EH102
3 August 2015
Millennials and Books
I read an essay called “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” which is written by Sherman Alexie several days before. I noticed this essay because of its heading which is interesting. In this article, Alexie aims to tell millennials, especially those from India that the way he acquired literacy and how he succeeded in a non-Indian World despite the negative expectations of Indian people in US society.
Alexie starts this article with a short story about the book which encourages him to read. He says: “We were poor by most standard …… I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph” (12). Alexie establishes pathos by describing the poverty in his childhood and the happiness when he understood the paragraph. Readers could get into his story and they doubt the relationship between those books and his brilliant literacy. He also establishes pathos with some sentences like “As Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians. I refused to fail” (12). These words are easy to affect the audience’s emotional response. So it will be easier for Alexie to persuade millennials to read books and benefit from books.
Then Alexie tells that he read and learned a lot from books after that. According to his own experience, Alexie says that millennials should read books as much as they can. Also, he states that “We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid” (13). If millennials refuse to fail like him, he illustrates according to his experience that reading is the only way to save millennials’ lives. The logic of reasons are clear and easy to understand. And those narratives are effective enough to support evidence. At the last paragraph, Alexie introduces himself as a writer and he has had some achievements. This part is served as ethos. It is important for him to introduce himself because he is a famous and popular writer now, which makes this essay about his own story become trustworthy and credible.
The author tells millennials his story to encourage them and strongly recommend them to read books. As a millennial, I feel so inspired. Overall, Alexie uses logos during the whole essay and emphasizes ethos at the end. Most importantly, he takes the full advantages of pathos which makes this essay so persuasive and easy to accept.

Work Cited

Alexie, Sherman. "The Joy of Reading-Superman and Me." Los Angeles Times 19 (1998). Print.