Shopping for Style

It’s Black Friday. Avid shoppers are lined up at the doors of their favorite stores from the time that they open, and they run in and out until they are forced out  by exhausted workers who are ready to close. All day the shoppers have been in search of clothes, appliances, furniture, and -my favorite- shoes. Everyone is shopping for items that suit their own personal style. Much like the avid shoppers search for their style, avid readers shop for style in the rhetoric of writers. They shop and search in magazines, books, newspapers, and other types of literature that strike their style-savvy eyes. When readers finally find the perfect style, they fall in love, much like a shoe shopper falls for the perfect pair of shoes.

Examples of Rhetoric (all from Marley & Me by John Grogan):

• Anaphora; We were young. We were in love. We were rollicking in those sublime early days of marriage when life seems about as good as life can get.
• Epistrophe; The prior owners, a retired postal clerk and his wife, loved the color green. The exterior stucco was green. The interior walls were green. The curtains were green. The carpet, which they had just purchased to help sell the house, was green.
• Polysyndeton; Not a cheery kelly green or a cool emerald green or even a daring lime green but a puke-your-guts-out-after-split-pea-soup green accented with khaki trim.
• Parallelism; The literature was filled with glowing testimonials about Labrador retriever’s loving, even-keeled personality, its gentleness with children, its lack of aggression, and its desire to please.
• Simile; He quaked with joy as he burrowed his head into my stomach and nibbled the buttons of my shirt, his tail slapping the steering wheel like the needle on a metronome.

Just as the perfect shoe is hard to find, excellent rhetoric is also. However, it is out there, and it can be found if searched for hard enough. When it is found, the shopping trip has been worthwhile. But for the most part, rhetoric is everywhere, so go out and shop for some!

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