All American Boys Rhetorical Analysis

Sam Baxter
Ms. Patrick
English 9-6
20 January 2023
Brutality in All-American Boys Readers often times cannot relate to situations in books, whether they be bizarre, make-believe fictional stories, or real things that happen to people. The solution is to use stylistic techniques to help readers understand what characters are going through and highlight their struggles in a relatable way. The book All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely uses various stylistic techniques to develop a brutal tone. The tone of brutality is created by using such techniques as sentence structure, sensory details, and simile. The outrage the authors are developing represents that of injustice and police brutality, similar to that which happened to Rashad.

Sentence structure alters the meaning of a passage by placing emphasis on the endings and beginnings of sentences. For example, in the story when Rashad is being falsely accused of stealing by a police officer, he eventually gets tackled. The officer laid his hands on Rashad and then, “He shoved me through the door and slammed me to the ground. Face-first” (Reynolds Kiely 22). By starting a new sentence for the sole purpose of saying “face-first,” the authors show emphasis on the phrase, adding to the brutal tone. On the contrary, if the authors were to just say, “He shoved me through the door and slammed me to the ground face-first,” the detail that Rashad landed face-first would just be another adjective without emphasis. The sentence structure is therefore utilized in order to emphasize the weight of the situation and help the reader understand how to interpret what they’re reading via

The two authors use these methods to develop the brutal mood and tone of the story. Not everybody reading All-American Boys can relate to Rashad’s pain. So, the authors describe what he’s going through by comparing it to a common occurrence among readers. To accurately describe the pain, the authors wrote, “My initial reaction to the terrible pain was to move. Not to try to escape, or resist, but just . . . move. It's like when you stub your toe. The first thing you do is throw yourself on the bed or jump around. It was that same reflex” (Reynolds Kiely 22). Rashad compares the pain from the beating to stubbing their toe in the sense that both incidents incite a reaction or urge to move and scramble. This helps the common reader relate to the situation at hand. The goal was for readers to understand the urge to move, which was eloquently