To begin with the point must be made that there are clearly always at least two sides to every story, and in most circumstances those two stories rarely agree with each other. That's why I selected two sources that strictly disagree with each other. Both the book Becoming Sister Wives and the 20/20 episode Breaking Polygamy deal in-depth with the topic of plural marriage and its social effects. However, they both show completely different views on the topic. Kody Brown and his wives; Mary, Christine, Janelle, and Robyn, paint polygamy as a perfectly healthy lifestyle. However, in her 20/20 episode, correspondent Amy Robach makes the claim that polygamy is abusive, sadistic, and unacceptable in a modern society.  These two positions use rhetorical devices to prove their point. Ethos, logos, and pathos are each used by the Browns and Robcah to attempt to prove that their view of polygamy is correct and should be accepted by society.

Ethos involves the credibility and ethics of the writer. These two sources have very different forms of ethos. Both the Browns and Robach have situated and invented ethos, which is one of the reasons they are both so interesting. Since the Browns have been living the polygamist lifestyle the have very clear situated ethos. Their experiences give them the creditability to have opinions about polygamy and those views should be taken seriously. Their situation also makes their ethos complicated, since they live the lifestyle they clearly are trying to persuade their audience to agree that it is a healthy and happy lifestyle. This angle to their story means that their ethos is up to question. The Browns try to fix this problem by talking about how they have studied their faith and lifestyle; this created ethos gives the Browns a small bit of creditability. Amy Robach, in her documentary, shows very strong assumed credibility since she is in a place of authority and trust with her audience. Being a news reporter from a well-known media outlet provides her strong creditability strong. Some of her sources however, have very poor ethos since they are under very strict political and social pressure, to say only certain things. One irony of both sources is that they both agree on the ethos of "prophet" Warren Jeffs. Jeffs has power over a whole culture of people, but he has absolutely no creditable ethos outside of his following. He says crazy things, like banning sexual relations between husbands and wives (Robach). His undeserved ethos gives him abusive power that controls daily lives of thousands. In my opinion that proves that ethos should be something taken very serious, and both Robach and the Browns have very legitimate ethos.

Both sources also have strong logos, even though they are very different. The Browns use their own personal experiences as fact and evidence to prove the positivity of their lifestyle. Each member of the marriage shares their story and views on the practice of plural marriage, starting with when they each met Kody all the way to present day. It is evident throughout the book that each wife does truly love and care for Kody and evidence is also shown that Kody is a completely clueless husband, but he does seem to prove his love for each wife is genuine. The Browns reference their other family members that also practice polygamy and are content (Brown et al 33-34). Their strategy seems to be to use strength in numbers to prove the legitimacy of their lifestyle choices.

Robach's logos is shown in a very different form, after all a picture is worth a thousand words, and she has a whole hour of video to prove her point. This video evidence creates for Robach a very strong argument that polygamy is harmful and should be abolished. The images of young women running along dirt roads in the middle of the night to flee from their own fathers who want to marry them off is in itself a very compelling argument. While these images from Colorado City do make the viewer have strong negative feelings towards polygamy, I noticed that Robach only speaks about the extreme side of polygamy. The Browns at least acknowledge the other side and views of polygamy unlike their own. As Kody Brown puts it "What I am called to do is not what you are called to do (Brown et al 4).

The big player for both these sources is their usage of pathos. They manipulate and contort their rhetoric to gain a certain response from their audiences. The Browns share their cute individual love stories in order to gain trust from their readers. Kody's first wife Mari shares her heartbreak from infertility (Brown, 95) and fourth wife Robyn tells of her painful abusive first marriage (Brown, 65). These plays on emotion are used to make the Brown family seem like everyday people with everyday issues. In my view these are poor uses of pathos to prove their points, since they leave out the obvious fact that these specific events never would have taken place if they weren't living as polygamist. They have to move states because the government wants to prosecute them for breaking the law, their kids are picked on because they have multiple mommies, and many of their children and rebelling against the concept of plural marriage. These problems all spark from their parents choice to practice polygamy. They also speak of how they have been discriminated against and how unfair and cruel that is. They even had to lie for years and claim that certain wives were actually Kody's sisters (Brown, 92). Stories like these make the reader feel almost guilty for the social injustice the Browns have suffered, but still doesn't prove that polygamy is a suitable form of marriage.

In Breaking Polygamy Robach uses pathos in many the same ways as the Browns, but to prove her own point. Robach's images of women with long hair and ankle length skirts evoke strong emotions. She attempts to speak with some of these young women and they reply with only silence and sad, defeated, looks (Robach). One mother even shields her child from the 20/20 cameras. These scenes are meant to stir within viewers a sense of sympathy, but to me at least it evoked anger also. Anger that the media is rudely interrogating these women, while they are just trying to grocery shopp with their children. It also makes me angry at these women because they have ways to get out, but they choose in many cases to stay. The families do deserve some recognition for their loyalty to each other. The wives are the glue that hold much of the everyday workings of the community. The politics of the men are what make life so difficult. Even the mother of the family Robach follows throughout the film admits that she would go back to the Colorado City community if her husband asked her to (Robach). By the end of the episode the wife discovers that her husband has chosen to go back to work for Jeffs and leave her and their children abandoned without support. The scene is heartbreaking to see daughters realize their father loves a "prophet" more than them. These strong uses of pathos work in many the same ways that the Browns use pathos, but prove very different points.

All sources use ethos, logos, and pathos, but they can be used in such different ways, they can logically explain two very different views. Becoming Sister Wives and Breaking Polygamy are not just about two different sides of polygamy; they are also two different forms of rhetoric. What Robach does using videos the Browns can't do, but what the Browns accomplish through writing Robach's documentary can't do.  These sources both use rhetorical devices extremely well and in an almost complimentary way, even though their views are severely different.
