Knowing Our Place by Barbara Kingsolver Book Analysis

Throughout time, communities as a whole have strived for something more in innovation and in the pursuit of betterment of their own individual lives. When reading “Knowing Our Place” by Barbara Kingsolver, She takes us through her own personal experience through writing in her log cabin in southern Appalachia. This is not only her experience through writing but her personal development and part of her own life story. From her simple community to her own children learning and living in this very simple and wild but fragile environment, they are both, her and her children still exposed to deeper thinking and self-reflection from the nature and wildlife that surrounds them. Her purpose in writing this is to show the changes a single environment can have on you in many different aspects of life. She also makes the argument through her descriptions and her comparisons that these environments can shape a person no matter how simple it might be, and with that experience, we can grow as a person. The intended audience of her writing is those who have not had many fulfilling life experiences and are caught in a day-to-day cycle and also those who might be satisfied with their lives but never knew they needed another window to look through to open up to new ideas. Her genre isn’t an argument but an analysis of her own life and surroundings that can be translated into our own personal lives that we can grow from. The writing is set in her own log cabin which eliminates the tribulations in her life and sets the context for her thinking and explanations when in this natural and simple environment. With the complex and various use of rhetorical strategies, Barbara Kingsolver is able to explain and establish her purpose and argument. While also giving readers a better understanding of the strategies used through the use of ethos, logos, and pathos. That produces the very intricate and methodical Kingsolver has written.

Kingsolver through her writing has been able to cement her credibility by explaining personal experiences and comparing and contrasting her different thoughts on what she has experienced. Kingsolver also uses good descriptions to better explain herself and create a vision for what she is saying to the readers. Her sources are reliable as they are her own first-person account of what happened, making her argument and thoughts more valid. She also uses her tone to display her stance on the impact of living in a calm natural environment. An example of this in the text would be “Sometimes I stand on the porch and just stare, transfixed, at a mountainside that offers up more shades of green than a dictionary has words.” (Kingsolver 33). While in contrast she also uses her tone to provide a more argumentative statement “No steel, pavement, or streetlights, no architecture lovely or otherwise, no work of public art or private enterprise, no hominid agenda.” (Kingsolver 36). These uses of ethos in her writing provide a greater understanding for the reader and her argument that through her descriptions and her comparisons that these environments can shape a person undoubtedly for the better. It also gives a great connection back to the overall thesis, that she is able to use her various rhetorical strategies and provide her argument in better detail because of her credibility.

With the use of ethos Kingsolver establishes her credibility and moves into providing her appeal to the logical reason in her consistent argument throughout the text using logos. Using her strategies she is able to make a logical and understanding argument, as an example “Our greatest and smallest explanations for ourselves grown from place, as surely as carrots grow in the dirt.” (Kingsolver 40). With this quote she describes her exact argument and gives the reader of the text a clear understanding that her and the readers themselves have grown in a simple mundane place that make us who we are today. While also speaking to individuals that might have grown in more serious or complex areas and are deprived of those simple explanations in their lives due to the advancement of the things around them. Kingsolver has experienced both sides of an environment as she explains “Now I am mostly known around these parts by whichever of my relatives the older people still remember.” (Kingsolver 33) this holds true to her experiences when in that cabin in Southern Appalachia, because even if her roots started here she is still a foreigner to the environment and treads lightly on the nature that surrounds her. This environment gives her a clear and logical argument for her own life that she then translates to the audience with clear and concise reasoning. With this use of specific evidence on how she is able to write in logos and also support her argument and the thesis statement that she is able to use her strategies to portray logos and the effects it has on the audience and the understanding they have of the text.

Kingsolver is able to use pathos the most to her advantage while writing her first person account and the argument that comes with that account. She is able to target the audience's values, emotions, and beliefs throughout the entire writing and an example of this early on is when she writes about her children at the cabin, “But mostly I am glad to watch them claim my own best secrets for themselves.” (Kingsolver 32). As she watches her children explore this environment that they have never experienced she can recall when she was the same age building her life experiences from the ground up and how those secrets shaped her eventual adult life. She also talks about her own emotions throughout the text giving the audience a connection with her writing when she explains her clear beliefs. “I tread lightly here, with my heart in my throat, like a kid who’s stumbled onto the great forbidden presence of a more mature world.” (Kingsolver 35) this quote directly relates to her feelings and understanding of the natural and untamed wilderness that surrounds her and how it affects her insight and thoughts of people who might not have or ever will have the same feeling she will. With that it relates back to her argument that these environments shape who you are as a person and some are more beneficial than most to help you grow as a person. Another way she builds her argument using pathos in her writing is when talks about children in her old neighborhood that have grown up in the city that surrounded her husband while gardening and her husband asked “What other foods do you think might grow in the ground? They knit their brows, conferred, and offered brightly, Spaghetti?” (Kingsolver 38). Throughout the entire text Kingsolver is able to use pathos to her advantage in connecting the audience with her emotions, beliefs, and values by giving simple comparisons and great descriptions. This wraps up her argumentative rhetorical strategies by building a connection to her argument while also building a connection through the emotions of the audience.

The various rhetorical strategies Barbara Kingsolver used while writing this gives the utmost understanding and perception of the world we live in backed by not only that, but the argument made that these environments can shape a person no matter how simple it might be, and with that experience, we can grow as a person. Kingsolver used ethos, logos, and pathos to better her writing, descriptions, and comparisons while also giving a first person account of a self reflection through the nature that surrounds her in the cabin. After being a part of the audience that has read and analyzed her writing, Kingsolver has given myself and others a better self reflection about their growth as a person and what environment created that for all of us. We can all use the text to connect to something in our lives while also easily understanding the argument made about our own growth that is seen in every line of her writing. “Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.” (Kingsolver 40) With this quote that entraps all of her thoughts and feelings into this text while also giving us one last look into why people might just actually need wild and uncontrollable places to help build ourselves and our lives.