Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Narrative

The author of this personal narrative essay is a student who just entered into a college. Throughout this entire narrative, the author talks about how she responded the new environment or “changes” in her life. She first talks about how she has matured from a child to a young adult through studying abroad alone. Coming to a country that she had never been to, the narrator tells about the cultural and emotional hardships and adversities that she went through while studying in a new environment. The author uses a quite serious and maybe condescending tone; however, as the narrative goes on, she uses lighter tone when she mentions about her “recent” college life. This narrative essay contains two appeals: ethos which shows the authority or credibility of the context, and pathos which shows the feeling and emotions of the context. She uses ethos when she writes her experience with details. She also uses pathos when she describes the hardships and difficulties of adjustment to the new culture and surroundings. In this context, the audience of the author is assumed to be other foreign students who might feel empathy to her story and maybe other college freshmen who just got into the college and try to conform to their new environment. The theme or the main point of this narrative is mentioned in the very first line of the narrative as a quote from Kelly A. Morgan: “Changes are inevitable and not always controllable. What can be controlled is how I manage, react to and work through the change process.” Throughout this narrative, the conveyance of the theme is effective. The author directly says it in the first line of her narrative and puts emphasis when she shares her experiences in high school. However, the story becomes ineffective as the story goes on, when the author describes the most current events in her college life. To improve this personal narrative, the author should link and emphasize her theme more when she describes her experiences in college. Also, the author should mention more about what she learned from her recent “change” in college and how others who read her narrative can reflect to it.