Life: Pass It on Essay

In her essay “Life: Pass It On,” Sandra Delgado offers a detailed argument about the importance of registering as an organ donor. Delgado asserts that it makes sense to become a registered organ donor. While making that argument, she employs varied rhetorical modes, nuanced diction, and effective logical appeals to bolster the persuasive power of her prose.

An analysis of Delgado’s diction further illuminates the way she establishes her ideas about the logic behind registering as an organ donor. In addition to sections that contain light, informal phrases (“a little less...savory, we’ll say” and “Really, that’s the extent of my hassle”), Delgado also establishes a tone that is erudite without being ostentatious or pedantic. She does so, for example, in paragraph 8 when she states “donors are actually subject to more post-mortem testing than non-donors” and in paragraph 9, when she writes, “dealing with strangers...is more abstract and impersonal.” In using such a scholarly tone, Delgado is perhaps attempting to ensure that her authority on the topic of organ donor registration is well established, while also making sure that she is not seen as an out-of-touch elitist. In short, the words that Delgado uses to build her argument about becoming an organ donor are no less important than her ideas in giving persuasive power to that argument.

In the excerpted passage, Delgado also builds her argument by employing logical appeals while detailing the reasoning that supports her arguments. In Delgado’s use of statistics, for example, we can find a significant logical appeal. In paragraph 4, Delgado cites a 2005 Gallup poll to share with readers the fact that while “95% of