Outline Hope Ranch Poltergeist

 

Hope Ranch Poltergeist

Kronk- represents the forms of rhetoric that contribute to the overall persuasiveness of the story.

                Good arguments and claims

Yzma- represents the forms of rhetoric that detract from the overall persuasiveness of the story.

                Bad arguments and claims

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X- Yzma

                Misleading vividness- an example of this from the story would be the overall vividness of descriptions of the house, the weather, the things in the house and not the vividness of the poltergeist or situation in the home.

                Appeal to misleading authority- “But Mrs. B_____ was adamant that I drop what I was doing and come at once.” We don’t know who Mrs. B is, there is no mention of credibility to back up the authority she is given in the story.

                Post hoc- the fallacy of attributing a causal relationship between a past and present occurrence simply because one happened before the other. The example of this from the story is “she broke up with her boyfriend” the stress and negative emotions that came forth after her breakup were considered the cause for the appearance of the poltergeist.

                Hasty Generalization- “The thing seems to dislike horses” The hasty generalization and reasoning behind the poltergeist being present is that it doesn’t like horses. On two occurrences a horse figurine and a horse picture were both moved thus generalizing that the poltergeist is targeting horses because it does not like them.

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x- Kronk

                 Appeal to emotion- “I could feel the underlying tension and fear.” After the writer steps into the house, they make note of the tension and fear that they could feel coming from the women in the ropom. This was a good example of Emotional Appeal because it backs up the idea that there is something bad in the house that is causing negative feelings and emotions.

                Slippery Slope- (1) The dislike for horses and (2) the breakup with the boyfriend caused the poltergeist to appear. There were two instances where slippery slope was present within this story. The dislike for horses is what caused the poltergeist, and the stress and emotion from the daughter after her breakup also caused the poltergeist.

                Appeal to consequences- “Most poltergeist phenomena last only three weeks or so.” “You mean this thing could leave of its own accord?” “Yes, and never come back.” The example of this from the story is a conversation between the owner of the house and the author where the author states a poltergeist only stays around for 3 weeks. The appeal to consequence was the strongest persuasive argument here because believing in the poltergeist would mean that it would leave within three weeks. Where not believing that it was a poltergeist would mean that they were stuck in a worst-case scenario situation.