Rhetorical Analysis Outlining Sheet
Directions: Use the chart below to fill out a plan for an essay analyzing the piece that you selected. If you need an example,
remember that I shared an example Persepolis guided literary analysis, as well as one using In Cold Blood in the guide to literary
analysis document, and also shared simpler versions of body paragraphs on symbolism from the In Cold Blood essay.
Directions: Use the chart below to fill out a plan for an essay analyzing Jamaica Kincaid’s “Sowers and Reapers.
Remember that you have that mad-lib and sample paragraphs available to look at when you are planning or drafting your
paragraphs, as well as other examples on Classroom.
Prompt: In her essay “Sowers and Reapers,” Jamaica Kincaid talks about the experience of gardening, but also her experience as an
American. Write a complete rhetorical analysis, including introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion, answering the
following question: What are the strategies that Kincaid uses to convey her ideas about American culture and history?
What is your thesis?
Kincaid uses the concept of how a garden is like the way of building a society.
Topic Sentence for first body
paragraph
Reminder: topic sentences should
identify a stylistic choice or appeal that
Kincaid uses and something it
communicates to the reader
Kincaid uses the gardens as a way to draw attention to how African Americans were
shown prejudice. Kincaid expresses the way worldly goods that african americans
had made, that people had admiration meanwhile these same people were being
treated as if they were on a lower class in society, although their creations are to be
appreciated.
Evidence:
Include at least 2. You can use
more.
Topic Sentence for second body
paragraph
Evidence:
Include at least 2. You can use
more.
Topic Sentence for third body
paragraph
Evidence
Include at least 2. You can use
more.
1.
The Middleton place garden is praised because of how “beautiful it is” but
nobody acknowledges the fact that slaves had made the garden.
2. In Jefferson’s garden book, he leaves out the slaves who had helped him with
the upbrinings of the garden.
Kincaid Ceases the belief that a garden is a place to relax and chill down, she says that
a garden should be used as a metaphor and that it has important meaning to it rather
than it just being a “garden” and that everything is mirrored onto a garden.
1.
Kincaid describes a garden as a way of memory. (having picked up a smell
she had sustained as a child.
2. And she had built a connection with her mother involving gardening,
Because they both had a passion for gardening.
Kincaid impugned an audience about the statue of ( John Calhoun Caldwell ) an
american vice president who was a notorious supporter of slavery and racism.
1.
She expresses how hard it must be for the black citizens of Charleston to
walk past the statue everyday.
2. She lets them know of this because she knows that a sum of the famous
gardens were built by african americans and she wants people to think of it
as a place of elegance and misfortune and not just a place of repose.