Journal Two

In David Giffels “Shirt Worthy” he takes advantage of a rhetorical situation and uses many elements of the situation to solve the exigence. He gives a very strong introduction with a lot of background of the situation and tells a little anecdote to grab our attention of his own memoir. Then he begins into the body of his story by telling us the story of how worthy one needs to be to get a Ramones shirt. He continues to tell us how he had children and for his son’s tenth birthday, he asked his father for a Ramones shirt. He also says how things have changed, because he mentions how a store like hot topic contains things that used to be based on a value system and now he no longer thinks about it. My favorite part of the whole memoir is when his son rips the shirt and the other man says “you just made it better.” That brings the story into his conclusion by saying how rock n roll paraphernalia had to be hard-worn based off of personal experience. I think the point of this story is to tell all his experiences he went through by going to shows and finally becoming “shirt worthy.”

The subject of this story is the author telling us his journey to getting shirt. I believe his audience is fans of rock and who have had similar experiences as the author has. i think this is so, because he mentions how there used to be a value system of shirts like that and when his one friend said how the kid made it better by ripping it. The story is relevant since there is an exigence of he wants to be worthy of a Ramones shirt and he eventually solves the problem.

Giffels develops a fitting response very well to this story, because he targets the right audience and delivers a good message thats easy to interpret into the meaning of the story. The best thing i think he does is use rhetorical appeals very well; especially ethos and pathos. He uses ethos in saying he believed he needed to be worthy to have a Ramones shirt and was ok in not having one for a while. And pathos, because at the end of the story he makes the audience feel happy for him since he finally got the shirt after a long time wanting one. I would love be able to use rhetorical appeals like Giffels did in “Shirt Worry.”