Kayla Andreoli

March 24,2020

Prof. Rovasio

English: 303

Rhetorical Analysis # 3: Stiff by Mary Roach

In the first and third person the perspective in which Roach explains the story is

reduced. Roach offers information on her encounters with cadavers and also gives you

some historical context on the beginning of operations and how it has been used or

used by various cultures worldwide. In my own understanding/words ,one of the jokes

she puts out is like, “maggots feast on the subcutaneous fat of a dead body sounds like

Rice Krispies” (pg.68). The explanation is that the image is conveyed to the reader.

This underlines how Mary Roach felt about what she was writing."Cadavers are

our superheroes, she uses a metaphor. She says. (pg.10) They survive fire without tear,

stop dropping into walls from high buildings and smashing head-on cars. She says,

"Don't say stiff, corps, cadaver," scolds the Embalming theory and practice.(pg.77)

An additional use of rhetorical devices is onomatopoeia as it explains "Click,

crack, pop, the sound of the maggots feasts on fat. Mary Roach uses a simple or casual

dictionary so that the readers can grasp her point and the examples she gives in the

novel. Her mood is applied to her syntax. Roach organizes the book by describing the

different uses after death for the human body. Every chapter presents an explanation

for how individuals relate to contemporary society.