of just how much effect racism has on all races. It is something that isnt dedicated to
only one but to many people of color, size, shape, and form. A lot of it has to do with history

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people wanting to hold on to the wrong done to their ancestors or others blaming people for the
history of their ancestors. It is important for Americas to realize that history is important but it
is also something of the past and not all people believe in the same ideology anymore. The best
way to solve the problem of race is to let go of any meaning that it once had in the past and to
make strive for a better future and teach children that all people are the same.
One of the best ways to move on from the past is for more parents to realize that the
things that they say and do show their children of what their ideology is and this can often lead to
children believing that that is what their ideology should be as well. It is important to teach
children to love all people the same regardless of race, gender, or anything else of the sort. I
think that literature and film are now an important part to how and what children learn more so
with the newer generations. The more that they see and understand acceptance of others the less
chance they have to grow up with certain ideologies that can be hurtful to others. Literature has
the capability to make people understand events that they otherwise wouldnt be able to
understand or relate to because it is something that wouldnt have happened to them but the
descriptive words that go into works of literature can help the reader relate more to any type of
circumstance.
Additional knowledge
For future knowledge to help better understand and solve the complex problem of racism
it would be beneficial to take more anthropology classes that deal with language and culture
because of their important aspects to literature and rhetoricespecially in using them to share a
message. I also believe that it would be important to possibly study philosophy because many of
the ancient rhetoricians were believe to be great philosophers. It is also important to keep

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studying my minors because it will help me to gain more knowledge on rhetoric. It is also
important for me to take more writing courses that focus on the theories of rhetoric. Lastly
continuing the study of literature is also important for future conceptual development and for
more knowledge of integration.

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Works Cited
Bonvillain, Nancy. Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Boston ;
Munich U.a.: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.
Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Print.
Camus, Albert, and Matthew Ward. The Stranger. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Print.
Daoud, Kamel, and John Cullen. The Meursault Investigation. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Norton, Amanda. Gothic and Atrocity. 2010. TS. Eastern Oregon University.
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.