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Shania Kenworthy

Simon Workman

English Composition 1101

September 15, 2018

Rhetorical Analysis: Why Public Libraries Are Amazing

In Nathan J. Robinson’s article, Why Public Libraries are Amazing, Robinson believes

strongly that we should not be making public libraries obsolete. He believes that the value of

libraries are extensive, many people of all classes use libraries, and there are many benefits of

public libraries. Robinson is speaking against the opposing article that is for the use of Amazon

and dwindling down the amount of public libraries that we have in America today. Robinson is

discussing how public libraries have been very beneficial to us all at some point and time in our

lives. Robinson explains the statistics, getting the audience’s attention, and other methods to

make the audience understand their point.

First, Robinson uses pathos in a way that not only appeals to the audience’s values and

moral beliefs, but also gives us many statistics and information about why public libraries are the

better option than say Amazon bookstores. In the third paragraph he states how “library users

talked about the value of libraries”. The financial value of having libraries around us is large. On

Amazon, you’d have to pay for every book. The library allows us to check out books at our

leisure and its free. Robinson uses pathos again when he talks about how libraries aren’t obsolete
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in the third paragraph. He says, “people use libraries a lot, and technology has not replaced

them”. He also states that “Americans think about how when libraries close, its hurtful to the

community”. This could be using the audience’s emotions to make them believe that if libraries

in their surrounding communities closed down, then the community could spiral down from

there. Fear is a very powerful motivator and could speak to the audience’s emotions and that

could be a possible reason Robinson uses it in his article.

Another way Robinson uses pathos in this article is by making the audience think about

equality. At one point he was saying “It’s worth appreciating how extraordinary libraries are,

why they matter …They are spaces of absolute equality, where anyone can come regardless of

financial resources..” This could make the audience think about how libraries bring us all

together no matter what race, gender, or class we are. Robinson was possibly trying to get the

audience to think about how libraries are so much bigger than just a building with books. Also,

it’s a place for us to come together and hang out, get information, or just read for pleasure.

He also uses pathos when he says, “They give the same things to everybody and there’s

something rare about that”. He is aiming at your emotions. Robinson wants the audience to

understand that we can possibly have peace in the world by coming together and just be able to

have a shared common interest for books and not worry about where you come from. By using

this method, he knew people have very strong opinions on everybody being equal and being able

to come together.

Robinson tries to get the audience on his side by using the pathos method once again and

uses feelings and emotions to get to the audience’s heart. He said, “Public libraries make the

world fairer, and they make life easier… we don’t put nearly enough resources into them”. This

is saying that if we put more time and effort into the libraries that we already have, we could
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make them even better verses turning to Amazon or an online bookstore. Bigger isn’t always

better. Libraries sometimes have minimal resources, so if we spent more time and money

invested in the libraries instead of turning to online resources, our libraries wouldn’t be faltering.

He gets to people’s emotions by persuading them to invest more in libraries rather than turning

away from them completely. This example can have a positive effect on people because they

would want to do better in the world.

Nathan Robinson also uses the pathos method when he talks about how the library can

benefit us. Robinson said, “The American public library is a model of what a community-run,

not for profit, public service ought to and can look like”. We should be fighting harder to keep

the libraries up and running. We shouldn’t be turning to Amazon when we could so easily be

fixing the community-run libraries we already have. This persuades the readers to fight harder

for something they believe in. This is significant to the article because the entire story is

persuading the readers to put more thought into helping save our libraries and not allowing the

online companies to take over more parts of our lives.

Robinson uses ethos in this article as well. Robinson uses many quotes and other people’s

opinions in his article. I believe he did this because he wanted to appear creditable. When he has

so many quotes and citations, it could help the audience to believe that he knew what he was

talking about. He adds in the article from Noah Smith where Noah discusses the situation in

Japan. This helps Robinson’s article because he is getting another story that matches his views

on the situation using another country and article as comparison. This is one example that shows

how he is creditable.

Robinson has presented himself to be trustworthy and credible. He is being persuasive

when he uses the ethos method to appear relatable. He uses ethos when he added in an article
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from Noah Smith and said, “When I’m doing research, I want to just be able to access “all the

books” to look through without thinking “Is this source so valuable that I am willing to pay X

amount for it?”. I believe he added this sentence so that he could help the readers see that he is

trying to be on the same level as them. Robinson added this article so that he could make in

known to the audience that he is sympathetic to the reader. He proves this by adding in Smith’s

sentence about not wanting to pay money for books that he could borrow in a library.

Robinson’s essay tries to be persuasive by using the logos method. He uses this method

when he said, “When an institution is controlled by a community, or a local government, the

residents of that community have democratic control”. He supports this claim by relating it to the

public library situation. If we allow the libraries to be controlled by the community, it would be

more beneficial than if we allowed Amazon to take over and then the community would have no

control whatsoever.

Robinson was effective in getting to people’s hearts and emotions by making them trust

him by getting to their emotions explaining to them how they should be helping the libraries.

This article is persuasive in using the pathos, ethos, and logos methods. Robinson really made

the article relate to the audience’s emotions, thoughts, beliefs, reason, and logic.