A Rhetorical Analysis of Blocking by Evans D. Hopkins According to the Webster Dictionary, rhetoric is defined as the art of speaking or writing effectively. Rhetoric is made up of three separate appeals that can be used individually or collectively in an attempt to persuade a reader. Ethos is the credibility and qualifications of the speaker or author. Pathos is the author's use of emotion and sympathy to get the audience to agree with his point of view. Finally, logos applies sound reasoning (logic) to appeal to the audience's typical ideas and prove the author's point. “Lockdown” by Evans D. Hopkins is a great example of an author using these appeals to persuade his audience. Hopkins' uses of the three appeals are easy to spot and relate to throughout the entire passage. He undoubtedly uses rhetoric to try to keep his audience's attention and to persuade them to think as he does about the treatment of prisoners. We can identify and trust that he is making reasonable claims because he was a prisoner and underwent a real lockdown. The fact that Hopkins was a real prisoner demonstrates his credibility in providing evidence to support his thoughts. Hopkins immediately demonstrates his credibility (ethics) in his opening sentence and also gains the trust of his audience. “I know something serious has happened when I wake up well before dawn and discover two guards wearing armored vests and riot helmets are doing a head count” (298). As he goes on to state that this isn't the first time he's encountered a blockage. "I have endured lockdowns in buildings with little or no heating, lockdowns during which the authorities cut the lead... half the paper... because that made his belief more credible thanks to his knowledge. Hopkins makes another attempt to gain his audience's trust with logos and talks about his beliefs about deterring crime "With violence affecting so many lives, one can understand the desire, driven by fear, to lock up young male offenders. But considering their impoverished and danger-filled lives, I wonder whether the pleasure of being locked up for decades actually deters them from committing crimes" (305). Hopkins is definitely not our stereotypical prisoner. More generally, our view of prisoners he's not someone who has this deep use of words and this broad sense of knowledge.