Rhetorical Analysis Of Road Warrior By Dave Barry

Mohamad Sarama
Professor Burke
English 1001
8 March 2016 “Road Warrior” Analysis We see and express hate and rage in our everyday life. In “Road Warrior”, Dave Barry uses many rhetorical strategies such as humorous and sarcastic tones to describe the rage of Americans. The main objective of this essay is to show how useless road rage is and that we all need to “keep our cool”(93). Barry begins to build his credibility with personal experiences and expressing appeals to emotion. He does this brilliantly using pathos, ethos, and logos throughout the article . In his article, Barry sets up the scenario by asking how widespread road rage is and stating that people are “MORONS”(92). He then proceeds by giving multiple example of motorist

Throughout his body paragraphs he ironically expresses his rage toward other drivers. Some of these examples include “these people are MORONS!,”(92) and of course nobody EVER signals or yields,” and “AFTER A WHILE WE START TO FEEL SOME RAGE OK?”(93). Barry’s use of capital letters helps the reader visualize how angry he gets at times when drivers disobey traffic laws. Another example of his rage is when he is waiting for a person to get in their car in a busy supermarket and leave but they seem to sit there for hours, “WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING IN THERE??!! COOKING DINNER???”(93). I personally found myself in that predicament countless times and detest drivers who do this. He makes his point clear in a humorous manner when he states, “let's be more considerate, OK? Otherwise I will kill you.” (??). Barry’s goal is to show the audience that he also is a victim of rage, however he has learned to embrace it and even tries to laugh about

One immersive example is “"When I finally get into the supermarket, I often experience Shopping Cart Rage. This is caused by people - and you just KNOW these are the same people who always drive in the left-hand lane - who routinely manage, by careful placement, to block the entire aisle with a single shopping cart" (92). Barry shows these common ignorances of American people by using comparisons to effectively show how pointless it is to be consumed in anger by them since they aren’t even aware know they're doing anything wrong. The audience can easily compare themselves to Barry’s spot on statements which gives him undoubtful credibility to his overall