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Ones Rhetoric

You may ask yourself what Rhetoric is and you question yourself how people have the

power to get followers or even control. Rhetoric is a study or maybe even a gift of

communication that has the capacity to persuade, inspire, and grab audience attention to change

ones belief, actions, and values. Their is no limits to this which can occur through any kind of

media or genres. The rhetoric helps us learn the strength or weakness of our own and of others

rhetoric. This then leads us to know anyone can have the strength and capacity to speak or act for

something whether it is a belief, or an action.

You can name someones rhetoric from the back of your head which is someone who we

know by Jesus Christ. His rhetoric was to get followers and believe in the Christianity religion,

and the creation of god and to bound for eternity with him. Jesus Christ is one of many that had

the strength to get followers and the belief in his rhetoric. As the years seem to progress and

society and the era is changing, people tend to have different rhetorics in life. The novel Fight

Club by Chuck Palahniuk is an inspiration in todays modern life and how one may be living life

in present time. The Character that best is known for his rhetoric and action is Tyler Durden.

Tyler Durden" is The Narrators" split personality. He was created or first known by the

catastrophic storm of the Narrator's insomnia leading to insanity and his frustration with a view

in life of wage-slavery and consumerism. He is the manifestation of the completely free person

the Narrator wishes he could be. His rhetoric are upon the values of material possessions, that the

things you own end up owing you and that the powerless in society are the most powerful. This

means that we are trapped in this modern world where all material owns us meaning our car
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owns us because we have to do payments and the car therefore has control over us. The

powerless are the most powerful because it takes many voices or actions to make a change and

we the powerless can overthrow the powerful whether it is to impeach the president or even sue

the rich.

The American novelist and journalist Chuck Palahniuk who describes his work as

transgressive meaning (characters in novels who feel, confined by the norms and expectations

of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways). His basic complaint is

that how our daily routine life exposes what is at the core of our modern world. Citing in his

award winning novel Fight Club, Palahniuk notes that, Then you're trapped in your lovely nest,

and the things you used to own, now they own you (44). He points out that even though The

Narrator consumes all his needs, it doesn't necessarily make him happy or gets time a sense of

accomplishment. The object or needs one buys dont make it ours because we must continue to

work hard to pay off or buy the objects that bring us happiness and completeness. Ultimately,

Palahniuk complains, that this begins to form a symbolic prison that The Narrator has locked

himself.

This observation rang to me because, now that I think about it, this goes out for all of us.

This goes out to us because we are in a world were consuming has becomes part of our everyday

life and is what we call an addiction. Just simply consuming something whether it is a phone or

car has the power to release dopamine but the sad part is that we dont realize what we buy isn't

ours making the product or object own us. I myself agree to this and can relate to it because an

object or obstacle that technically owns me has been work. I am a full time student and part time

worker. As hard as it may sound without my job I am nothing. It provides me with the little
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money I need to pay of school, buys my needs such as gas for transportation, food, materials for

school, etc. It owns me but it is a temporary stay because it provides just enough for my needs.

Even though this job owns me it makes me value the things in life, we are all consumers in life

and the little stuff I consume have value in them.

Activist Annie Leonard is an examiner toward the cost of consumption and garbage. She

is the author on the book The Story of Stuff. Her complaint is that consumption has became a part

of our life and that we don't value what we have therefore making more trash in the world than

what we already have. She claims herself in her writing as Pro-Stuff noting that, In fact, Im

pro-stuff! I want us to value our stuff more, to care for it, to give in the respect it deserves, I want

us to organize that each thing we buy involved all sort of resources and labor. Someone mined

the earth for the metal in your cell phone (vi). Leonard points out that she wants us to value

our stuff and understand. Therefore, stuff should be long lasting made with pride and cared for.

I agree towards valuing our stuff more because if you think about it, the things we value

more, we either use a lot or spend a lot of time with. For instance I have my blanket that I have

had since I was born and its been my main blanket ever since. That blanket satisfies my needs

and I don't see why other objects or materials wont satisfies yours. A phone can last for a very

long time as well for other electronics. We live in a modern world were they come up with new

inventions and we just war to have the latex version and not Fall Behind. By falling behind, it

means you want to be just like everyone else and have the newest thing. Its sad to say the new

generations of our future life are attached to this memo of having it all and they dont realize and
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value the things around them or what they have. The people that are considered On top of us

and that are Powerful are the ones to blame. They focus on just getting richer and
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don't care about the rest. As crazy as it may sound but very true is that, the powerless in society

are the most powerful.

The novelist and journalist Chuck Palahniuk describes and notifies this in his novel

Fight Club. His action towards this shows that the society needs the powerless. As Palahniuk

sites this in his novel Fight Club, he notes that,We are the middle children of history, raised by

television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we

won't. And we're just learning this fact,' Tyler said. 'So don't fuck with us.(166). This point

shows that without the Powerless, the world wouldn't operate. The main complaint is that the

world needs the powerless more than anything and they can take over the powerful if united.

I agree that the powerless in society are the powerful ones. Even though we do not have

the wealth nor big connections to something, their are more low and middle class people than the

higher class. This means that without the middle or low class, the system wouldn't operate

without the powerless. The powerful are very few and can easily be over thrown. A personal

experience that I can relate to has to be back in my high school year. We had a principal that

wouldn't do anything and we demanded change in the snacks that the student store and vending

machines provided for us. We wanted this change in school but the principal never reached out to

us or even took it to consideration. Thousands of students gathered up to ask for a new principal

and it took a while but a new principal was sent to our school and listened to what we had to

say .This comes to show that we the students have the power to ask for a new staff and over

throw someone higher than our position or rank.

This comes to show that anyone who is trying to live the American Dream can either

reach their way to the top and be considered the Powerful or some may just get a well paying
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job but not enough and will be considered either Powerless, low class, or middle class. The

American Dream depicted in the show Frontline episode eleven, Two American Families,

constitutes of attaining decent jobs whom offer adequate salaries and health care benefits to help

promote upward socio economic mobility. In the past two decades its been nearly impossible for

an average person to find a well paying job and attempt moving up the socio economic ladder,

when the United States department of labor implements low minimum wages. For those very few

well paid jobs that do exist, they require one to have an astounding educational background

which is very expensive to acquire and/or have connections of some sort with the elite. Life in

the U.S has become all about survival and the theory of thriving has simply become an illusion.

As a result, the lower class is growing immensely large while the middle class is slowly

disappearing, and the upper class is simply stable.

As crazy as it may sound Tyler Durden does have a point towards his rhetoric. His

rhetoric on how the values of material possessions, that the things you own end up owing you

and that the powerless in society are the most powerful. Many fail to realize this in society but,

most of modern civilization stand in this view of life. We don't see life as a beauty anymore

rather than just doing our everyday routine going to work, and making a living to survive.

Everyone is so caught up to todays technology and materials that the materials and technology

own us and have us brainwash in a way where we are addicted to all this material. We dont see a

value in stuff anymore and just want to consume more and more. We the powerless have the

ability to change things and do something in our lives. Its time we wake up and open our eyes to

the world and change all this because after all we are the most Powerful in society.
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Work Cited

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. London: Vintage, 1996. Print.

Leonard, Annie, and Ariane Conrad. The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the

Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health--and How We Can Make It Better. New

York: Free Press, United States, 2011. Print.

"Two American Families." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, n.d. Web. 07 May 2017.

Class and the American Dream. The Opinion Pages. The New York Times, 30 May 2005. Web.

29 Nov. 2016.