Rhetorical Tools

Today in class we talked about a few different rhetorical tools used in narratives. The first was mutability/plasticity. This means the ways the material can be reshaped for different audiences. Plasticity is used all the time in writing, because authors write to try to reach an audience. Sometimes the writing needs to be tweaked a little to better suit a particular audience.  The next one  was piecmeal, which is the way a narrative has been assembled from many different sources and put together. Many writers get  information for their works from a lot of different sources and mold bits of them together to form the tale they want. Windows of opportunity are gaps that can can be filled with other stories or perspectives that might not have been included in the original story. It's like the untold section of a well known story, for example Merlin's childhood and teenage years. Most people know who Merlin is, but not much has been recorded historically about his childhood, which leads into the last tool. The last tool we talked about was open-ended closure, which means that if the reader wants more than what is provided for him, then he's going to have to find it for himself by making it up or even possibly writing it. So if a reader wanted to know more about Merlin's childhood years, the reader could make up his own version of how Merlin grew up or write his own story about the adventures he might have had.

When I first learned about rhetorical tools, I automatically thought of classic fairy tales. I can't think of any other collection of stories that has been retold as many times or in as many different ways. They definitely use all the tools mentioned above. For example,  "The Little Mermaid". The disney version has been molded to better suit a younger audience than the original tale, so it's more kid friendly. The story line is made up of bits and pieces of a couple differents versions of the story, therefore showing an example of piecemeal, and there is a window of opportunity left open because the audience could wonder what happens to Ariel after she marries Prince Eric? Someone must have not been able to stand that open-ended closure, because now there are 2 new "Little Mermaid" movies explaining both Ariel's childhood and her life after she gets married.