Every English teacher’s been there: It’s Friday, you’ve got too much to grade, and you could really use a day of quiet to plow through the papers. You think to yourself, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just show a movie?”
When I was teaching high school English full time, I had many, many days like this. I didn’t want to waste the instructional time, but the stack of papers I had to grade was becoming a mini Mount Everest. And then one day, in the middle of a unit on Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals, it hit me: I’ll just make a mini-assignment that goes with the movie.
Oh man, did I feel like a genius.
My solution was simple: I’d have students write a paragraph about how a scene in a movie used ethos, pathos, and logos. What movie did I choose? Only the most spectacular piece of cinema to come out of the 1980s: The Princess Bride. I was confident that I’d find something relevant because rhetorical appeals are all around us all the time. (I mean, you could do this with just about any movie ever made.) However, I didn’t realize that The Princess Bride had the perfect scene for this assignment until I popped in the DVD to start scanning for the right part.
Rhetorical Appeals: Inigo Meets The Man in Black
In the scene above, Inigo is waiting for the Man in Black (Westley) to finish climbing the Cliffs of Insanity so that he can murder him. Inigo, however, is impatient and tries to get him to climb faster. When the Man in Black scoffs at the idea, Inigo tries to persuade him to take a rope so that he can pull him to the top. Of course, the Man in Black is not keen on this idea in case Inigo simply drops the rope, sending him plummeting to death in the murky waters below.
Enter the rhetorical appeals! Inigo tries several appeals to persuade the Man in Black to accept his help:
“I promise I will not kill you until you reach the top.”
Inigo’s promise is a weak appeal to the Man in Black’s logic. Sure, you’re not supposed to break a promise, but what’s to stop Inigo from just letting the rope slip from his fingers? He tries another tactic:
“I could give you my word as a Spaniard.”
The Man in Black rejects this ethos appeal. “No good. I’ve known too many Spaniards.”
Inigo presses on.
“Isn’t there any way you will trust me?”
“Nothing comes to mind.”
Then Inigo brings out the big (rhetorical) guns:
“I swear on the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya, you will reach the top alive.”
Moved by this emotional (pathos) appeal, the Man in Black finally accepts Inigo’s rope and is pulled to (relative) safety.
Putting It On Paper
Once the students watched the scene, I paused the movie for a few minutes to let the them get their thoughts on paper. At the time I was using the PEEL method for writing paragraphs, which goes as follows:
After students wrote their paragraphs, they had to color code them to show that they understood the elements of PEEL. Here’s an example PEEL response on how Inigo uses rhetorical appeals:
Once enough of them were winding down, I pressed play again and walked merrily back to my desk for another 45 minutes of uninterrupted grading. Only when we had ten minutes left in the period did I go back to the front to pause the movie, at which point we quickly unpacked the rhetorical appeals students found. Then they passed their papers to the front, packed up, and left at the bell. It was a magical day.
Of course, after six periods, I had the extra stack of movie paragraphs to grade. However, since it was only worth five points, and we’d discussed the appeals at the end of class, I felt fine giving each one a check and moving on to the next mini Everest on my list of things to do.
What are your favorite activities for students when you need time to grade? I would love to hear from you! Comment below or email maskedmotif@super-ela.com to share your favorite tricks of the trade when it comes to time-saving in the classroom.