Rhetorical and Visual Analysis

Marco Munoz
University of Texas at El Paso
RWS 1301
Image of Ebola

Rhetorical analysis is a form of criticism, and it examines the interactions between an

authors text, image, poem or web page and an audience. The image that is going to be
described and analyzed is called Ebola drawn in 2014 by The Sacramento Bee which is
an important newspaper from Sacramento, California; this image is giving an aspect of
health that many people do not even care. I invite everyone to analyze this image has every
of us have a different points of view the world taking in consideration that ethos, pathos,
logos and rhetorical situation need to be analyzed.
In this cartoon drawn by the fifth largest newspaper in California The Sacramento
Bee, in the cartoon we can appreciate a big fat man making emphasis of the average
American man, we can see in the image who express he is worry about the situation we had
with the Ebola virus (EVE), according with the OMS (Organizacion Mundial de la Salud)
The EVE came from Africa and had some apparitions in the United States, this virus had a
90% lethal to humans and provokes fever, diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding between others
symptoms. But, what is really lethal for Americans? I may say Americans are concern for
the wrong things, in this cartoon we can say this guy does not care about his health, and this
actually happens to a lot of the population in the United States. In this part we can see how
the author is trying to get our trust and also gain more credibility to the audience using
ethos very well.
We see also in his face he is terrify about the spreading of the virus in the country, while
he is holding a super big combo of soda, fries and burger with his right hand and also in his
left hand he is holding a beer while he also has a cigarette in his mouth. Ebola was a very
contagious virus and we had a few cases in the United States but it was not even close to
the main reasons of mortality in the country as we can see in the cartoon obesity has

300,000 of deaths per year, tobacco has 450,000 of deaths per year and also alcohol has
88,000 deaths per year. We can see the author use some facts such the tobacco and also
statistics on giving the number of deaths for each of the facts so we clearly can see that
logos is been using in this part.

The ethos in this cartoon come from the credibility of the characteristics this is
representing, we see the credibility of this every day because we live it we also know all the
problems of health this country deals with. It is true and we need to be concern about what
is important for our health. Also logos are been used in this article as I said before the
author used facts and statistics to make his simple reasoning how is that we are more
concern about a rare virus that it is not even belong to this part of the world than obesity
and legal drugs that can kill us in mass. I think the rethor motivation was encourage the
audience to start thinking about our personal health which it is really important.

I think his audience is all Americans who care more about things that are not that
important rather than health, these are issues that a lot of Americans had. And was a great
way to transmit this message by news paper which a lot of people read, fortunately some
may be awareness of this situation.
In conclusion, I think author was motivated by trying to make Americans awareness,
that been healthy matters and also. Analysis the cartoon gives us a clear idea of how ethos
and logos can be used and the right way to do it.