Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ashleigh Smart
Ms. Teuscher
English 1010
25 October 2018
The text being analyzed is titled The More Factor, it is a selection from The Hunger For
More: Searching for Values in an Age of Greed. Laurence Shames talks about how America as a
whole, has a “hunger” for more and more. Shames mentions that it is “part of our history and
character”(76). We increase our economy, the land that we live on, and the ability to create more.
Throughout his essay Shames uses logos, figurative language in the form of metaphors and
imagery, and poetic techniques such as repetition to get his message across.
In his essay Shames uses logos as a way to logically show readers what his message is.
Logos uses facts, and logic (as said before) to reach the audience. Shames uses the facts side of
logos many times throughout the entire essay. Facts are not only statistics, they can also come
across as telling exactly the way it was in the past, like giving a history lesson. An example of
this is when he writes, “What people would do was buy up enormous tracts of parched and
vacant land, lay out a Main Street, nail together some wooden sidewalks, and start slapping up
buildings”(76). This is a simple way to quickly explain to or remind people of how fast towns
were going up all across America. This is also a way to get readers to understand what he had
said before. By relaying history that has been taught, readers are able to make connections that
benefit their understanding. In the essay Shames is explaining to the audience how America’s
(and individual Americans) goals are to gain more. Not only in objects, but in land, knowledge,
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money, etc. He goes on to explain how the supply of more, is decreasing. He says, “... If
America’s supply of more is in fact diminishing, American values will have to shift and broaden
to fill the gap where the expectation of almost automatic gains used to be”(80). This is an
example of the logical side of logos. The way he explains this logically connects in reader’s
brains. People are able to make the connection that if they are wanting more, than attitudes will
have to change and the point of view on that topic will have to change too. There is a common
saying that goes something like this: “If life is being lived the same way as before, but a different
outcome is expected, nothing is going to change. In order to get that other reuslt, the way life is
being lived will have to change”. The last type of logos is using statistics as facts. Shames used
this to tell the exact percentages that productivity had been changing annually. Using these
percentages Shames is able to help people see exactly how the numbers were changing. If he had
instead given examples -or tried to explain through other ways- readers would not be able to
understand as well as they could with an exact idea. This exact idea came from using the
Figurative language is a very helpful tool when writing any form of essay, review, book
or other piece of writing. There are many types of figurative language, but reading his essay, it is
seen that Shames mostly used metaphors and imagery in this essay. Metaphors are a way to show
a resemblance in something, even though it is not literally applicable. Metaphors can be long and
expansive, or short and simple. A simple example is when he says, “...the towns would be as
empty as the sky...”(76). The towns aren’t literally as empty as the sky, but it is a connection that
makes sense to many and does not take much knowledge to comprehend. A longer metaphor can
be used to show something that might be more difficult to explain. Shames uses a fairly long
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metaphor to demonstrate life and the way people can live it through fear. He says, “The fear that
the world may not be a big enough playground for the full exercise of one’s energies and
yearnings, and worse, the fear that the playground is being fenced off and will no longer
of more to a fragile bubble that is being popped. The other type of figurative language that he
uses is imagery. This may not fall completely under figurative language, but they are both highly
used literary devices. Imagery is used to form mental images, figures or a likeness of things.
Shames uses imagery to show what some people’s lives were like. The specific people that he
mentions, were called yuppies. They are city-dwellers who have professional careers and affluent
lifestyles. He states that “For all the blather about yuppies with their beach houses, BMW’s, and
radicchio salads…” which paints a picture of how elegantly they were living their lives(80). He
uses this to lead into a more statistical sentence which includes many of the percentages about
decreasing productivity each year. Shames also uses imagery to explain the American economy.
domain that could expand in perpetuity, a gigantic playing field that would never run out of room
and on which the game would get forever bigger and bigger and more filled with action”(81).
This paints a well defined picture of how he sees the economy, and by including this description
it helps the audience better understand his point of view that America’s economy is growing
Lastly, Shames uses poetic techniques such as repetition to get his message across. By
using repetition correctly, the audience is clearly able to see exactly what one of the biggest ideas
of this essay is. Because of what Shames wrote and how he used it in multiple ways, readers
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could see that a big idea of this essay is frontier. To many, frontier is thought of as new land that
can be used, such as the vast frontier or great frontier, where people can expand their land and
area that they occupy or own. He mentions this type of frontier, but expands on it and displays
how there are many other ways to use it. He adds that the American trinity from the very start
has been “Frontier, opportunity, more,” this includes the main three things that Shames talks
about all through his essay(78). He mentions how the frontier was the pathway to America’s
future, and how it lead to many other important occurances during our history. He says that “the
frontier, as reality and as symbol, is what shaped the American way of doing things and the
American sense of what's worth doing”(78). A big point that he hit on is how frontier was used
for many things such as campaigns, the beginnings of science, fads and fashions, outer space and
even the ocean. He states how it is no coincidence that John F. Kennedy called his political
campaign the New Frontier. If it is broken down; the word frontier is known by many, so it was
easy for people to quickly connect to, and new helped people see that this was a type of frontier
never experienced before. Although we see frontier as a positive thing, many other countries
don’t see it the same way. Shames states that “In Europe, and in most of Africa and Asia,
“frontier” connotes; at worst, a place of barbed wire and men with rifles, and at best, a neutral
junction where one changes currency while passing from one fixed system into another”(81).
Even though frontier is used substantially all through his essay, he uses repetition on a few other
words and phrases as well. One other big example is the recurrence of saying that having more is
better than the quality of what is had. He mentions how “In America a sense of quality has
lagged far behind a sense of scale,”(78) and how “Expansion could remain a goal unto itself, and
would continue to generate a value system based on bulk rather than on nuance, on quantities of
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money rather than on quality of life, on progress itself rather than on a sense of what the progres
was for...”(79). By repeating this in multiple ways, he is able to create a picture of what many
Americans views on life is. Readers see that their view was not positive.They’re not only seeing
this because of what he said; but because of the repetition, how it stands out and how it stays in
people’s thoughts.
In conclusion Laurence Shames uses logos, figurative language in the form of metaphors
and imagery, and poetic techniques such as repetition to help readers understand his point of
view. With these three literary devices being used Shames is able to get his message of
America’s hunger for more, across very clearly. The audience is able to see that it is “part of our
history and character”(76) and that we increase our economy, the land that we live on, and the
ability to create more. Overall, using literary devices helps make writing more clear, interesting,
Works Cited
Shames, Laurence. “The More Factor.” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture
for Writers. 8 th Edition, ed. Sonia Maasik, Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s