Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan Rhetorical Strategies Essay

Gifted fountain of Fish Cheeks, Amy Tan, assures young girls that being different is not only acceptable, entirely also advantageous. Rhetorical strategies-such as imagery, tone, diction, and appeals (logos, ethos, condolence)-were the brushes with which she painted a portrait of self-acceptance for teenage girls everywhere. Tan uses a sympathetic tone to occupy to the pasty teenage reader that is experiencing the same thing and the nostalgic adult reader that has experienced.Tans book of account choice diction exposes her insecurity in her heritage and desire to be an average American teenager, in her opening. The originator described traditional American food in an appealing way, roasted turkey and sweet potatoes however omitted any detail about Chinese food. She labeled American manners as proper, but dubbed her relatives and their Chinese customs as noisy. The significance of this strategy lies in its ability to make the textbook relatable. The entire narrative relies on the authors shared experience with the audience, being ashamed of their incongruity and their pursuit of normality.In the third paragraph, Tan enlists the aid of imagery to provide the reader with a more than accurate depiction of the scenery on that night. Vividly detailing the assortment of food Tan was not describing how she saw the food but how she feared Robert would. As revealed later in the text, Tan is quite fond of her finiss taboo cuisine. So, the description of the food using negatively connoted words like slimy, bulging, fleshy, rubbery, and fungus were used to stock her concern about how she and her family would be perceived. This use of imagery and diction exemplifies Tans transmission of emotion-first reside and anxiety, then relief and acceptance- to her audience throughout the text.The appeals to ethos and pathos were vital for Tan to be able to relate to the audience. She had to first establish her credibility as someone who had experienced being a part of 2 different cultures and the desire to fit in. She did this by telling the narrative in first person. Also she showed smashing contrast between the two cultures she belonged to by illustrating her familys traditional Chinese Christmas contrary to American traditions. Then, she appealed to pathos by frequently attaching an emotion to every part of the story. For example, in the opening she conveyed a sense of apprehension with her use of repetitive questions. Likewise, Tan suggested a feeling of relief in the end with her shift in diction, from negative words like despair to more positive words like stunned.