Getting to Know Mrs. Obama

       In the autobiography, "Becoming", (2018) written by Michelle Obama, explores the life of Mrs. Obama as a kid to growing up into a woman and The First Lady. She tells her life in chronological order, from her youngest memories to the older lessons in life she learned. The purpose of Mrs. Obama writing this autobiography is to explain to readers why she is the woman she is today. The audience target would be the American people and citizens of the United States.

        While reading the first chapter of the autobiography, we felt closer to Mrs. Obama. Her childhood is not as similar to ours but we were once little girls and grew up with a family. She shared special moments that she had with her family, and we can relate to having special moments. Some of the moments are moments that no matter how old we get, we will remember it like yesterday. The first chapter told us a lot about Mrs. Obama that and her family.

      Mrs. Obama appeals to ethos in this first chapter by providing what we consider historical events and tragedies, as the events that were taken place then while she was a little girl. For example she says "Outside the ballparks, America was in the midst of a massive and uncertain shift. The Kennedys were dead. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed standing on a balcony n Memphis, setting off riots across the country, including in Chicago."(Page 4) Providing these keen details helped set the setting and atmosphere of the environment and time period of which Mrs. Obama grew up in. While introducing her family, Mrs. Obama appeals to pathos. Each time she spoke of her family she used positive adjectives to describe them. For example describes her family picture with her parents and her brother Craig as,"There's and early family photograph, a black and white of the four of us sitting on a couch, my mother smiling as she holds me on her lap, my father appearing serious and proud and Craig perched on his............-his arm extended toward mine, his fingers wrapped protectively around my fat wrist."(Page 5) She spoke of her family with loving adjectives and it created a tone of warm and friendly, as if the reader was apart of the family now. Each strategy that Ms. Obama used through out the first chapter was very effective.