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Rhetorical Analysis Of William J. Fanning's The Invisible Ray

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Featured in the academic journal Science Fiction Studies, William J. Fanning Jr.’s article “The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s” discusses the prominence of death rays in the post-World War I era. Based on popular media records (i.e. Books, film, literature, news articles, etc.) Fanning makes claims that people at the time were preoccupied with ideas of the ‘next war’ and the potential destruction of humanity via ‘death ray’, defined in the article as any weapon that could cause such harm. Fanning uses the persuasive techniques ethos, logos, and pathos3 to convince the audience of the points he formulates within the article, and ultimately his overall claim that ‘death rays’ were a prominent part of the 1920s and 30s. In the article, Fanning uses extremely well known celebrities and their association to death rays in order to bolster his argument and credibility. An example of this usage is “ The Invisible Ray (1936). Starring two icons, Boris Karloff and Bella Lugosi, this film features a radium-based death ray” (Fanning Jr. 267). By using such recognizable …show more content…

The use of pathos was primarily found in the connotation of the adjectives throughout the work and was very well done because it accomplished its persuasive purpose, kept the paper interesting, and remained formal in the conventional academic context. On the first page alone, examples include “war-weary”, “death”, “cataclysm”, “conflict”, and “frightening” (Fanning 253). The use of these words both embellish the points in the article, as well as causing the reader to empathize with the fear of the people towards the potential destruction of the death rays, which fueled its popularity. Being able to empathize with these fears help the audience to understand the mindset of the era, showing why death rays were so popular, therefore making the author’s argument of how this popularity was shown significantly more

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