Rhetorical Analysis Of Salvador Dali: Life And Work

Depending on the purpose of their work, writers utilize different rhetorical elements; Descriptive text often contains imagery to engage the reader's senses, expositions contain non-objective language to give a reader a generalization on a subject, while an argumentative piece often contains a mixture of ethical, logical, and emotional appeal to change the reader’s view on a particular subject. The writer, Frank Weyers, however, used a mixture of objective language, imagery, and chronological order in his book, Salvador Dali: Life and Work, to achieve a narration on the Spanish artist, Salvador Dali.

Throughout the book, Weyers avoids the use euphemisms and any biased comments, utilizing only objective language. This is shown many times when the author describes death in Dali’s life. In one example the author simply states, “In 1982, Gala died” (Weyers 83). Even when the subject of the book dies himself, the author only states, “Dali died on January 23, 1989” (Weyers 91). By stating that Gala, the wife of Dali, and Dali himself “died” rather than ‘passed’ or ‘moved on to the next life,’ the author shows a refusal to romanticize morbid subjects, even death. This refusal indicates an emotional detachment to Dali, allowing Weyers to write an honest, objective narrative on the artist's life.

Weyers also makes strong use of

This element is used on nearly every page, with sentences often starting with a date or events listed with the appropriate ‘after,’ ‘then,’ or ‘later.’ Sentences like, “At the beginning of the 1930s...then in 1933” and, “In the period after his New York stay in December 1936” allow the reader to follow the events of Dali’s life in a organized and logical sequence (Weyers 34) (Weyers 45). By writing the events in the sequence they occurred in Dali’s life, Weyers achieves a fluid and comprehensible