Following is a rhetorical analysis of the effectiveness of Applebaum’s argument written by an AP student, Tamar Demby. How does she develop her position? Why do you agree or disagree with her? How might she improve her essay?
Alarmist or Alarming Rhetoric?
Tamar Demby
In an age when threats to life as we know it seem to grow too enormous to face, it becomes tempting to regard any danger as an apocalypse waiting to happen. But however huge and urgent an incident appears, it is important to look at the big picture and calmly analyze the true risks of all responses. Within the context of Japan’s struggle to avert a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture, Anne Applebaum, writing for the Washington Post, argues against any further expansion of nuclear power. However, she undermines her own purpose by basing her argument on unsupported claims, relying on highly emotional language, and failing to establish her ethos as a credible authority on the issue.
As a journalist rather than a nuclear physicist or someone with credentials earned by education and training, she has to present a clear viewpoint supported by solid evidence. If she has a history of reporting on nuclear power issues, then she should have explained that expertise. Instead, she relies on hot-button issues such as Chernobyl to alarm her readers, who are likely an educated and well-informed audience. Even though she is writing in the midst of the crisis in Japan when no one knew what would happen to the reactors, she needs to establish a fair-minded ethos and build a more fact-based case. Unless she moves her audience to share her concern and alarm, she fails to achieve her purpose of making them see the true “cost” of nuclear power and oppose further expansion.
Applebaum’s central point is spelled out in the title of her piece: “If the Japanese Can’t Build a Safe Reactor, Who Can?” In order to ask and then answer this question, she must establish the supremacy of the Japanese to build a safe nuclear reactor. In her first paragraph, she highlights the strengths of the Japanese: “cohesiveness, resilience, technological brilliance and extraordinary competence” and cites examples of all these traits except technological brilliance—leaving the reader with no reason to agree with her assessment of Japanese technological prowess. This pattern continues in the second paragraph, as Applebaum attempts to explain that the Japanese can be expected to have built the safest possible nuclear reactors because they were “designed with the same care and precision as everything else in the country”—a statement she fails to support. Verified details seem to be reserved for viscerally effective descriptions of the situation in the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Applebaum states that the plant will not “eventually recover,” as three reactors are “letting off radioactive steam . . . (and) there have been two explosions.” These facts serve only to appeal to the reader’s emotions, focusing on the horrifying results of the catastrophe but not addressing—or supporting—Applebaum’s claims. Ultimately, Applebaum’s position seems to be based more on personal alarm than analysis of facts.