Personal Narrative Essay

George Lewis Hughes

English 103: Accelerated Composition – Personal Narrative Essay

Daniel Richards

September 29, 2008

Common Manifestations of Rhetoric within One’s Immediate Surroundings

I have never anticipated the term rhetoric to define such a broad variety of media. I now acknowledge that everything that picks a vantage point from which to pose an argument or to approach a persuaded viewer can be regarded as rhetorical. For instance, within the confines of my very own dorm room, I can witness countless, multimodal features of rhetoric. Of course, I observe various Clemson icons, self-images of school spirit and homage to one’s own university. I notice the Starbucks coffee brand label on one of my coveted, immediate energy sources. The monopolized Target symbol glares at me from the label on my desk wipes container. Even the very color scheme of my own side of my dorm room has been somewhat unconsciously coded to suggest balmy, aquatic imagery. What is more, my picture choice to conceal and to further embellish the dismal, cinder-blocked side wall further draws appeal to the serenity of coastal living. Across the room sits my Aqua Velva bottle of aftershave, advertising refreshing sensations on its label. Back to my bookshelf, I also manage to glimpse at my Chopin statuette tucked away in a corner, which I now come to realize as a partial token of my prior identity.

In Cope hallway, I snicker at the Talladega Nights quotation under my name label on the dorm door, since it essentially connotes me to a badass. The glaring Exit sign exercises self-importance in that marginal chance of hazardous evacuation emergencies.

On the overall campus, the exterior architecture of my dorm building is very rigid, almost to boast those contemporary Spartan attributes reminiscent of the victimized college freshman. Nonetheless, welcome banners counterbalance the sternness of the scene in a lighthearted

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manner, so as to make the anxious first-years feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, just like any solid piece of liberal propaganda. Finally, to no surprise, the most superimposing rhetorical image of them all resides in the form of a tilted, orange, paw print: the Clemson University insignia, which, no matter where it is branded, seems to bray, “Go Tigers!”

How these advertisements and other forms of visual rhetoric impress me personally, however, is that they overall do not, in the immediate sense. Over the years I have trained my mind’s eye to look at certain visual commodities rather without seeing them at all, let alone drinking them in. Nevertheless, I am most deeply influenced to draw on an intrinsically glazed sentiment of patriotism, partiality, and favoritism for all those great, symbolical implications which reside behind the prominent, “Clemsonian” crest, which so opulently in our eyes bears that warmly familiar, orange, paw print; but such a propagandistic icon should only move me as such because of my staunchly overrated personal fancy as to being an elitist swine.