Rhetorical Analysis
Adriannah Baker
Professor Washburn
English 101- College Writing
19 October 2014
Addiction in the Homeland When Deborah Sontag wrote the article “Heroin’s Small-Town Toll, and a Mother’s Pain” it wasn’t to scare or frighten the public. What she wrote were facts and intimate details of a family’s pain and heartache over what happened to the person they loved who had an addiction she couldn’t beat. Deborah wrote this article with the intention of letting everyone know that heroin is a very serious problem that has to be talked about and not just pushed under the rug anymore. We were all Deborah’s target audience and she now wants us all to step up and realize what goes on in those dark places no one ever wants to look into or even clean up. The article starts out talking about how Karen Hale lost her daughter to a drug overdose in a hotel room one May night. It goes on to tell how she hasn’t touched anything in her daughter’s bedroom or looked at the hotel where she died because she just isn’t ready to face what happened in those places yet. Next in the article it describes how the use of heroin has spread, where it came from, and how no one is immune from its harmful grasp whether you’re rich or poor, black or white. An example of this is, when a famous actor died of a heroin overdose leaving his mother, wife and children to deal with the aftermath of his death. Further into Ms. Hale’s story, you get told the struggles she went through trying to help her daughter get clean and how nothing ended up lasted for large amounts of time as she just ended up relapsing. Near the end of the article, you find out Ms. Hale realized that heroin isn’t just a drug but also a disease. As a result, she is now working to promote a drug called Naloxone, an overdose reversal medication. She has reached out to young addicts and is coaching them on how to approach their families about getting help or using clean needles to help prevent infections and other diseases. She also
Professor Washburn
English 101- College Writing
19 October 2014
Addiction in the Homeland When Deborah Sontag wrote the article “Heroin’s Small-Town Toll, and a Mother’s Pain” it wasn’t to scare or frighten the public. What she wrote were facts and intimate details of a family’s pain and heartache over what happened to the person they loved who had an addiction she couldn’t beat. Deborah wrote this article with the intention of letting everyone know that heroin is a very serious problem that has to be talked about and not just pushed under the rug anymore. We were all Deborah’s target audience and she now wants us all to step up and realize what goes on in those dark places no one ever wants to look into or even clean up. The article starts out talking about how Karen Hale lost her daughter to a drug overdose in a hotel room one May night. It goes on to tell how she hasn’t touched anything in her daughter’s bedroom or looked at the hotel where she died because she just isn’t ready to face what happened in those places yet. Next in the article it describes how the use of heroin has spread, where it came from, and how no one is immune from its harmful grasp whether you’re rich or poor, black or white. An example of this is, when a famous actor died of a heroin overdose leaving his mother, wife and children to deal with the aftermath of his death. Further into Ms. Hale’s story, you get told the struggles she went through trying to help her daughter get clean and how nothing ended up lasted for large amounts of time as she just ended up relapsing. Near the end of the article, you find out Ms. Hale realized that heroin isn’t just a drug but also a disease. As a result, she is now working to promote a drug called Naloxone, an overdose reversal medication. She has reached out to young addicts and is coaching them on how to approach their families about getting help or using clean needles to help prevent infections and other diseases. She also