Laura Carroll Backpacks Vs Briefcases Rhetorical Analysis

In this personal essay, the author writes about their love for the culinary arts. They delve into what cooking means to them, why it means something to them, and where they go to learn more. In their piece, the author talks about how food brings people together and how cooking can be a form of storytelling. The purpose of writing this essay is for college admissions officers. The author is responding to a prompt in order to persuade their audience to accept them into a university by talking about a concept that captivates them. In Backpacks vs. Briefcases, Laura Carroll talks about the components of the rhetorical situation “Constraints limit the way discourse is delivered or communicated” (49).  Considering the circumstances of this essay being part of a college application, there are numerous factors that likely acted as constraints. Some being the word count, feeling stressed, and having to rush to complete it. The constraints likely altered how the author chose to write this piece to effectively reach their goal. With that being said, the author of this essay successfully achieved their goal of building credibility and convincing their audience through the use of personal anecdotes, movie references, and imagery.

To begin the essay, the author sets a passionate tone through the use of a personal anecdote from their childhood where they remember cooking for the first time “As a budding 5-year-old, a seemingly lackluster box of mac and cheese rocked my world” (Rettmann 1). By establishing their relationship with cooking, the writer builds ethos, which refers to “the credibility of a rhetor” (54),  and proves that they have knowledge on the topic. Pathos, which is meant to “use emotion to persuade you” (47),  allows the reader to humanize the author as they imagine them as a young child.

Furthermore, the author utilizes references to get their point across. In the second paragraph, they describe a scene from Ratatouille “where he tries a strawberry and a piece of cheese for the first time as fireworks begin to go off in his head is the perfect visual representation of what it’s like to discover a passion for food” (Rettmann 2).  Drawing this comparison helps the reader have a clearer picture of the writer’s personal feelings about food. The author uses nostalgia to appeal to the audience’s emotional side through the use of a children’s movie  “These images are meant to evoke an emotional response in the viewer” (Carroll 53). Referencing the movie Ratatouille aids in solidifying their argument that cooking is a form of storytelling by connecting it to an actual story. 

Throughout the piece, the author uses figurative language as an aid in establishing one of their claims, people are united through food. One form of figurative language used in the essay is imagery. “Rhetors may invite audiences to accept new identities for themselves, offering readers of who they are but of who they could be” (Grant-Davie 405). The writer of this piece does this through their use of imagery. In the fourth paragraph, the writer describes what it’s like being in the kitchen “The individual smells that hit your nose as you add the ingredients, the calming sizzle of the pan as it heats up, and the explosion in your mouth when it hits your tastebuds” (Rettmann 4). The audience is invited to experience a glimpse of what it is like to be in the kitchen and prepping a meal.  

Throughout the essay, the author exemplifies their fondness for the culinary arts by conveying cooking as an experience. They explain that as a process, cooking is unique and different for each person who does it. Through the combined use of ethos and pathos, the author was able to convincingly prove to the reader that cooking is something they have an affinity for. By allowing the reader to look at the author's perspective, they develop an understanding of what about cooking is so captivating and how the author's experiences give them insight into this topic.