In the article “Stop the Clock”, Amy Wu talked about how the world is always speeding everything up. Within this article, it started as her explaining how clean her aunt’s house was when Amy was little. Amy then stated that she would try to not be like her aunt and do everything the “fast” way. Amy also talked about how even in stores she would see signs that would say save time, etc. Eventually as she was growing up, she made dinner for her family and started to appreciate her aunt for the things she does for her family and the way she makes time for them. In the end, Amy mainly sums up by saying, “In the end, we may lose more than we’ve gained by forgetting the important things in life.” This last line of her story is also her thesis statement as well. The key arguments that support her thesis are her making dinner for family one night by scratch, and her handwriting a letter to her cousin.
The author uses pathos by writing from her own experience. She has a lot of emotion in her paper, which helps her show her pathos as well. Another form she uses is ethos by using correct grammar, and writing very sincere about her topic. Lastly, she uses logos in her article by giving a lot of reasoning behind her thesis. Amy uses opinions of other others in her article to help her get her point across and make sense of things.
The appeal I find the author relying on most is pathos because she writes a lot from her own perspective. In this case, I think her relying on pathos worked because it really got the point across and kept the reader engaged. The most persuasive thing about her using pathos is the way she worded things and used great examples. One quote from her that really stuck out was, “We’re living life on fast-forward without a pause button.” This was a good metaphor used that helped me understand what she was trying to get across to the readers.
The audience that this article is pertaining to is Newsweek readers who are probably for a general audience. However, mostly college aged students who are just starting out. This affects what people are saying here because Amy is gearing this article towards younger people to embrace them of giving themselves more time. This article had some strengths and weaknesses as well. Such as for strengths, Amy uses a lot of good descriptions and examples throughout her article. Another is, she really gets her point across and makes it well known throughout her article. A weakness on the other hand though is, she talks about how we should slow down, but in reality, everyone living in today’s society is always trying to find new ways to make things faster paced. Especially the people she is trying to persuade most, the young people of today. Many people today like things fast paced so in some cases this growing slower could be a bad thing. Another weakness is she does not use any statistics in her paper or very many factual things. Amy’s paper could be more enticing if she used more of these things.