Rhetorical strategies are attempts made by authors for the purpose of persuading or informing their readers. In his text, “The Ganges’ Next Life,” written in the New Yorker in 1998, American author and journalist, Alexander Stille, draws attention to controversial social and environmental issues that third world countries, specifically in this case being India, must endure due to poverty-stricken conditions. Stille successfully employs various rhetorical strategies throughout his text in order to effectively make his argument. Stille applies rhetorical questions, contrasting imagery, the building of a connection to his audience, and using data. These strategies adequately serve to implement the appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to provide Stille’s argument about how it is crucial for the water to be cleaned. A strategy that Stille uses to prove his argument is rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions infer an idea that may be challenged by the audience. Stille asks his audience, “Will India (and other parts of the Third World) master its problems, or will it descend into a nightmarish Malthusian struggle over diminishing natural resources? ... Will its [India’s] ancient rituals, such as bathing in the Ganges, survive beyond the next century?” (599). Stille asks these questions without an expectation of an answer. These rhetorical questions serve as a guide, leading us to Stille’s broader claim of the importance of the Ganges River to everyday Indian life. This River is central to everybody and it revolves around every aspect of their daily life. These questions assist to further emphasize the poor condition of the river and do so in hopes of battling to clean up the river so that India’s, as well as other third world countries’, traditions will remain. This helps him to connect with his American audience by demonstrating how this is a bigger, more global concern that affects us all, rather than just in India. A significant amount of Americans may perhaps have been unaware of these concerns that third world countries are facing until Stille addressed them in his text. Another approach used by Stille in an attempt to connect to his audience is by the use of pathos. Stille allows the audience to envision contrasting images. In one paragraph, Stille describes the everyday life on the Ganges River- “adolescent boys in G-strings do pushups, flex their muscles, and wash their bodies; naked children splash in the water; and families carry their dead to the “burning ghats” to cremate them and scatter their ashes on the river” (598). Then, in the next paragraph, Stille contrasts the previous image with the water being “filled with sewage, human and industrial waste, the charred remains of bodies, and animal carcasses” (598). What this signifies is the author’s intent to appeal to his reader’s emotions. This allows the readers to picture a beautiful image of how the river is used in India, which is dissimilar to how our rivers are used here in America. He then starts to mention how polluted the water is, enabling the readers to feel a sense of urgency in cleaning the water to help maintain India’s traditions.
I believe a significant amount of Stille’s audience is Americans. Americans generally acknowledge and value children and the younger generation; therefore, Stille notes that “waterborne illnesses- hepatitis, amebic dysentery, typhoid, and cholera- are common killers, helping to account for the deaths of more than two million Indian children each year” (599). Stille does this in order to tap into his reader’s common values. His mentioning of the children dying allows his readers to feel sympathy and perhaps the urgency to clean the river due to the fact that so many people are coming into contact with the river and that, in turn, causes death amongst many. Stille could have stated that many people, including adults, are dying because of the deficiency of clean water; nevertheless, exercising that children are the ones dying allows his readers to be in a somber mood so that they will too feel the criticality to clean the water. To argue the desperation of India’s need for clean water, Stille brought in statistics to illustrate his point. Stille gives lots of data in his piece. In one example, he states, “While India has twenty percent of the world’s people, it has only four percent of the world’s fresh water” (606). Here, Stille uses statistics to show how there is a large population in India that is suffering from lack of clean water. This supports his argument because it helps serves to justify the fact that it is vital to help maintain the cleanliness of rivers for this third world country, for there are so many people living here that are having to suffer from such hazardous conditions. I believe using statistics is a great method to ensure a valid argument. The extremely polluted river does not only refer to India’s Ganges River, but is also a serious matter of a large part of the world’s population in many other countries. Stille’s use of data contributes to the appeal of logos. This makes him more credible in behalf of presenting his knowledge. Alexander Stille addresses an important issue that affects many parts of the world’s population today. He implicitly explains the everyday relationship that the Indians share with the Ganges River and how it is necessary for that water to be cleaned in order to survive. Stille uses rhetorical questions to infer an effective use of ethos strategy by having a strong impact on his listeners to encourage them to lead in the direction of his argument. He uses an appeal to emotions, using pathos, by providing his readers with contrasting imagery as well as tapping into their common values. He also brings in statistics, a logos strategy, to help justify his argument that there is a large population living with a limited amount of fresh water. It is clear that rhetorical strategies make an affective argument to inform and persuade readers.
Works Cited
Stille, Alexander. “The Ganges’ Next Life.” The New Humanities Reader. Richard Miller, Ed. New York. Harcourt, 2007. 598-611. Print.