In the book Ishmael, Daniel Quinn argues claims about our culture and beliefs through Ishmael, the gorilla. He somewhat effectively argues his claim, I say somewhat because he doesn't adequately use all three parts of an argument: ethos, pathos and logos.
Quinn's intended audience is very clearly every Taker/human that is living everyday without really realizing the destruction of the environment and society around them. His rhetorical purpose is to show these people what they're doing wrong and not necessarily tell them how to fix it, but telling them how they should inform everyone and essentially start a revolution. He does this because the world is very quickly being destroyed by humans because of our lack of energy to do something about it. Quinn puts into perspective how the world is slowly being ruined through the character of Ishmael.
The reason I don't think Quinn's argument was extremely effective is because he didn't use very much ethos.
In the beginning he used Ishmael's captivity in the zoo then the menagerie to give Ishmael some credibility with being able to observe humans from the outside of our world. Ishmael also taught himself how to understand humans which gives him some credibility as being very smart. Quinn does mention a few books Ishmael read to further his knowledge about humans, one being the Bible, but that is about all the ethos he uses. He doesn't use any ethos while arguing throughout the book to back up his claims which is where I see most of his faults.
Daniel Quinn mostly uses logos to support his claims throughout the book. On almost every page there was logical evidence to back up his claim he was currently making. He did this a lot through stories he told that put many...