Evaluative Essay Planning Template: Image Identification and Justification

Purpose/Thesis

Evaluative Essay Planning Template Image Identification and Justification In this section, identify the single image you have chosen to evaluate in your Evaluative Essay, and explain why you chose the reader and why an evaluation of the image will be important to your reader. 

Purpose/Thesis In this section, describe your overall purpose for writing about this image. What will you attempt to prove? [Write your response here in at least 1 paragraph.] Your Criteria for Evaluation Describe your 2-3 criteria for evaluation, and for each of those criteria and using specific details, provide two specific pieces of support for each criterion.

Rhetorical Appeals/Persuasion In this section, Note at least one use in the image of logos, one of pathos, and one of ethos. Next, note at least one way in which you, in your writing, will appeal to your reader with logos, pathos, and ethos. below is an example intructor give us on how we will do it: Evaluative Essay Planning Template with Sample Responses

Part I:

Image Identification and Justification In this section, identify the single image you have chosen to evaluate in your Evaluative Essay (such as a magazine cover, and advertisement, new or vintage, a public service announcement), and iconic image), and explain why you chose the reader and why an evaluation of the image will be important to your reader. [Insert your response here in 1-2 paragraphs.]

To insert an image into your Word document here, go to the image, right-click, copy, come back to your Word doc, right-click, paste. Example: I first wanted to use an advertisement for a luxury item, like a car or expensive liquor and including possible celebrities like Matthew McConaughey.

I examined a few of these, and while I was able to determine some criteria and messages in them that I could have written about, I thought I would try another angle as well to give myself options. The other path I took was looking for public service announcements regarding social problems, health problems, human rights issues, and/or safety measures.

The latter approach proved more fruitful and excited me more. After examining a number of public service announcement posters dealing with a wide variety of topics like smoking, motorcycle safety, transgender awareness, and military personnel issues, I chose a public service image from The Orthopaedic Trauma Association that warns of the dangers of opioid addiction.

Criteria for Evaluation

The image spoke strongly to me because it captures the viewer’s attention and communicates the feeling of being trapped by addiction in a unique way via the composition, colors, and symbolism.

Part II:

Purpose/Thesis In this section, describe your overall purpose for writing about this image, addressing only the contents of the image (see Week 7, Lesson 1). Note: Your purpose is not to highlight/argue about a larger issue (like a social problem) but rather to illustrate what you see in the image and how those elements impact the viewer. [Write your response here in at least 1 paragraph.]

Example: My overall purpose in writing about this image is to illustrate how color, shape, imagery, composition, and words all come together to create a powerful message.

We see many public service images about drugs of all sorts, and specifically about prescription drug abuse and addiction, but I aim to demonstrate that the creators of this particular image have evaluated the audience and their message well and have been highly successful in constructing a single visual that will impact children, teens, and adults with prescription medication issues themselves or with family members and loved ones in that situation.

Part III:

Your Criteria for Evaluation Describe your 2-3 criteria for evaluation (such as clarity of message, power of message, viewer engagement, timeliness – see Week 7, Lesson 1), and for each of those criteria and using specific details, provide two specific pieces of support for each criterion (see Week 7, Lesson 1). [Compose your response here in at least 2-3 paragraphs.]

Example: The first criterion by which I will evaluate my image is the power of the message. I will examine the specific elements of the image, discussing how powerfully each does (or does not) contribute to the image’s goal of opioid abuse awareness.

Two specific supporting details I will use include the imagery of a trapped person inside a pill bottle: the intensity of the hands compared to the rest of the human’s shadow and the way in which the image of a person completely fills the inside the image of the pill bottle, indicating not just being trapped but having no more room inside, being almost squashed inside the bottle.

The second criterion I will employ will be timeliness/context. How does this particular ad fit with the decades-long campaign to combat opioid abuse? The image is very recent, from 2018, so some details that illustrate where the image does or does not meet this criterion might include the anonymous look of the person in the bottle.

Rhetorical Appeals/Persuasion

In the past, ads have focused on particular segments of society, most notably teens and young adults who illegally sell, buy, and abuse opioids. Awareness has expanded now; all types of people are addicted to prescription drugs. It isn’t just a criminal element, and the image portrays an ambiguous human to show sort of an “anyperson” who can easily become addicted.

I will describe the details that illuminate that, from the androgynous face and body, to the anonymity even of the pill bottle. There are no words on the bottle, so this could be your grandmother’s painkillers, your sister’s anxiety medication, or an illegal use medication via the absence of a label/identifier. Finally, I will examine clarity of message as a third criterion.

Most specifically, I will look at how clearly the image communicates those feelings of despair, being trapped, feeling hopeless and desperate. The positioning of the human’s face as downturned, for example, looks defeated, with the vibrant shadow of the human hands pushing against the pill bottle large and in the foreground.

This communicates a struggle, a weariness of the struggle, a feeling that no matter how large and strong the hands are, it will not be enough because opioids are stronger. With that, the clear message is twofold: avoid addiction at all costs, or, if you are addicted, you need help outside yourself.

Another detail is the dominant background colors, shades of blue, highly symbolic for sadness in general but adopted even more in recent decades to represent depression.

Part IV:

Rhetorical Appeals/Persuasion In this section, Note at least one use in the image of logos, one of pathos, and one of ethos. Next, note at least one way in which you, in your writing, will appeal to your reader with logos, pathos, and ethos (see Week 7, Lesson 1). [Insert your response here in 1-2 paragraphs.]

Example: In my chosen image, pathos is the most evident and powerful of the rhetorical appeals because of the use of a clearly despairing, trapped human in a field of blue. The viewer’s heart is drawn in immediately because the human figure looks so defeated and hopeless.

Viewers will immediately feel compassion, not just for the anonymous figure, but for people who are in reality addicted to opioids. It is likely viewers will know at least one person who has dealt with addiction, and this image crosses boundaries in that is the image of addiction in general.

Even though the ad is specifically about painkillers, we recognize in that human what addiction feels like in general. Logos is present because the ad combats a common misconception among addicts, that they can stop if they want and that they don’t need help.

It illustrates well how addiction is truly a cage, a cell, that the addict alone cannot escape. In addition, ethos is present via the official Medical Association that created the public service image and via the small statistics written under the image – facts about the number of addicted people and doctors’ efforts to minimize prescribing.

For my own approach to logos, ethos, and pathos, I don’t know that I will discuss this small print text much; the campaign is well-known, and it is the image itself that offers the most powerful message. Instead, I will utilize mostly logos, or logic, to break down all of the visual elements and what they mean.

While I will use language that describes the ad’s use of pathos (despairing, defeated), which will inevitably influence my reader emotionally, my own major approach will be logic-based

Part V:

Credit Your Source Create a full reference for the source from which you accessed this image. Try to trace your image as best as possible to the original source of publication. Example: The Orthopaedic Trauma Association (2018). Opioid safety.