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Rhetorical Analysis

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Submitted By sydchick1023
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Sydney Chick
3rd period 9-11-12
The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History
By: Jennifer Price

Jennifer Price reveals her true outlook on the famous plastic pink flamingos. She lays out her opinion by including one central tone, excellent word choice, and examples to explain her insight on the American culture and society. Throughout her entire essay, Price is informing her audience that she believes the entirety of the 1950s American culture and society was fake and “plastic”.
Price displayed a very strikingly obvious sardonic tone, mocking everything about the1950s. Her use of “but no matter”, was an enormous indicator of her derisive comments and examples of the American culture. Another example Price used in her essay while analyzing the trendy pink flamingos was, “but no wonder”. With that being said, she was implying the pink of the fake flamingo was even brighter than that of a real one, after asking a rhetorical question pointing out the absurdity of the overly excessive bright pink.
Price incorporated numerous analogies and examples to beat around the bush. She for example said, ‘The plastic pink flamingo is a hotter pink than a real flamingo’, trying to engage the reader to think deeper and have them correlate the ‘ hotter pink than the real flamingo’, to the fake and plastic society she believes in. Through these examples, she is forcing the reader to realize, American society is hiding behind this fake identity, just like those famous hot pink flamingos.
Reading prices essay, it eventually turned into a critical view of American pop culture. Her essay was written to a more mature audience, who she thought were knowledgeable of previous events, such as the Great Depression, and the event she mentioned about the hot pink car purchased by the famous musician Elvis Presley. Based on her knowledgeable audience, she had a strong word choice, and used the right amount of connotation to show her dislike towards ‘pink’. By the overuse of this, Price was able to grasp her readers mind out the fact that she truly felt American society was dark.
The mixture of word choice, sarcasm, and examples, Price was able to conclude that she had a strong indignant feeling toward the fake American culture. In conclusion, the analysis done by Price, by the misleading trends of the 1950s shows her true ideas and thoughts of American society.

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