By this point, you have analyzed what we mean by the rhetorical situation, and you have learned a number of key concepts and terms. It's time to put all
the ideas together to examine a series of texts on a single subject. Following
are four texts related to the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that landed the first
humans on the moon. The first is a news article from the Times of London
reporting the event; the next is a speech by William Safire that President
Nixon would have given had the mission not been successful; the third is a
commentary by novelist Ayn Rand; the last is a political cartoon that appeared
at the time. Discuss the purpose of each text and how the interaction among
speaker, audience, and subject affects the text. How does each text appeal to
ethos, pathos, and logos? Finally, how effective is each text in achieving its
purpose?