Rhetorical devices

Analogy and personal anecdote

One of the main rhetorical devices used in the excerpt from Glennon Doyle’s memoir Untamed is the personal anecdote of Doyle’s trip to the zoo with her family. This story introduces the concept of taming and wildness which can also be found in the title of the book and reflects one of the main ideas Doyle explores.

This anecdote also serves as the basis for Doyle’s exploration of her own escape from the metaphorical cages society forced her to fit into. In this way, Doyle creates an analogy between the tamed cheetah and her own experience: 

She’d say, ‘Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this. I imagine fenceless, wide-open savannas. I want to run and hunt and kill. I want to sleep under an ink-black, silent sky filled with stars. It’s all so real I can taste it.’ (ll. 56-59).

Here it becomes clear that Doyle is empathizing with the cheetah’s situation and knows what it is like to feel trapped in your own life and long for more. 

Doyle continues to u...