Rhetorical Analysis: "Let There Be Dark"
By Jonathan Lam on 07/30/17
Tagged: essay rhetorical-analysis
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An SAT rhetorical analysis essay in response to an article by Paul Bogard, “Let There Be Dark.” Fifty minutes straight of just reading and writing! Here goes:
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When global warming, nuclear war, or terrorism loom over humanity as very real and tangible threats, given the recent relevance (i.e., coral bleaching, leftover Cold War tensions, and extremist terrorist attacks), it would never appear that light, of all the environmental factors around human beings, could cause man's subtle destruction. As a result, Bogard's main focus is in creating a sense of urgency to his audience of the average, clueless citizen of the world, and he does this by using a global-to-specific inductional reasoning format, broad appeals (both statistical and cultural) and wrapping the essay up with a strong call to action.
Bogart knows how to create a dramatic entrance, even down to the date the piece was published. December 21st. The winter solstice itself. By mentioning "this winter solstice" in the first paragraph, Bogart draws attention to the date as a point of relevance. With the winter solstice— the day with the longest dark time in the year— his point to "remember the irreplaceable value of darkness" suddenly becomes very pertenant to the audience. This method of giving importance to general events, or creating strong connections to his theme of the importance of darkness from splendors of ordinary life, is commonly used to build urgency in the article. He does this when explaining the general history of life as it relates to the importance of darkness, bringing bats, sea turtles, wild cats and other "nocturnal and crepuscular species" to light because of their survival need for night. The umbrella terms of "solitude, quiet, and stillness" — happy words that might be associated with peace and serenity— are attributed to darkness. By establishing these connections, Bogart links the loss of darkness to the loss of these desirable, calm traits.
While he does bring global ideas to relate to his essay, Bogart also uses a wide range of specific examples to back his claim as well. To mention the WHO and working late into the night as a "possible carginogen" and the source of other diseases such as "diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and depression" means that his topic is important to human health; bringing in "nocturnal and crepuscular species" of animals notes the ecological importance of darkness; explaining darkness as a factor of "soulful life" in religion describes the spiritual importance of darkness to humans; and emphasizing night's role in artwork such as Van Gogh's "Starry Night" exemplifies darkness's role in culture. By bringing in so many specific, qualititative examples of the exigency of preserving light, Bogart is able to appeal to many people from many fields in his global audience.
To wrap up his use of examples, Bogart uses quantitative data in the penultimate paragraph (the fact that "the amount of light in the sky increases an average of about 6% every year"), not only to satisfy the mathematicians in his audience, but also to quantify the extent of the creeping light pollution. Before this section of the essay, there was no description of exactly how far light pollution had gone, but only an indication that it was getting worse; with the new contextual knowledge about the importance of dark, this average 6% light increase means that the sky would double its brightness in under 17 years! He further hammers in this point by stating that his generation, those over 35 years-old, would be the last to "have known truly dark nights." These numbers make the situation much more urgent because of the lack of time, much like any deadline for the estimated end of coral reefs or the date when CO2 emissions start suffocating other biomes, and it also creates an appeal to pathos because there is a sense of a near loss, the loss of the beloved dark.
The last main literary element Bogart uses is a then…now structure. The anecdote that he introduces the passage with gives a sense of the then ("woods so dark that my hands disappeared before my eyes") and the now ("8 of 10 [American] children … will never know a sky dark enough"). He repeats this structure in the next paragraph, comparing the ancient rhythm of the day-night cycle to the modern, lights-always-on stereotype humans are known for. This structure introduces the problem at the beginning of his essay, comparing the worlds of natural darkness to an artifical brightness, which aids the aforementioned specific and global examples used by Bogart to create exigency. However, comparing the current to the future, as he does in the final paragraph, is also effective in that it creates a powerful call to action. Not only does it keep the chronology going, but this solution follows the problem in a logical order. After his thesis that natural darkness should be preserved— the necessary urgency in the piece, the mostly-informative part of the essay— the final paragraph is his main plea: to take action against advancing light pollution. Because "it doesn't have to be this way … [It] is readily within our ability to solve." With all of the reasons he provided in the earlier paragraphs in mind, the reader now has the chance to fully understand why simple acts such as turning off lights and using "new shielding technologies" is so important.
It's not easy to convince people that we need more darkness. But Bogart sides himself with statisticians, artists, clerics, ecologists, and physicians, as well as virtues of silence and serenity. If the simple, little changes we humans make to our lighting can make such a huge impact and help so many aspects of our existence, why not make them? Bogart brings a fire into the hidden treasures of the darkness.
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Phew! Done! It's so much harder to write an essay without the pressure of grades goading you on.