Understanding Brooks’s Binaries

RACHEL KOLB

Provides brief overview of Brooks’s argument.

As a high school and college student, I was given an incredible range of educational and extracurricular options, from interdisciplinary studies to summer institutes to student-organized clubs. Although today’s students have more opportunities to adapt their educations to their specific personal goals, as I did, David Brooks argues that the structure of the modern educational system nevertheless leaves young people ill-prepared to meet the challenges of the real world. In his New York Times editorial “It’s Not about You,” Brooks illustrates excessive supervision and uncontrolled individualistic rhetoric as opposing problems that complicate young people’s entry into adult life, which then becomes less of a natural progression than an outright paradigm shift. Brooks’s argument itself mimics the pattern of moving from “perversely structured” youth to “unprecedentedly wide open” adulthood: it operates on the basis of binary oppositions, raising familiar notions about how to live one’s life and then dismantling them. Throughout, the piece relies less on factual evidence than on Brooks’s own authoritative tone and skill in using rhetorical devices.

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In his editorial, Brooks objects to mainstream cultural messages that sell students on individuality, but bases his conclusions more on general observations than on specific facts. His argument is, in itself, a loose form of rhetorical analysis. It opens by telling us to “sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days,” where we will find messages such as: “Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself.” As though moving down a checklist, it then scrutinizes the problems with this rhetoric of “expressive individualism.” Finally, it turns to Atul Gawande’s “countercultural address” about working collectively, en route to confronting the individualism of modern America. C-Span and Harvard Medical School aside, however, Brooks’s argument is astonishingly short on external sources. He cites no basis for claims such as “this year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history” or “most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life,” despite the fact that these claims are fundamental to his observations. Instead, his argument persuades through painting a picture — first of “limitless possibilities,” then of young men and women called into action by problems that “summon their life” — and hoping that we will find the illustration familiar.

Connects article to personal experience to create an ethical appeal.

States Brooks’s central claim.

Transition sentence.

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Instead of relying on the logos of his argument, Brooks assumes that his position as a baby boomer and New York Times columnist will provide a sufficient enough ethos to validate his claims. If this impression of age and social status did not enter our minds along with his bespectacled portrait, Brooks reminds us of it. Although he refers to the theology of the baby boomer generation as the “worst of all,” from the beginning of his editorial he allots himself as another “sensible middle-aged person” and distances himself from college graduates by referring to them as “they” or as “today’s grads,” contrasting with his more inclusive reader-directed “you.” Combined with his repeated use of passive sentence constructions that create a confusing sense of responsibility (“The graduates are sent off into the world”; “graduates are told”), this sense of distance could be alienating to the younger audiences for which this editorial seems intended. Granted, Brooks compensates for it by embracing themes of “excellence” and “fulfillment” and by opening up his message to “most of us” in his final paragraph, but nevertheless his self-defined persona has its limitations. Besides dividing his audience, Brooks risks reminding us that, just as his observations belong only to this persona, his arguments apply only to a subset of American society. More specifically, they apply only to the well-educated middle to upper class who might be more likely to fret after the implications of “supervision” and “possibilities,” or the readers who would be most likely to flip through the New York Times.

Comments critically on author’s use of evidence.

Analyzes author’s intended audience.

Brooks overcomes his limitations in logos and ethos through his piece’s greatest strength: its style. He effectively frames cultural messages in binaries in order to reinforce the disconnect that exists between what students are told and what they will face as full members of society. Throughout his piece, he states one assumption after another, then prompts us to consider its opposite. “Serious things” immediately take the place of “rapturous talk”; “look[ing] inside” replaces “look[ing] outside”; “suppressing yourself” becomes an alternative to being “independent-minded.” Brooks’s argument is consumed with dichotomies, culminating with his statement “It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.” He frames his ideas within a tight framework of repetition and parallel structure, creating muscular prose intended to engage his readers. His repeated use of the phrase “but, of course” serves as a metronomic reminder, at once echoing his earlier assertions and referring back to his air of authority.

Brooks illustrates the power of words in swaying an audience, and in his final paragraph his argument shifts beyond commentary. Having tested our way of thinking, he now challenges us to change. His editorial closes with one final binary, the claim that “The purpose in life is not to find yourself” but “to lose yourself.” And, although some of Brooks’s previous binaries have clanged with oversimplification, this one rings truer. In accordance with his adoption of the general “you,” his concluding message need not apply only to college graduates. By unfettering its restrictions at its climax, Brooks liberates his argument. After all, only we readers bear the responsibility of reflecting, of justifying, and ultimately of determining how to live our lives.

Closely analyzes Brooks’s style.

Analyzes author’s conclusion.

WORK CITED

Brooks, David. “It’s Not about You.” Everything’s an Argument, 7th ed., by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz, Beford/St. Martin's, 2016, pp. 106–8. Reprint of “It’s Not about You,” New York Times, 30 May 2011.