Lorelei, the ‘Mother God’
On a Thursday afternoon, I was approached by a fellow college student as I was taking a study break. She wanted to share with me from the bible verse, Genesis 1:26, which stated: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” She wanted to first know if I was a Christian, I replied: “yes, Catholic”. Then later asked if I had heard the verse, bluntly lying I said “yes”. She specifically focused on the words “us” and “our”, explaining that although many people have the conception of having only one god these words give a new meaning to also having a mother god. At this point, I wanted to tell her “girl, I got to get back to studying”. She had gathered the notion that I had become uninterested, asking me once again, “your Christian right”. At this point, I didn’t want to be engaged in the conversation anymore replying “I’m going, to be honest, I’m catholic because I rather have a faith and believe in something, than not believe in anything. I belive parts of my faith, while others I do not.” Although I had stated this, she connected with me replying she was atheist once before, she kept going back to her ideology of there being a mother god. From this whole conversation, I never grasped her name, let alone she said it 3 times. Why you ask? Her delivery, arrangement, and style behind her argument was weak, making this conversation insignificant to remember her name, so I have decided to name her Lorelei.
The five canons of rhetoric are as followed: invention, arrangement, memory, style, and delivery. All are pretty self-explanatory, although there is a key one that is most important and that is the invention. Invention is the key to building your persuasion towards your audience. In the conversation stated above, Lorelei kept trying to draw me into her belief in the Bible verse. Often, using pathos to build her argument. But why wasn’t my attention grasped? The invention of her argument was not strong enough to capture my attention, to persuade me into believing this whole “mother god.” Let's be honest I wasn’t going to be like “OH MY GOD! MY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!” The rhetoric behind her whole concept was not fully thought out. You see without fully creating an argument, what do you have to give? Yeah giving a great delivery can imprint on your audience, but they won’t grasp the meaning of your persuasion. Without fully developing your argument, what is there to memorize, create a style for, or arrange? Compare it to the analogy of inviting someone over for dinner, you don’t have any of the resources to cook or prepare dinner, what are you going to feed them? And no, take out is not an option. Without nothing, there is nothing to invent. Nothing to present to an audience. That’s why invention is key to the importance of crafting an argument, it’s the backbone to it all.
