BLOG POST #2: Rhetorical Analysis

 In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson uses many different methods to keep his audience interested, and invested in what he is telling them. Through his personal style of writing, he uses many rhetorical devices to make his point. 

In Stevenson's Just Mercy, he makes use of pathos often. Pathos is used to invoke emotion in the audience, which he does often in his anecdotes. For example, when he talks about his phone call with Jimmy Dill, he says, "I also realized that I was crying...The harder he tried to speak, the more I wanted to cry. The long pauses gave me too much time to think. He would have never been convicted of capital murder if he had just had the money for a decent lawyer." Here, pathos is used to invoke anger and sadness in the audience as they realize the unfairness of the situation, that Jimmy Dill could've avoided this deadly situation if he had just had the money. Stevenson says this to upset the reader, and make them angry, as he feels, to get them to realize that money plays an unfair advantage in our justice system. 

Another interesting device Stevenson makes use of is personification. He often refers to the state that he is living in to do his work, Alabama, as a living thing. For example, he says, "...but states like Alabama refused to assess in any honest way whether the condemned are disabled." Stevenson uses personification here to continue to tell the reader that the system in Alabama has deeply rooted justice issues, like ignoring the mental health of inmates when condemning them. He uses this rhetorical device to make a dig at the Alabama justice system by turning them into an object who isn't doing their job correctly. 

Stevenson also uses rhetorical questions to get the reader to think more deeply about the issues he is talking about. In one instance, he asks, "Why do we want to kill all the broken people?" This invokes emotion because it is talking about killing people, which is a sensitive subject. It is also asking a question that should have an obvious answer, which would be no. However, he is asking because the normal response would be that we don't want to kill the broken people, even though this is what seems to be happening to many. He asks these questions to have the reader think more deeply about the issue, and really realize what he is actually saying. 

Stevenson uses these rhetorical devices, and more, to allow the reader to dive deeper into his story, and the story of all of his clients. He wants the book to leave an impression on the people who are reading it, and he is hoping to have this bring about some change, and encourage others to do good for each other.