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Rhetorical Analysis Of What It's Like To Fail

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The long-form essay, “What It’s Like to Fail”, was written by and about David Raether, a former comedy writer who became homeless. After reading his compelling story, I noticed David used two rhetorical strategies to develop his main idea, which was failure can happen to everyone, but anyone can recover from it. The two strategies he used were organization and details. David Raether used organization to show the long process of failure in his life. In the beginning of the essay he talked about his life before his failure and described how successful he was as a comedy writer. David then talked about how his decisions with his money, and the decline in sitcoms, caused him to fail and become homeless. Towards the end of his essay he talked about …show more content…

He was very successful and rich. However, due to economic problems and poor decisions making, he lost all of his money, his house went into foreclosure, and his family left him. He talked about living in his 1997 Chrysler minivan behind Kinkos in Marino, California. During his homeless period he was very lonely and struggled to find a job due to his extended time of unemployment. Even though he couldn’t find a job, there was one thing that helped him escape homelessness. He wrote about how Craigslist had jobs that helped him make a source of income. Craigslist also had advertisements for rooms that David could rent for an affordable price. If David wanted to visit a family member, Craigslist had a transportation option called rideshare. Rideshare allowed people to share the cost of driving together to the same destination. David’s details throughout his essay helped show the challenges of being homeless and how hard it can be to get a job. He also described in great detail how using Craigslist can help a person escape homelessness by finding ways to make money, finding a place to live, and finding a source of transportation. David’s detail in his essay informed people that failure can happen to anyone no matter what social class you

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