Response to Myron Oliver's "It's Alive!"

In Myron Oliver's "It's Alive!", Myron takes us on a playful journey through logic, sensory, and emotions by introducing us to the concepts of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos in a three cornered fantasy land where the parts of the rhetorical triangle take on human like form eliciting audience appeal just by being who they are. This post reminded me a lot of a book I read about geometry called “Flatland” by Edwin Abbot in which the author tries to introduce the reader to complex concepts like spacial relation and perspective by giving human elements to lines, edges, other shapes, and plains in space.

In “It’s Alive!” Myron encounters Logos the Lumberjack and conceptualizes Logos for Myron right away by demonstrating that all things are possible through knowledge and understanding which - obviously has an impact on Myron. Paula Pathos tells the harrowing emotional story of survival which engages Myron’s heart. Barak Ethos engaged Myron by creating credibility because he could see and hear the elements in Barak’s wooden landscape. Before Myron meets the Lumberjack, Barack, or Paula he finds the landscape barren and frightful. Once he gets to know these folks, it seems like Myron is more at ease with the Rhetorical Triangle.

Works Cited

Oliver, Myron. "It's Alive!." N.p. 2011. Web. 18 April 2011. Myron's Log. 2011. http://myronslog.blogspot.com/2011/04/its-alive.html