For the rhetorical analysis of a profile of a community, I have chosen “One Nation, Divisible”. This article was written by Michael M. Phillips, a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, in December of 2017. I want to start by addressing the fact that this article was written about a woman, Caity Cronkhite, who readily left the place where she grew up but now, through reflection, has a softer heart towards the people of her hometown.. In order to understand her perspective, the author includes many descriptions and analysis about the community itself which is what I will be focusing on. The main frame of this article is a person: Caity Cronkhite. She grew up in Kingman, Indiana – a town of about 500 people. Another obvious frame is place: Fountain County (where Kingman lies). The last frame, which is the least apparent, is interactions: a rural community struggling to their accept fate as an afterthought. Cronkhite felt like she wasn’t supported by Fountain County so she left as soon as she graduated high school (which she did a year early). She now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been exposed to what coastal Americans think of her hometown. One of the specific moments this divide is shown is through a restaurant, Cracker Barrel. “Friends at work one day called her over to ask about Cracker Barrel. ‘It’s just like a chain restaurant we go to treat ourselves,’ Ms. Cronkhite said. A co-worker jumped in: ‘It’s this really white-trash restaurant that overweight Midwesterners go to.’” The next frame, place, is shown in overarching descriptions and comparison graphs between Fountain County and San Francisco. As a member of this community, I was surprised to see how the author described Cronkhite’s hometown. He focused a lot on the negatives like drug and alcohol problems, as well as a suffering economy. This was used to support Cronkhite’s reasons to leave and make her the protagonist in this article.
The last frame, interactions, is shown in the descriptions of reactions she got for her decisions. When she decided to graduate a year early, her teachers and administrators tried to dissuade her and put certain restrictions on the types of awards she could graduate with. After she posted an article about some of her feelings, her mother responded with, “Oh goodness. What is this going to stir up?” Although Fountain County was thousands of miles away, everyone knew what she wrote. Former teachers and classmates responded with mixed reviews; some felt a sense of good riddance while others appreciated her honesty. This all came from online - mostly through Facebook, which is the most popular platform for the people living there. The overall argument that the author and Cronkhite make about this community is that this part of America is being overlooked and stereotyped to a point where divisions between the coasts and “the middle” are increasingly apparent. There are two purposes for this argument: one, to support Cronkhite’s internal conflict and two, to bring these feelings to a national conversation. The easiest way to see this divide is in the graphs, images, and quotes the author provides to show the contrast between America’s coast and the center of the country. The country's divisions exist because there is a lack of dialogue between American's living in those places. Cronkhite wants her story to help readers personify the issue and encourage the conversation.
1 Comment
Lindsay
4/9/2018 03:55:40 pm
Hey Clare! This is a great analysis! You do a really good job of going into detail about the profile and analysing the three different frames. I thought the profile itself was interesting because it is not autobiographical like a lot of the other profiles I have looked at - the author is writing about the experience of someone else. I also thought it was interesting how one person’s experience was heard thousands of miles away. I can also see the frames at work in the profile the same way you did - the clear frame of person (Caity Cronkhite), place (Fountain County) and interaction (the struggling rural community). Something that I will take away from this profile when writing my own is to not analyse another person’s story but instead just my own with my own viewpoint. Overall, really good job with your RAB!
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Clare McGradyI'm a sophomore at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Archives
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