Rhetorical Analysis Of Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods

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In Richard Louv's passage Last Child in the Woods, he contrasts people and nature. Louv’s purpose is to show the reader the separation between people and nature in today's society. He adopts an informative tone to appeal to logos as well as using a personal anecdote to appeal to the reader's sense of pathos.

To create an informative tone in the first paragraph, Louv chooses to use words such as, “experimenting,” “conjure,” and “stamp” because these say exactly what is going on. In addition to his diction, he gives just enough detail for the reader to understand the information, but he does not give so much detail that it is distracting from the purpose. He also quotes several people that provide background information on the topic at hand. The purpose of this rhetorical strategy is to help the reader gain insight into Louv’s thought process and understand the rest of the passage. …show more content…
The first source quoted is the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he says they “are experimenting with genetic technology through which they can choose the colors that appear on butterfly wings.” People will trust something more if it is backed by a university rather than a personal experiment. This quote, however, is an example of how nature and people aren’t seeing nature a it was created, but as a way to virtually benefit them; a counterargument such as this helps prove his point that they are in fact separated in a negative way. Another counterargument is the quote from writer Matt Richell who supports advertisements in nature rather than just the virtual world. By addressing a counterargument, it demonstrates Louv’s skill as a writer because he is able to defend why his view is actually
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