In Dave Barry’s “Batting Clean up and Striking Out” he explores the two things each gender is sensitive about. Barry explains how women are typically into cleaning while men just don’t care, while men are into sports and women just don’t care. Barry’s purpose is to prove that men and women can be very different. The tone of the passage is just plain satirical, as the sarcasm can be easily detected. The most prominent rhetorical device seen in this passage is anecdote. The author writes the passage almost entirely in stories, such as the example of how his wife told him to clean the bathroom, and he belived he did, but she thought it wasn’t enough. This creates ethos, as the author has experienced this firsthand. Another rhetorical device in this passage is allusions. The author uses allusion when he compares listening to the faint sound of the World Series radio broadcast to the murderer listening to his victim’s heartbeat in Edgar Allen Poe’s story. This allusion allows the audience to better connect and understand what the author is saying. I thought this passage was pretty funny. Once again, the author did a great job of lending credence and saying that while not all women liked to clean and not all men liked to watch sports, the majority did. His use of the anecdotes was very funny and very relatable, as I’ve seen both my parents be more picky over each thing. His allusion to Edgar Allen Poe was also very interesting since I’ve had to read a lot of those passages in different English classes. |
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