hi I'm Don Knight and English teacher from Westfield High School in Westfield Indiana and today I'm here to talk to you about the rhetorical analysis essay specifically we'll be looking at evidence selection and commentary just a reminder you can download the passage um and prompt if you want you have access to it here uh you can print it you can follow along with it or um I will talk us through as well if you don't want to do that um also you might want to check out the previous video we're going to be talking about the same prompt as we did in the last one um where we talked about thesis statements this time we're talking about evidence selection and commentary so um The Prompt that we're working with is Mary Oliver's owls the following is an excerpt from the essay owls by Mary Oliver a poet and essayist who won the national book award and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry Oliver's writing focuses on The Wonder of the natural world read the passage carefully write an essay that analyz the rhetorical choices Oliver makes to convey her message about nature in your response you should do the following so the last time we talked about responding to the prompt with a thesis that analyzed the rhetorical choices this time we're looking at selecting and using evidence to support your line of reasoning and explaining how the evidence supports your line of reasoning or the commentary when we select evidence um it's going to be focused on the thesis so we're going to use one of the thesis statements that we talked about in the previous video um for the purpose of analyzing this passage today so the thesis we'll work with is Mary Oliver uses imagery and Paradox to convey her message that her relationship with nature is complex she both reveres and fears it um so evidence needs to do two things here because we're always focused on the thesis statement as the building block of our essay we need to make make sure that we're selecting evidence that illustrates imagery or Paradox and that shows the complexity of her relationship with nature so there's an um line of reasoning on the screen um and again I have two body paragraphs on here just to illustrate this idea you might have three or four body paragraphs it depends on um your thesis statement it depends on what the prompt is asking you to do um I'm using for the purpose of this and I just want to remind you that two very well-written body paragraphs especially since this is a timed essay um is going to be better than three or four just okay ones so we want to have those well-developed body paragraphs that focus on the thesis statement so we're going to focus on body paragraph one first you'll notice here that um we're going to focus on imagery um and so our claim for that first body paragraph might be that um imagery is used by Mary Oliver to convey her complex relationship with nature um I'm going to give you a second if you want to pause and take a look at the first paragraph we're going to talk through this and again you have access to the passage um but take a second here pause read that first paragraph and then we're going to talk about selecting evidence from it that we might want to use for that first paragraph and just hit play when you're ready to go so I pull a couple of pieces of evidence for us to take a look at the first one the screech owl I can imagine on my wrist and I can imagine sitting quietly before that luminous Wanderer the snowy owl so remember we need imagery and we need it to show the complex relationship here this definitely has imagery but it doesn't really reveal anything about Mary Oliver's relationship with nature now let's look at the second example I have found the Headless bodies of rabbits and blue jays and known it was the great horned owl that did them in again some imagery here but it doesn't really reveal anything about Mary Oliver's relationship with nature and then finally Mary Oliver can imagine the Screech Al on her wrist or sitting quietly before that luminous Wanderer the snowy owl however she says the great horned I can't imagine in any such proximity if one of those should touch me it would be the center of my life and I Must Fall definitely imagery here and we see that complex relationship and Mary Oliver is talking about how she feels when she sees it um and that it would be the center of her life so this is a good piece of evidence because it does both of those things we need it to do in order to focus on answering the thesis right now let's look at body paragraph 2 here we're going to focus on Paradox because again our thesis is that Mary Oliver uses imagery and Paradox to convey her message so it makes sense to organize our body paragraphs around that again you can pause here we're going to look at two different paragraphs this time so um pause and read the paragraph and then when you're ready you can hit play and then do the same thing here for this second paragraph and I'll talk through some um pieces of evidence from it again just hit play when you're ready okay so we're looking for evidence that shows Paradox and that helps reveal the complex relationship with nature that Mary Oliver feels so one example of evidence from this paragraph each flower is small and lovely but in their sheer and Silent abundance the Roses become an immutable Force this is definitely Paradox we don't typically think of small and lovely roses being a force um so there's definitely Paradox there but we don't see the complex relationship with nature and then there is the idea of red and pink and white tense of softness and nectar this isn't Paradox it's imagery but we don't see that um contrast of what would not make sense to us like a small um Roe being an immutable Force here we just see images uh and we definitely don't see that complex relationship with nature and then finally I drop to the sand I can't move I am restless no more I am replete sepine finished filled to the last edges with an immobilizing happiness and is this not all terrible is this not also frightening so we definitely see Paradox here the idea of Happiness being terrifying doesn't seem to make sense but upon further investigation it does because it does show that relationship and then it shows the relationship and its complexity that she finds both happiness and fear in nature um I will tell you that um this idea of selecting evidence is one of the weaker areas I see when I look at these essays um for my students um and that's because there's this tendency to just find something like oh yeah yeah that's Paradox or oh yeah that's imagery um but not looking to see does it actually support my claim and so here that other component that idea of revealing the complex relationship is very important so just some reminders commentary should go beyond summary it should explain how the choice helps convey the message um so here we're looking it how does the imagery or how does the Paradox help convey the complex relationship with nature um it should show the complexity of the relationship not just tell so we might want to think about you know this shows what does this show and then another thing that I've um talked to my students about is if you assume your reader hasn't read the passage it forces you to explain further and in more depth so assume your reader hasn't read the passage and explain in that kind of a depth to them and remember the commentary is explaining how the evidence supports the claim so let's look again at paragraph one we've chosen some evidence now we're going to work on the commentary for it remember we chose this is our best evidence to show imagery that reveals the complex relationship so Mary Oliver can imagine the screel on her wrist or sitting quietly before that luminous Wanderer the snowy owl however she says that um she can't imagine being in such proximity that if one of those should touch her it would be the center of her life and she must fall now let's look at how we might explain this piece of evidence here Mary Oliver uses imagery to show the contrast between the beauty and power of nature the former she finds inviting and the latter terrifying first she uses imagery to illustrate the beauty and nature like the white gleam of the snow 's feathers this nature she seems to rever she wants to observe and interact with it even imagining a screech L on her wrist in the next part of the paragraph however the images that she uses portray a darker side of nature she seems to fear the great horned owl which she says are the pure wild hunters of our world she describes them as Swift and merciless and describes the Headless bodies they leave behind unlike earlier she cannot imagine being close to Nature in this darker form saying that to do so would make her fall her relationship with nature is clearly complex she is struck by the beauty but fears the power as is represented in her interactions with owls okay so it's your turn uh this time we're looking at Paradox so remember um we chose the last example with I drop to the sand I can't move I'm Restless no more being an example of both Paradox but also being a good example of how her complexity with n nature is revealed so um pause here and try to write commentary that goes beyond summary um where you're uh anticipating talking to a reader who hasn't read the passage and having to explain how this example reveals the complexity of her relationship with nature um and when you're ready hit play okay I'm going to explain uh or give you an example yours might sound different and that's okay there is not one right answer but this would be a good one to model and look at you know did you do something similar so here Mary Oliver describes through parallelism how her relationship with nature makes her happy so happy that it eases her restlessness and she feels like she can't move this is immediately followed however with two paradoxical rhetorical questions that indicate that the happiness she finds in natur is terrible and frightening to her throughout the passage she uses imagery to convey both the beauty and power of nature the Paradox here however delves deeper into the complexity of her relationship it is not only that nature sometimes brings her joy and sometimes fear the use of paradox shows how both of these emotions can happen simultaneously and can be caused by the same aspect of nature what is beautiful is also terrifying and what is terrifying is also beautiful so some reminders evidence and commentary should be aligned with the thesis the evidence should focus on how a specific rhetorical Choice helps convey a specific message and it should explain how the specific Choice helps convey the specific message all right thank you so much for joining me um remember to be kind to yourself and to others and I hope you'll come back for another video thanks so much