Rhetorical Analysis of the song “Gasoline” by The Weekend
The Weekend used ethos in the lines “And I love it when you watch me sleep/ You spin me ’round so I can breathe /It’s only safe for you and me/ I know you won’t let me OD”. The purpose of the author’s writing is for the audience to understand his actions as to why he is staying in the relationship. In addition to his partner watching him sleep, he feels safe and comfortable with her, as she saves him from overdosing on drugs. The intended audience is people who have not lived that addictive lifestyle. The context influenced the author to persuade the audience of the benefits he gets from the drugs and the relationship.
The phrase “It’s 5 AM” of the two verses contains an anaphora. The purpose of the weekend is to show his addiction is causing him to get high over and over again to cope with his pain. The intended audience for this is people who live this lifestyle, helping others to understand the consequences of this bad habit. The setting influenced the author to make these choices in the 80s when pop music and dancing were popular, the author wants to show the behind the senses or impact the lifestyle can take you.
Pathos is used in the line “And if I finally die in peace/ Just wrap my body in these sheets (Sheets)/ And pour out the gasolinе/ It don’t mean much to me”. In my opinion, this makes the audience sympathize with the weekend due to their lack of concern for death. “The only thing I understand is the zero-sum of tenderness” also contains pathos. Despite not receiving any reward in the relationship, this line can evoke empathy for the partner as it is one-sided. The purpose of this is to show the overwhelming effect it brings to the partner. In order to address people who are in co-dependent relationships and are often the fixers, the author clearly shows the audience who are fixers that this is not love, it’s unhealthy, and it’s not worth fixing your partner in the end.
How do we associate good and bad writing in a technology-based generation? Since we have improved our ways of writing and finally accepted technology into our writing, what are the new rules on what constitutes a good piece of writing?
Rhetorical analysis is to understand a way to convince others visually, aurally, textual, or through sensory interpretation. There are three methods I use rhetorical analysis in my everyday life. My first method of using rhetorical analysis is through interviews. I assert that I am a responsible person who takes her work seriously. I put on my button-collared shirt with my trousers to persuade my interviewer as a potential candidate to hire. By sitting up correctly and talking confidently, I show my interviewer that I am confident and can be a good employee. To get them intrigued, I use words such as efficiency, and understanding, and positively explain my weaknesses at the workplace. My second method of using rhetorical analysis is through convincing. For example, I convinced my friend to listen to a new pop artist I found. I influenced her by explaining that she is an artist that brings confidence to her listeners and cares about self-love and acceptance. I showed a few of her songs and explained the message behind her song and music video. Therefore, I encourage my friend how the artist stands out in the music industry. Also, I demonstrate that the pop genre can bring a message, such as the RNB genre or Rap. My third method of using rhetorical analysis is through social media. For example, on my Facebook, the pictures are of me and family members outside. Through these pictures, people can assume I am a family person; I am a very outgoing and social person. My social media can influence my friend requests or determines who will approach me to be friends and who won’t. Almost all of my Instagram followers are fashion pages or college students. They are adults with many accomplishments. My following can tell people that I like fashion, I have goals and am working toward them, and I am pursuing a college degree.
For Digital receipt #9, I have completed my draft for Assignment #2: Rhetorical Analysis. For this assignment the text I’m referring to is: https://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis
I have read Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing, “When Your Grades Are Based on Labor”, and the Labor Log in two hours. The takeaway I got from the text understanding rhetoric is the influence outside factors play on writing. Such as, questioning what audience the author wants to target and the message it is portraying. The takeaway I got from the second text is next time I take risks in my writing or in other words try something new to help improve my writing.
My question after reading the article “Bad Ideas about writing and digital technology” is how texting ruins a student’s grammar skills if students are just texting informally to others. Why does grammar matter when texting? Nowadays, people often use abbreviations and made up words to better express their feelings while socializing with other people.
Life is the journey of learning. We are learning every single day that you are alive the same as me. We always need to face issues on the way of learning, sometimes they can be solved in a minute, sometimes you need to spend a day, a week, a month to finally figure out the solution for the issues or problems. But I pretty enjoy the time spent trying to find the answer for the issue and how this answer really works for this specific issue. The most interesting thing that I learn in my life is computer hardware. When I was a middle school student in my home country, I started to be in touch with the most successful human invention product ever, Computer. The thing that contains a world that is ten times, hundred times, thousand times bigger than our real world. This new world not only shocks me about the intelligence of the human, but also makes me have a huge interest in how this computer is created and how they put thousands, millions of electric currents in the small litter metal box. Because of the passion of hunting for the answer for how the computer can understand the orders that humans give and how the computer completes the orders, I began the learning trip about studying computer languages and computer hardwares.
At the beginning, I learned most of my knowledge about computers from the internet via videos and websites. I took my first computer class at my high school. I still remember I learn C++ language in this class and that was the first time I learned about C++. My teacher is very patient, he always clearly explains how every single command and function loop works in the program. I still remember spending a bunch of time understanding the logic in the programming language and learning the way to think for solving the questions. I always read the question first and break down the question in many steps. By solving all the single steps and combining them together into the big step to reach out the final intention.
He always lets us play with these commands and functions to create the thing that we want to do. Because of this class I started to know that only learning one computer language is not enough to be a computer engineer and let me recognize that I have a lot of things needed to learn to be a professional computer engineer. One more thing that very interests me is the way that they build the computer hardwares especially the CPU (Central Processing Unit). One of my passions is creating the new powerful and effective CPU. It can advance not only for the computer system but also can approve all the fields that rely on the capacity of computers’ solving and calculation ability like finance, entertainment, environmental protection and medical etc….
While writing this paper, I began to tailor it with the audience by explaining in detail how I got into literature. That’s why I had explained what happened to me in 9th grade with learning new things about literature like foreshadowing. Which later on affected me into watching more stories in media like Black Mirror, Attack on Titan, Death Note and more shows. I then begin to explain one of those shows that is Black Mirror to show how much detail was placed into it. This should hopefully show the viewer on why I like this aspect of literature and an example of that being used in a show. What I noticed when I wrote this was that I was able to write a lot more than I thought because in some other papers I would have a harder time to write more things in it to meet the quota on how much should be written. Here not so much due to the subject being something I enjoy to see and explaining it was pretty nice and relaxing. Another insight was my writing seems basic where I have simple English, I don’t say any complicated words just using simple words. I have seen it in my other works too where I don’t use more complex words or sentences I think anyways. Concepts that have impacted my piece as well as the author since it seems the creators for at least Black mirror have made sure to explain more things of the episode they made and how they placed a lot of detail in it. Whether one was having music that represented the characters personalities or how they took inspiration from things that had happened in real life.
Stories have interested me in the past but those were mainly from what I remember shows from tv like Spider man or Spongebob. Books I had mainly seen when I needed to but I would usually choose magic treehouse series of books because I did like the stories and adventures the characters get me. They were all interesting but I haven’t known them much other than being fun until 9th grade. 9th grade I had an English class which was okay during the beginning, however when we reach I think the middle and end of the year. We began to learn about literary devices, they are an aspect of writing that can be identified and help it out. Only one that has stuck with me to this day was foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is when a hint to something that happens in the story in the future. This had me interested a lot when I heard about it and the reading I think we had and analyzed was the Veldt. In there it had some analyzing we had to do and one I remembered while writing this was the lions. In the end of the story the lions had eaten some people, this was possibly foreshadowed with how in the beginning it talked about lions eating and it heading to drink water, exactly what it had done at the end of the story. This was a spark of interest with things later on in the future furthering my interest, an example was a show they revealed in that class being Black Mirror. It led to me searching the show with how interesting the concept was and how much detail is placed into each episode which has its own story in them. They had introduced a new literary device that was symbolism. Symbolism is things that tend to represent other things. An example could be using pink to represent love or red to represent something dangerous. These two literary devices had me look into more shows and enjoy stories even more with them. Some of these shows or stories were Attack on Titan, Death Note, Xenoblade and possibly more that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Black Mirror is a show about technology and how people are seen using the technology. It’s a dark show at times showing how technology can affect people in the future, whether it’s by a rate system people can do to others that determine their status in the world or making digital clones of people. All the episodes have their own stories making it an anthology series that can have some references to previous episodes. They also contain some details whether it’s symbolism or foreshadowing.
An example of symbolism was in the episode “15 million merits” with the main character receiving a hand crafted penguin statue, representing it being much more real and heartwarming. Then at the end he receives a penguin statue that’s made from a factory, this is to show at the start he was willing to fight the system they had lived on. This was a system where to get a better life you needed some celebrity like America’s Got Talent. However, when he vented his frustration he then gained his own show about saying he will fight the system and tell everyone to not give up. That is all an act for a show, revealing he traded his will to fight for a good cause to get a better lifestyle which could be debated is still not real. Another instance with symbolism and also foreshadowing was “Black Christmas”, in a scene there are two people about to have alone time. There is a wall with three Xs that glow red which indicate the situation they are in on both that part but also the violence that will soon happen. There was another shot with the girl leaving only to then be followed up by a scene with a character sharpening his knife. There are more scenes and episodes that show something like, I recommend checking it out at least the first few seasons.
When discovering literature it can be nice to see the little details that soon become prevalent later on makes me see how much care was placed into writing the stories. Showing how everything is connected made me even want to try writing stories myself. Due to how great it can be to see a story come together, the lessons shown, small bits to show something grander later on. It has made me watch more stories mainly in anime, games and sometimes some books. The stories have also impacted me like Black Mirror with the technology being shown in the series becoming more and more real which scares me.
I just found out that in an interview the creators for that episode had actually inspired the robot dogs from the dog from the left, regardless the advances that had been done as of now is impressive and scary to think of at least for me.
Like the dogs from metalhead or the app that lets people review others on how they act from the episode nosedive. I hope to soon learn more about stories and what they offer to the readers.
Language and literacy are used in everyone’s life, and it is around the globe. This allows us humans communicate with each other, learn more about ourselves and the world around us, and helps our character development.
Growing up PBS Kids and other kids’ channels such as Noggin/Nick Jr played a role in learning English. I was born in the US, but both my parents are from Haiti. At home they would barely speak English with us since that isn’t their primary language making Haitian Creole the first language I spoke. It wasn’t until I was around 4 years old when I started speaking clear English so that other people could understand me. These channels gave me the ability to communicate with people other than my family and start making friends as a child.
Some shows that helped me learn how to speak are nothing but classics everyone should know. Mickey Mouse, Electric Company, Cyberchase, etc. But I also watched a lot of movies with my dad such as Boyz in da hood, Coming to America and listened to music a lot. Focusing on a lot of words being used in entertainment industry allowed me to speak better and learn better. I believe that if English is not your first language, watching films, shows, and listening to music is an amazing way to learn a language and their culture. It played a key role in my development and communicating with others.
Email us at [email protected] so we can respond to your questions and requests. Please email from your CUNY email address if possible. Or visit our help site for more information:
Teresa Calcano on 
Teresa Calcano on 
Shahed Ahmed (He/Him)
Cai Rong Li
Min Aung Zaw (he)
John Suquinagua (He)
Barthendrick
