Analyzing Digital Rhetoric
I read the news piece “We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage” by Christine Kenneally. This piece was gut wrenching but also incredibly captivating. Once I began reading it I could not stop. This story immediately connects to the reader’s pathos. The emotional appeal began as soon as I saw “We Saw Nuns Kill Children”. I saw that and thought about how terrible that must have been for a child to witness and felt sad and empathetic. I knew this story was going to be very emotional and it was. The piece included interviews and records regarding the abuse hundreds of children had suffered from at an orphanage in Vermont. The purpose of this piece was to unearth a terrible truth and to tell these people’s stories that had been kept hidden for so many years. The audience is really anyone because this story is so well written and important and can draw in just about any reader. This piece also included images of documents and children at the orphanage. I noticed sometimes when you would scroll the background would turn black and there would just be an image or a newspaper clipping. This was a very cool aspect of the story that the author must have thought hard about incorporating.

