Tactics, Flaws, and Tactical Flaws. (Week 3)

Tactical Flaw sounds more like a method of battle than a topic for a Rhetoric course, but I guess the process of arguing can sort of be like battle.  It is one of the rhetorical virtues that Heinrichs brings up in Ch. 6 of TYFA and I think Safran Foer has used it very subtly and effectively so far in Eating Animals.  

Most notably in the first chapter of Eating Animals, Safran Foer illustrated to us readers his natural, human flaws in character.  He showed us how on-again off-again he was about vegetarianism, how he so often made promises to himself that he could never fulfill.  Even in chapter two he made sure we understood that he hated dogs for most of his life before he recently started to love them. Some might argue that this is detrimental to his ethos since he cant make up his mind and may be untrustworthy, but I think it adds to his ethos by making him seem more human.  This seems to be a sort of tactical flaw method he's using--one in which Safran Foer shows us his flaws so that, rather than not trusting him, we actually feel closer to him.  Each of us knows that we're not perfect, so why would we want to hear from someone who thinks he is?  

So aside from just the virtuous method of tactical flaw, this method encompasses ethos and pathos as well.  Safran Foer does this so subtly that we almost don't even notice--we just go straight to connecting with him on a more personal level.  But when we look closer, like we have been, we can really see how carefully and effectively he uses every single word he writes.