Hating Books Isn’t Always Bad
ERH 101, Section 1
Date Due: 11 July 2015
Date Sub: 11 July 2015
Paper No. 2
Help Received:
Peer response
Conference with Professor
Cole Smiley
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Reading doesn’t come easy, and isn’t fun for everybody. Gerald Graff is a very good
medium in his essay “Disliking Books at an Early Age” for students and professors. Many
professors have a problem with their students not reading, and they wonder why their students do
not enjoy reading like they do. Graff gives very solid evidence that it is the teacher’s fault and
not the students’ in his essay that draws from personal experiences. He uses rhetorical devices
such as ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos to help prove his points.
“Gerald Graff is an English professor and dean of curriculum and instruction… at the
University of Illinois at Chicago,” (Norgaard). He is not the stereotypical English professor who
loves to read and has enjoyed reading for the duration of his life. Graff actually grew up scared
of books because reading was frowned upon by other kids in his neighborhood growing up.
Because of this, he can better relate to the students that he teaches. Graff shows in his essay that,
though reading may not come easily, it is a necessary evil, and there are always ways to spark
someone’s love for reading. For him, it was a debate over the ending of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Fin that didn’t occur until his junior year of under-grad. He is now an English
professor which serves to show that the love of reading can come to everyone.
Throughout this essay, Graff uses many rhetorical devices to help solidify his motives.
He uses pathos, which is an appeal to emotion and ethos is used to give his credentials. Graff
also uses logos to help bring some logic into his arguments. The essay is underscored by an
appeal to kairos, which represents current events of this time period.
Ethos
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Ethos is a reference to the credentials of the writer. Graff attended the University of
Chicago for his under-grad years, and proceeded to Stanford University for his Ph.D.
(geraldgraff.com). He is now an English Professor and holds the position of dean of curriculum
and instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago. So, as one can see, his having attended
two prestigious colleges and having taught at a third, give Graff more merit than if he were
someone else. Graff is highly respected by his peers and students alike and people tend to respect
the opinions of a professional more than those of an amateur. Therefore, Graff’s extensive
professional background makes him an extremely qualified candidate to expound upon this
subject and makes his appeal to ethos particularly effective.
His background as a child who disliked reading is also a great part of his ethos because
he experienced what he is talking about and experiencing something is the best way to become
educated on the subject. By basing part of his argument on his personal experience, Graff is able
to make his piece come alive, which makes it more believable. While most English professors
have harbored a love for their subject since the day they picked up their first book, Graff took
many years to develop a love for the subject which makes him more adept to speak on behalf of
students who, like him, have taken a long time to enjoy reading. Combined with his professional
experience, Graff’s personal experience makes a lasting impact on his readers and helps his
opinions assert their value.
Pathos
Gerald Graff can really appeal on an emotional level with the audience he is trying to
reach through bringing up experiences from his past that scared him away from reading. Graff
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said that if he were to have become a bookworm, he would have been “in danger of being beaten
up daily by rougher working-class boys,” (Graff 112). This experience alone, brings the audience
to empathize with Graff because he lived in fear of being bullied for doing something that most
would consider trivial. Graff is able to relate to his audience because he has been in the shoes of
both the student and the teacher. This allows his audience to relate to him just as well.
Graff is also careful to use accessible language to allow his audience the opportunity to
understand and relate to his work. Occasionally, he heightens his vocabulary so as not to draw
away from his appeal to ethos. When speaking about his past experience with reading, Graff uses
language with a very negative connotation, such as, “sissy,” “danger,” and “frustrated,” on page
112 as well as “painfully difficult and alien,” (Graff 113). This allows the reader to feel as Graff
once did and appeals to his or her emotions. As time progresses, and Graff discovers his love for
reading, the words surrounding reading begin to take on a more positive connotation. Graff uses
words such as “excitement,” “value,” and “power” (Graff 114) to bring the reader to experience
his emotional epiphany alongside him. As the reader feels this change of heart, his or her
emotions will likely follow suit with those of Graff. By using charged language, Graff is able to
entice his reader and carry him or her on an emotional rollercoaster to drive his point home.
Logos
Logos is the rhetorical appeal to logic. Graff has a very specific point in this essay, which
is that reading does not always spark an interest in people. Many people like discussing subjects
rather than reading about them. He uses logos to try and tell professors of higher education,
along with teachers of high school and below, what they should do instead of forcing the
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children to read books that they are not interested in. Graff finds a very good middle ground
between teachers and students. One of the reasons he wasn’t very fond of reading is because he
said it wasn’t very relatable. He said, “I could see little connection between my Chicago
upbringing and Huck’s pre-Civil War adventures with a runaway slave on a raft up the
Mississippi,” (Graff 113). The fact that many people are unable to relate to what they read
drives many to dislike reading as a whole, rather than to continue to search for relatable topics.
This is one of Graff’s primary arguments and it is a very logical one at that. This claim is one
which both teachers and students can understand. He manages to connect the two groups by
basing his argument partially on reason rather than emotion and credentials alone.
Graff recognizes that sometimes the accepted way of teaching children to read and enjoy
doing it is effective. He says that “the germ [literary bug] is first planted by an early experience
of a great book,” (Graff 115). However, he then refutes the full validity of this tactic by
recognizing that for most children, this does not work. By setting up the contradictory argument
to his own and demonstrating its weaknesses, Graff makes his own argument appear all the more
correct. This again is an appeal to logos as it is an example of the use of logic to portray one’s
feelings.
Kairos
In the 1990’s there was a notable decline in the number of students participating in
humanities majors and in the amount of reading that students were doing. Considering that this
piece was written in 1993, Graff was likely motivated to write on this subject by the state of
English in the United States. Because this was already a noted issue, the general public would
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have been searching for a solution. So when Graff published his piece and wrote about his
personal experiences with reading, people were more open to accept his ideas, particularly
because his ideas were a little different than those of most.
In this excerpt from his book, Graff proves that reading is necessary to society and that
students will be more likely to enjoy it if teachers understand the correct ways to teach reading.
By appealing to ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos, Graff illuminates his opinions and convinces his
readers of the legitimacy of his writing. He cites his credentials as an English professor and as a
youth who disliked reading to show his aptitude to write upon this subject. He uses emotive
language to demonstrate his change in sentiment toward reading and to draw his readers’
attention and is also careful to refute opposing viewpoints. In addition to these, the time period in
which Graff wrote this piece was conducive to his audience’s perception and acceptance of his
ideas. Dr. Gerald Graff not only creates an effective rhetorical work by employing these appeals,
but also illustrates an intriguing point of view on reading.
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Works Cited
geraldgraff.com. N.p. 2015. Web. 10 July 2015.
Graff, Gerald. “Disliking Books at an Early Age.” Composing Knowledge: Readings for College
Writers. Ed. Rolf Norgaard. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007. 111-17. Print.
Norgaard, Rolf, ed. Composing Knowledge: Readings for College Writers. Boston: Bedford/ St.
Martin’s, 2007. Print.