REHUGO #1

Nisha Rangel
Mr. Soeth
English 3 AP
January 27, 2011

REHUGO Analysis #1 – Reading: In Search of the Good Family.

A. Essay: In Search of the Good Family. Author: Jane Howard.

B. Howard’s thesis is that all human beings need a family, clan, or a tribe in order

to survive in the world. No matter how far we move away or how we no longer keep in

touch, we will always have someplace that we came from and a home to fall back and

rely on.

C. Towards the beginning of Howard’s essay, she strongly emphasizes the importance

of family and how we should rely on them more often and even consider family as a

part of our friends,unless they do not want to be considered friends. “For this we

must rely on our families of friends. If our relatives are not, do not wish to be,

or for whatever reasons cannot be our friends,then by some complex alchemy we must

try to transform our friends into our relatives.”, this provides an example of

pathos, by showing how family needs to be valued more and considered as more than

just family. As Howard goes on she begins to provide evidence on ethos by

giving advice on how to maintain or start good families. For example, she lists

steps one through ten beginning with “1. Good families have a chief, or a heroine,

or a founder – someone around whom others cluster, whose achievements, as the

Yiddish word has it, let them kvell and whose example spurs them on to like feats.”,

and by giving advice to the reader, it shows that she has experienced these events

and is trying to help others correct what may have been something her family has and

other families may need.

D. Some of the rhetorical strategies Howard uses is process analysis, repetition,

and rhetorical questions. Howard uses process analysis by listing ten steps on how

to begin or maintain a good family, such as “1. Good families have a chief or a

founder…2. Good families have a switchboard operator…3. Good families are much to

all their members, but everything to none…4. Good families are hospitable...5. Good

families deal squarely with direness…6. Good families prize their rituals...7. Good

families are affectionate…8. Good families have a sense of place…9. Good families

find some way to connect with posterity…10. Good families also honor their elders.”

She also uses repetition throughout the essay to emphasize certain points of her

argument to her audience. In her first paragraph, for example, she opens with

repetition of the word call and you, “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a

tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. You

need one because you are human. You didn’t come from nowhere. Before you, around

you, and presumably after you, too, are others.”, this helps better her argument

because it make the audience focus on how the essay relates to themselves and how

their family is. Another strategies Howard uses is rhetorical questions. By using

questions like “What can such times teach us about forming new and more lasting

tribes in the future?” and “Have not the Japanese for years had an honored,

enduring – if perhaps by our standards rather rigid – custom of adopting

nonrelatives to fill gaps in their families?” to get the audience to think about how

their families are and what could be learned and improved within their family as

well.

MLA Citation for Essay:

Howard, Jane. In Search of the Good Family. From Families in Atlantic Magazine.

Copyright © 1978 by Jane Howard.