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A Rhetorical Analysis Of No-Win Situations By Alfie Kohn

924 Words4 Pages

In “No-Win Situations”, Alfie Kohn recounts his view on competitive games. He begins the essay with a simple personal example: musical chairs and explains how the winner is out to make everyone else fail in order to be the winner. He also says that competition undermines self-esteem, poisons relationships, and holds individuals back from doing their best. Kohn claims that recreation is at its best when the goal is not to make everyone else fail and win, but to team up and reach a certain goal together. He uses an example of research conducted by Terry Orlick, a sports psychologist at the University of Ottawa, in order to support his claim. Further, he mentions that the objective of even the friendliest games such as tennis is to make the opponent fail. Kohn continues to state that there is a psychological cost of competitive games: the more an individual compete, the more that individual needs to compete to feel good about himself. Moreover, he states that there is a toxic effect on relationships due to competition. Especially children tend to envy winners and be suspicious of just about everyone. Furthermore, he mentions that competition is what drives an individual to cheat. Kohn does an effective job of developing his ethos using effective examples and reaching the readers emotionally; however, his debatable argument is highly emotionally-based and does not include very many logical facts to support his claim. …show more content…

Yes, he is right. These physical activities offer a fine work-out without any involvement of competition. In a society where obesity has become a major issue, physical fitness is important. It is not a must to compete with another to acquire these benefits. Nevertheless, once again fails to support his claim by providing concrete

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