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Katherine Boswell
Professor Newsom
ENG 1020
11 October 2010
Rhetorical Analysis: Our Culture, What’s Left of It
Anthony Daniels is a writer, retired prison doctor and psychiatrist who uses the
pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple in most of his essays and articles. During his life he
has worked in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa, Kiribati, and the east end of London
along with many other places. In his travels Dalrymple has acquired much knowledge,
and used this knowledge in many of his essays as well as anecdotes about topics that
are related. For those of you who have not read any of his works or have never heard of
Dalrymple for that matter, you are missing out. His philosophical position as a
“compassionate conservative” is a point of view that is very interesting to read about
and knowing his view on many topics that you would think differently about is interesting
to say the least. Dalrymple writes about many topics that include: education, politics, art,
culture, and even religion.
Although Dalrymple himself is an Atheist - having been raised as a Christian, but
converting around the age of fourteen – he writes and criticizes Anti-atheism. In his
essay “What the New Atheists Don’t See,” he touches upon other Atheist writers, or
those who argue the logical appeal of there being no God, and that Christianity is a
falsehood that is put before our eyes as an explanation for everything. I agree with
Dalrymple when he says “To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.” The
Western civilization (America) is nothing but people believing in something or someone,
and to regret believing in something is a metaphor for regretting the civilization itself.
Although in Our Culture What’s Left of It most of the 26 essays that make up this
book do not really have much to do with each other topic-wise, the underlying
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connection between them is Dalrymple’s conservative view towards them and ideology.
In the essay titled: “The Frivolity of Evil” Dalrymple writes that men such as drug
dealers, thieves, and control freaks are frivolous when it comes to their relationships
and they end up hurting and abandoning their women and children. This in turn causes
the women to do whatever it takes to survive, most of the time by illegal means and that
can have a negative effect on the children. In one case it is written that one man would
verbally and physically abuse a child while the mother knew and the mother wouldn’t do
anything about it for fear that it would end the relationship. The basic argument in this
case would be that because of the frivolous ways men with shady occupations treat
their women/families, it plays a negative role in the upbringing of the next generation.
The children of these men will probably grow up to do something similar because that is
what they are exposed to. The ideology of the father being “frivolous with evil” is
probably the model the child will use when he or she gets older, since like I said, it is
what they are exposed to.
Using his ideology, Dalrymple compares and contrasts the tragedy of Macbeth by
Shakespeare to the Soviet Union in his essay titled “Why Shakespeare is for All Time”.
He is comparing the use of totalitarianism in each situation. In Macbeth, Dalrymple
explains that there is no ideology and I quote “Macbeth is motivated in equal measure
by ambition and by the fear of appearing weak and small in the eyes of his wife.”
Shakespeare is saying that because of those reasons, he takes to heart the prophecy of
the witches and he kills off all the people who are a threat towards his plans, and
eventually he achieves his reign of totalitarianism but he also pays the price. The same
goes for the Soviet Union, however, reading many conspiracy theories about alleged
Jewish and Masonic plans for world domination roots his ideology. Dalrymple writes
that Adolf Hitler caused mass genocide, and ethic cleansing all of the sake of
totalitarianism, so that he would be the only one in power to create a “Greater
Germany.”
In the essay “Don’t Legalize Drugs” Dalrymple is using personal experience with
seeing what the effects of drugs and alcohol do to a person. This it appeals to his ethos,
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which is how he bases most of the information he uses in his essays. He uses the
example of working as a doctor on a British government aid to Africa, helping with
construction in a rural part of Africa, he witnesses that because of the decline in the
price for alcohol, more men are buying it and becoming more drunk each day, not even
being able to make to their beds because they were so intoxicated. Because of the
decline in price and the increase in intoxication, the workers suffer from more
hangovers, and more frequently wreck their bulldozers and other machines making the
cost for the British taxpayer to rise.
Dalrymple uses many examples in this book throughout his essays, most of them
revolve around the logical appeal, logos. He uses logic to explain all of his reasons for
example in the “Frivolity of Evil” he uses what seems to be a cause/consequence
strategy when saying that since those men treat their women and children in a negative
way, the outcome is most likely to be negative. He uses his findings as a psychiatrist to
back his claim. Also in the essay “Don’t Legalize Drugs” Dalrymple uses logic when
explaining that if the price of drugs were lowered and were to become legal, demand for
it would rise exponentially, consumption would increase, and in effect to that criminal
behavior and more addicts would come into play.
When dealing with the personal appeal, there isn’t much to draw from when it
comes to Dalrymple. From what I have read, there have been moments where he
shines a light of sympathy on some of his subjects, but a very dim one. He uses logic
for just about all of his essays, critiquing other authors and subjects, reviewing books,
plays and articles, and when using his own experiences as an anecdote. Using a
matter-of-fact, or common sense approach further proves the efficacy of logos used in
Dalrymple’s works.
There is no real clear main thesis when reading this book. For the reason that
there are so many different topics, there is no way to pinpoint a thesis statement for the
book as a whole. However, in most of his essays I have come to the conclusion that no
matter what Dalrymple writes about whether it is poverty, drugs, criminal violence,
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religion, or moral relativism he believes that Britain is the place where all of the things I
have listed are the most clearly represented.
Looking at the book as a whole, Dalrymple uses all three of the rhetorical
strategies, some more than others. We find the ethos in every page we read, his
credibility doing nothing but increasing with each personal experience and first hand
witness he writes on. Logos going hand in hand with the ethos as he uses common
sense logic, as well as statistics when explaining his findings. Pathos is the odd one out
in this because Dalrymple is not writing to make you feel sorry for someone or
something, he is writing these essays to inform, and to argue different and controversial
topics. He did a good job of using the rhetorical strategies, and before I knew it I was
captured into the essays.
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Works Cited
Dalrymple, Theodore. Our Culture What’s Left of It. Chicago, USA: The Manhattan
Institute, 2005
Dalrymple, Theodore. What the New Atheists Don’t See.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be .html