Hao 1

Rui Hao

Justine Yan

Writing 39B

24 Oct 2017

Rhetorical Analysis: The Actual Hollister

Located in the heart of California, fifty miles south-east of San Jose, the town of Hollister

evokes curiosity and interest of many, especially by its name. In The Actual Hollister, Eggers

travels to the mysterious town, which became known by the brand Hollister started by

Abercrombie & Fitch, and find it complete but economically depressing. However, Eggers never

fail to surprise his audience and attract them to his story with his masterful skill in writing

strategies. Eggers challenges the convention of rhetors telling everything about themselves in the

start to build credibility by revealing his personal relation with Hollister partway in the essay,.

His identity changes from a persona of an outsider, to a descendant who has a family history

close to Hollister, which surprises the audience, and instead of losing credibility for hiding

who he is, Dave Eggers gains acknowledgment from the audience through this unique rhetorical

technique.

Eggers begins manipulating rhetorical strategies even before the article starts. Published

on the New Yorker, though the title of the article is the Actual Hollister, the webpages name,

actually, is the History of Hollister. In fact, when the audience, the New Yorkers readers,

click to open this piece, they would make a few assumptions already: is this the history of the

clothing brand founded by Abercrombie & Fitch? Is this a historical or academic article? And

who is the person going to tell the story? Surprisingly, when the audience skim the subtitle, a
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California town and its name, they soon realize that this storys focus is the town instead of the

brand. I would never turn away from this articlewho would? At this point, the readers are

ready and curious to discover the relationship of the town and the hoodies that many wear. Dave

Eggers, now, initiates to build his persona in the first sentence, The year I turned forty-three, I

woke up one morning and thought it would be a good day to go to Hollister. This sentence is

short, simple, but exceptionally informative. Eggers clears all the fog; this is not a ethnography

published by a research team, but a travel story with this middle-aged man to explore and

discover. While Eggers is building an image of a ordinary traveler, he starts to imply the

audience his lack of preparing and lack of knowledge about Hollister, but in fact, he already

finished his journey at this point. Up to this point, everything that Eggers does still applies to the

general convention of travel writing; most importantly, he builds a persona for himself to guide

the audience in his story, and this persona is credited by the audience for being an outsider

among all of them.

The expectation of Hollister that Eggerss persona has also plays an important role when

he tries to blend in the outsider audience to gain their trust. Early in the passage, Eggers

mentions, No one was expecting me and I wasnt expecting anything. And later, when he

arrived in Hollister, he states, It is a strangely complete town. At this moment, his persona has

a low expectation about the town, and is surprised by the fact that it has basic infrastructures.

The low expectation seems plausible at first; nevertheless, it is actually strange that he has an

negative attitudethis town seems to be affiliated with a famous clothing brand! If I were he(his

persona), I would expect it is a economically wealthy town, or at least everyone owns a Hollister

hoodie. Overall, it should be more reasonable to have a higher expectation. I believe that Eggers

is trying to hide himself from the audience. There is a pattern that we can find: he knows the
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towns history, while his persona does not; he is related to this towns founder, while his persona

has no clue; finally, he has a higher expectation in this town because of the relation, and his

persona supposedly has a lower one.

Dave Eggerss enthusiasm for this town is richer than how much he presents to us in the

Actual Hollister. According to the Telegraph, a national daily broadsheet newspaper in the

United Kingdom, Eggerss youth was not easy:

For all his affability, Eggers, you suspect, has a pretty dark side which will hardly come

as a surprise to anyone who has read his first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering

Genius. In the book, Eggers described how, aged 21, he brought up his eight-year-old

brother Christopher Toph. This was after their parents both died of cancer within

weeks of one another One of the reasons Eggers feels so ambivalent about A

Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is because of what subsequently happened to

his sister, Beth. When the book was published, she accused him of downplaying her role

in their brothers upbringing and beefing up his own. She later recanted saying shed

made a dreadful mistake Im so embarrassed. I was having a terrible LaToya Jackson

moment. Then, in November 2001, Beth Eggers committed suicide (John Preston).

A man lost his parents at my age, and his sister laterI cannot even attempt to relate because of

the fear I feel by just thinking about it. However, what I can imagine is that after all the

difficulties that he went through, he must treasure everything that he has, and everything his

family has. I believe, he wants to find something about T.S. Hawkins in Hollister; he wants to

find anything that he can collect, and he wants to find the bond he has with this town in Hollister

Valley. He has a expectation, or a wish, for this ordinary but unique town.
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He is unsatisfied. His ancestor, T.S. Hawkins was one of the founders of the town, but besides

the hospital that might touch his feelings, the rest of the town, as he described, is slightly

disappointing.

When the history of the town and his identity revealed, his personas job, which is to

guide the audience, is finished, and now he would not worry about the suspicion of writing a

travel propaganda for profit (although knowing his background, I believe he would not). He

never attempted to glorify Hollister into a charismatic wonderland, and when he starts his

conversation with Debbie Taylor, he finds out that the town would soon have a Walgreens, and

everyone was excited about that. In the barbers words, It sucks.

(Q: How's the family? I don't want to pry too much, but we did come to know

your family with your first book, so it's natural to wonder how everyone's doing. Did you

finally get a dog? Melati Kaye

A: People have been really good to us. I think generally as humans we understand

or assume that the world is full of generous and huge-hearted people, but you don't really

know it first-hand until you get letters from strangers who are truly concerned about the

welfare of your family. It just knocks you over, how kind people are. A lot of people

share their own family stories with me, and man, some of these letters well, every story

is sadder than the last. There were a lot of times over the last couple years when these

letters, from people I might never meet, really gave us strength. A lot of people, total

strangers, wrote extremely kind notes after my sister died last year, and that meant a lot to

us. It was such a hard year. There are times when my brothers and I just look around and

can't believe there's only three of us left. You really can't do the math, or you'd lose your

mind. But we're doing well. Bill's in D.C. writing and consulting, and Toph will be a
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sophomore in college this fall, and we're happy to be back in California. No dog yet,

though. )Possible secondary source.

(more about Dave Egger)

Dave Eggerss main purpose is to tell the true history of Hollister and clarify its

relationship with the brand Hollister, while demonstrating his personal observations of the

town today. Also, in the other hand, he made the trip to look for, and memorialize T.S. Hawkins

and his town. Just like what Pico Iyer states in Why we Travel, We travel, initially, to lose

ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves(Iyer 1). He does not tell the audience what he

has gone through and what his purpose is, but silently, guides them to go on the journey and see

the California town: Though it might not be good enough for a Hollister clothing outlet, this is

the real Hollister, a place where people work hard and sometimes struggle with their past and

their present but look with great practicality toward the future(Dave Eggers, The Actual

Hollister).
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Work Cited(unfinished)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6865365/Dave-Eggers-interview-the-heartbreak-

kid.html

http://picoiyerjourneys.com/index.php/2000/03/why-we-travel/

https://web.archive.org/web/20070211133148/http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/interview/reade

rs_de.html