A Rhetorical Analysis of “What We Do to the Moon Will Transform It Forever”
An Essay by Rebeca Boyle
In a New York Times article titled “What We Do to the Moon Will Transform It Forever”, Rebecca Boyle warns her audience of the potential downsides of privatizing space exploration. Her essay is like a love letter to the moon, and with that comes a very emotional and heartfelt argument. She employs pathos as the key persuasive device, by using expressive descriptions, personal stories, and emotion-laden vocabulary in order to create a personal connection between the audience and her argument. Although these techniques are effective, her overreliance on pathos leaves little room for logos and ethos, and is in turn riddled with fallacies in an effort to prove her point correct.
Emotion-laden vocabulary and expressive descriptions were keystones in the rhetorical devices that she used in the essay. One of the ways she does this is through her specific descriptions of the moon. The moon is purposefully described as a special and isolated place, and as an entity that needs to be protected. The author uses phrases such as “unique in the known cosmos”, “our planet’s only satellite”, and “Earth’s inert, spectral companion world [that] shepherds our existence” in an effort to create the intimate feeling of responsibility of the moon as something to preserve. These descriptions make the argument against privatized space travel stronger because she contrasts these positive scenes with the stark negative potential outcome of the moon if we continue having companies send things to the moon. The more she makes the moon seem beautiful, and fantastical as it alone, it just makes the moon after we privatize it seem that much more dirty and greedy.
This leads to the second way she makes her argument stronger through pathos, where she attempts to build distrust and an image of unreliableness by carefully choosing words in the tone that best supports her claims. One main example of a company that is attempting to go to the moon is the “Nova-C”, a rocket that is going to be launched by a private company called Intuitive Machines, which is a 118 million dollar project that is constructed in partnership with NASA. When describing the potential launch, the author uses the word “careening” to describe the rocket’s trajectory toward the moon’s South Pole. This word has a very negative connotation to it. The word “careening” means to “move swiftly, and in an uncontrolled way” (Oxford Languages). For a project of this scale, and with the number of calculations, engineering, and money put into it, I think that describing the trajectory as uncontrolled shows that the author is manipulating the words to get the tone she desires. The word itself is subjective, and it does not stand out in the paper the first pass through, but these words can create powerful imagery in the reader’s head of the rocket spiraling out of control and insert the idea that the companies as organizations that did not know what they were doing. A small word like this can have a possibly lasting effect on the subconscious of the reader on the legitimacy of Intuitive’s Nova-C project and privatized space flight in general. In a similar vein, Boyle uses the word “flotilla” to describe the private landers, rovers, landers, and science instruments that are to be launched to the moon. Under closer investigation, we find that flotilla is used to describe “a fleet of ships or boats, especially a navy organizational unit … of small warships”(Merriam-Webster). The use of a word that is often used when describing warships gives the reader an impression of the private landers, rovers, landers, and science instruments as intimidating, aggressive, and invasive. These adjectives are effective because they create the idea that these scientific instruments are invading the moon with the goal of taking something from it using brute force. This description would convince the reader to see the privatization in a much more negative light than if these instruments were described to be for science and the betterment of humanity. Through the use of tone, Boyle uses pathos to create this negative connotation with the opposing argument.
As we read on and under further scrutiny, the fallacies in her writing begin to become more and more apparent. One thing that I noticed was the over-exaggeration of the failures of the privatized missions, weakening the argument through the straw man fallacy. In order to strengthen her argument, she makes the failures of the private space companies seem more prevalent than they actually are by failing to mention any successes that these companies have had, and flaunting governmental space program successes. The mention of the failure of Peregrine and Space IL multiple times throughout the essay and India and Japan’s space program’s success show that the author heavily favors governmental programs over private programs. This also shows a false dichotomy where it makes it seem as if the governmental programs cannot “invade” the moon like the private programs can. A specific way the author attempts to build the distrust of these companies is through the overuse of the word “fail”. This word is used a total of six times in the essay, and every time to describe something that a space company did. The frequent use of the word is not that noticeable to the casual reader, since it is spread across the essay. However, the effect is similar. Boyle is using this to subliminally hammer in the fact that these companies cannot be trusted.
These arguments are entirely based on emotion, and the author doubles down and starts to rely on ad populum and appeal to tradition to support her claim as well. One central account that she uses to build her argument is the opinion of the Navajo people. The Navajo Nation president wrote to the NASA administrator, asking to delay the launch because the Navajo people revere the moon as a spiritually important object. Although this is an interesting perspective, the fact that the Navajo people revere the moon as a spiritually important object has nothing to do with the majority of the population who does not revere the moon as a spiritually important object. The main reason that this argument exists is because people either feel like since Navajo people think the moon is spiritually important, they should too, or they feel like they should care because the Navajo people care, both of which make this argument an ad populum. This shows how weak this argument is, since it is completely reliant on people feeling the need to be liked, and not necessarily about whether they feel like the reader feels private companies should go to the moon or not. The author is taking advantage of the reader’s desire to fit in. Another fallacy that the author falls back on is an appeal to tradition. This is when the argument is deemed to be correct on the basis that that was the way things were done in the past. To make a point, the author talks about how early humans used the moon for various things such as marking time, creating calendars, and forging their first civilizations. The author also talks about how we developed religion and invented philosophy and science because of it. The argument the author is making with this statement is that since we have formed religions and invented philosophy around the moon, we have never gone to the moon and “tarnished” it, and that makes it bad. This is an example of an appeal to tradition because the author relies on how it was done in the past as an argument for what should be done now. This is a weak argument because the conditions of the past are completely different from the conditions today, making it a weak analogy.
To try to make the argument make sense, the author uses the fallacy of, the slippery slope. One such example is when the author talks about the expectations that people have about space exploration and the reality. The author talks about how Nova-C could succeed, which is a contrasting viewpoint from the rest of the essay. The author goes as far as to say that it could succeed and the one after that, and many more. The author also acknowledges the idea that the “outlook may feel like a compelling next step for humanity’s cosmic ambitions”. However, immediately after that statement, the author comes to the conclusion that there will be “… a dismaying future where the moon becomes a hotbed of unregulated human enterprise that will irreversibly transform it”. There is no reason or explanation that is given in this jump in logic. The difference between those two opinions is stark, and going from the potential success of Nova-C to success after that and over and over until there is an unregulated human enterprise that will irreversibly transform the moon is a slippery slope. This argument is weak because it is an unsubstantiated claim that is just going off the basis of if this could happen then this could happen then this could happen. This is not effective because there are infinite possibilities of what could happen, and creating a hypothetical chain of events gives the reader no additional useful information. Another example of when the author used a slippery slope was at the end of the article. The author begins with the claim that humans tend to “transmute exploration into extraction”, which was not supported by any evidence or reasoning. Then, the author claims that the moon is also headed the same way and that the moon “won’t be alone for long”. This argument is a slippery slope and also an appeal to fear, as the argument is just there to get a negative emotion out of the reader. This makes for a weak argument because the reader is lost as to where and how the author came to the conclusion of humans turning exploration into extraction, and how and why that supposed action is going to happen on the moon as well.
The essay’s argument was based almost solely on the appeal to emotion, and it was clear that the foundations of the argument were shaky when we dived into the fallacies that supported those arguments. Although many parts of the argument did not have enough rhetorical devices to make it convincing, I still believe what the author was trying to convey. I believe that in order for her to make a stronger argument that is able to convince somebody with differing opinions, she should make sure that she does not rely too heavily on how she feels, but on the logic behind her thoughts.
