Using Fiction to Teach Rhetoric
The art of persuasion doesn't just apply to nonfiction
Welcome to From the Teacher’s Desk, where we take turns further reflecting on our episodes and applications to the classroom.
It’s a little embarrassing, but I didn’t have a full understanding of rhetoric until I started graduate school after eight years of teaching high school English.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t learned about the art of argument, and it wasn’t that I didn’t understand the many elements of writing and writing instruction, I had just never been formally exposed to it as a high school student and it didn’t come up in my college literature or writing classes.
I got a crash course in the concepts during the summer before I started my graduate studies full time. I had to take a course on teaching writing before I could teach Freshman Composition. Everything I would learn over the next three years would open up my world as a reader, writer, and teacher. By the time I started teaching the new AP Language and Composition course at the school where Alicia and I taught together, I was all in on the role of rhetoric in teaching composition.
But rhetoric lessons aren’t just for writing students. I quickly discovered that rhetoric could be a powerful way to look at the structure of fiction, as well. After all, many fiction writers are also making an argument in their short stories and novels. Why not challenge students to analyze the arguments the authors are making and how those arguments apply to the world they are living in now?
I was up to the challenge and quickly found a way to do so in both my AP and non-AP classes.
Rhetoric in Drama
I know this makes me a minority amongst English teachers, but I personally love Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I had to memorize Mark Antony’s “O bleeding piece of earth” speech when I was in high school, and I have been passionately in love with the play ever since. However, it is not my favorite play to teach because I just cannot get my high school students excited about political drama with a side of geopolitics.
However, it really is an excellent piece when studying rhetorical appeals. Even if you were to just study the funeral speeches and the intrigue leading up to the assassination, there is plenty for a teacher to work with. Drama is a perfect way to introduce rhetoric to students because the fictional speeches with fictional outcomes help us to investigate the potential impact of a speaker’s appeals. My English 10 colleagues and I did just that this year with Twelve Angry Men. You could also do this with The Crucible. Use the powerful visual of drama to help students see the juxtaposition of appeals to both credibility and emotions, or emotions and information. Discuss how the appeals work on both the other characters and on them as audience members. Then encourage them to write speeches of their own.
Rhetoric in Novels
Students of Arthur Miller are fully aware that he was making arguments about current events with his plays, but novelists also make powerful arguments with their fiction. As both a history and English major, one of my favorite 20th century novels is John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. A couple of the times that I’ve taught the novel, I’ve had students look at the intercalary chapters about the Dust Bowl as the argument for why the Joad’s story matters. A strong historical narrative also tells students a lot about the time period, presenting the opportunity to discuss historical context as an important element of literary analysis. (The research driven literary analysis paper I’ve done with students can be found here.)
Modern novels can also present strong examples of persuasion. A study of The Hate U Give or Speak gives students a chance to investigate the ways we use language to speak to abuses of power and pathways to healing. The Kite Runner has always opened up discussions about war and the refuge experience, and I’ve used Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer to expand the discussion to more current events. The options for a study of rhetoric in literature are endless.
Rhetoric in Film
When Alicia and I chose to use rhetoric as our lens for the film Women Talking, we did so because we wanted to show how our understanding of rhetorical analysis can extend beyond study of speeches and op-eds. I am a firm believer that film study can be a powerful tool when we ask students to be active viewers of the media that we put in front of them. That is why I usually give them some kind of open-ended study guide, such as this, to help them think through both the filmmakers’ intentions and their own reactions to the stories being told.
Understanding the art of argument and persuasion can be difficult for all ages, but it is possible. What are some of the ways that you have used fiction to teach your students rhetorical appeals?
Want to hear more about how to use rhetorical analysis with film study? Listen to our episode over Women Talking.
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