Introduction
The essay "Smoking: Taking Cool to Different Levels" exposes sad truth about inventive cigarettes ads. Author describes three posters of different tobacco companies that aim to attract the addicts’ attention and convert new victims. The authentic writing technique is impressive: reader is virtually absorbed into the scene as it unravels itself under the artist’s masterstroke. The “smoking is wrong” statement can be compared to this essay as a spring landscape’s verbal description to a blind man contrasts with live view.
Arguments
Author incorporates some reasoning against smoking along the essay’s course but these arguments are lost in a vast extent of the scenery. Logos is not weak; it is just overshadowed by pathos in this work. The persuasive tactics is perfectly justifiable as author appeals to the same age group as ads do. Tobacco industry employs a false pathos, which can be conquered only with equally strong but healthy counterpart. The target audience is hit with a sardonic humor that turns coolness into the foolishness. As meteor is about to smash the smokers’ house, they flee, carrying nothing else but cartons of cigarettes that are “necessary rations for an emergency”. Really cool image, compared to the next-door neighbors: they are “probably not the colorful cigarette smokers who show so much personality”. The pathos is rich to the point of being overwhelming as author steadily ruins the “coolness” notion.
Strong Ethos
Highly artistic and passionate development of the scene does not prevent author from employing the strong ethos in her essay. The openness and sincerity win the reader’s trust much better than smoking “authorities”. After all, who cares about the nameless cowboy or haughty Winston ladies while someone as sincere and persuasive has mastered a gift of expressing one’s personality. It is a writing technique worth learning, and the author’s uncommon talent sets the highest standard.
