Rhetorical Modes

Topic: Longing

Narration: I felt emotional longing the first time in kindergarten when I had to wait after school everyday for my parents to come pick me up for two hours or so. All I wanted was to go home to eat and sleep. I had felt physical longing many times before for food and sleep and such, but that was the first time when I had felt emotional longing. I have felt even more intense emotional longing since then, I've moved six times so each of those moves induced more longing for my friends and for company.

Description: A love sick girl sits in her window seat and stares out on a rainy street and dreams of a young man. She remembers the day before while they had been out on a romantic date together, and wishing it was still the previous night. She misses him tons and dearly wishes they were together right then. She hasn't been able to think of much else for almost the entire day, stuck in her thoughts of them together and her longing for him.

Example: My parents keep trying to persuade me that the only way to break the longing cycle with my boyfriend is to get super busy with chores and homework so that my mind is completely absorbed with them. This will push all other thoughts out apparently because then I'll have no room to think about my boyfriend. This isn't a very permanent solution though, it just holds it at bay for a few hours while I'm preoccupied with chores. 

Comparison/Contrast: Longing and just plain wanting something are different but subtly so. Wanting something is more shallow and flesh deep. Longing includes more emotion and depth. I can want food, but I do not think and dream and cherish food every time I come into contact with it. When I long for something, it's hard to make it leave my mind for an extended period of time. The opposite of longing would best be put as dreading, you are anticipating something, but instead of positive of anticipation it's a negative anticipation.

Process Analysis: Longing has one main section to it, although this one section a beginning middle and end. In the beginning, it starts with occasionally thinking about a person or thing, and gradually begins the middle stage of consistently thinking about it/them, which develops into the third stage of craving and feeling lost without the object of the longing.

Division of Analysis: Longing can envelope your entire life ans suck you down if one does not control it properly. It can leave you hopeless and stuck until you are reunited with the object of your longing. Your attention must be slowly torn from the point of interest and redirected toward other things. Longing is made of focus, distraction, re-thinking of old thoughts, visualizing the item of your longing, and cold hard craving. These can lead the longing victim in a loop of unending and insane uneasiness and dissatisfaction.

Classification: Longing is very frequently linked to love and passion and the "ewy-gewy" dreamy Disney version of love when two lovers are separated. However, a person can long for a variety of things. Sometimes a wake up at 3:00 a.m. longing for pizza, or a child may long for his/her mother, or a person may long for a pet that just passed away. Longing fits many different situations.

Cause and Effect: Longing starts out with a deep attachment to something that grows, and then the object of attachment is removed, leaving an empty feeling and a craving for the missing item or person. The person has set up a life style around the item so when it is removed, the person feels deeply effected and lost without its presence. Their emotional happiness is disturbed and cannot be immediately reestablished without the missing object or person. 

Definition: Longing is the deep emotional craving one feels toward another or an object. There are deep ties rooted in the person's brain that now link them together with the item or person. Longing can bond two people together and make them not want to be apart. Longing is a negative feeling, but it is closely linked with positive ones when the longing is answered with a reuniting of the object or person.

Argumentative/Persuasive: Longing is essential to every day life. Without it, people would not bond, no incentive systems would work anymore, and society would cease to function. A longing to be with a loved one holds the world together. If a child wonders off from his mother, a longing to be safe and with her again ensures a better chance that he will look for her in order to be safe again. Without this gut reaction the young one might wonder off and die without the nurturing of the parent, if this happened enough, the population would decline. A longing for food ensures people want to eat, so that we don't starve to death and are incentivesed to look for food.