The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

Analysis & Response 99 and since we are afraid of solitude, we no longer desire to read for long periods of time. We also no longer have the ability to live in our own mind. Instead all of our mental space exists within the realm of social contact. The author also comments on how we have lost the desire to journal, along with the recognition that we as people are deep, and we had a depth to us that you cannot fully make known to others. Thus, we think that we can share everything about ourselves with each other. Deresiewicz says afterwards that those who desire to maintain their sense of solitude must be able to do so by going against the crowd and not fearing the opinion of others. He then says that those who want to practice solitude must be willing to be unpopular and even seem to others to be impolite. He concludes with the argument that those who want to live in solitude must “not be afraid to stand alone”(6). Deresiewicz has strength in his argument, by using his tools of argument well with few fallacies, and strong pathos. However, he makes a significant mistake in his use of logos and ethos such that I cannot as a critical thinker fully accept his argument. Deresiewicz weakens his argument themost by his use of logos. He uses logos well when it comes to referring to historical figures. When he walks through the history of solitude, he references many different historical figures that strengthen his argument. I was so bombarded by the historical references that I found myself wanting to believe his argument from the sheer force of examples. Also he quotes Trilling as saying “the modern fear of being cut off from the social group even for a moment”(4) in support of his argument, showing logos by referencing a knowledgeable man. However, all this being said, Deresiewicz does not use many staticstics in his argument. This problem especially weakens his claim that we live in constant interaction with technology. The only statistic that he has is a number that comes from a relative of a teenager when he says that she informed that the teenager “had sent 3,000 text messages one recent month”(1). This is not a scholarly statistic. And this particular subject of how much technology we use regularly seems to be one that must have been researched in a scholarly way. He also does not reference sources for his facts such as his claim that “the MySpace page, with its shrieking typography and clamorous imagery, has replaced the journal and the letter as a