The Last Meow
Burkhard Bilger in the article, “The Last meow”, claims that people are spending too much money on their pets, which is getting out of control. Bilger supports his argument by demonstrating how Americans spend more money on their pets that the federal government spends on welfare grants. The author’s purpose is to inform people to think twice about how much money we use on our pets and instead, focus on more important issues such as sick children or stray animals according to Bilger. The author uses ethos and logos to touch the hearts of his audience and with an informative and persuasive tone.
Ethos is used throughout Mr. Bilger’s article to pull the heart-string of his readers and an emotionally guided decision in helping wounded animals and treating them with compassion as one would as a human being. This use of ethos can be seen when describing the circumstances when Karen’s pet cats helped her struggle on when she was in 2 car crashes that temporarily disabled her, “her injuries were serious enough to warrant visits to a chiropractor during her honeymoon, and they were compounded, three months later, when she was rear-ended again”. Her cats is what gave her hope and comfort and that is what the author is wanting because it informs the reader to symbolize with Karen and also admire her cats, which allowed her to stay motivated and conquer her circumstances.
Bilger ties the whole article together with even more robust use of logos, as he uses rates and statistics to provide true evidence to his emotional prone statements found throughout the article. The most profound use of logos can be found when discussing the growing number of dogs and cats that were found in the households of the United States, “between 1980 and 2001 alone, the number of dogs and cats in the United States grew from ninety-eight million to a hundred and thirty million … eighty-three per cent refer to themselves as their pet’s mom and dad”. This successfully provides...