Unitasker Rhetorical Analysis

                The Unitasker by AJ Jacobs is a chapter in Jacobs’ book about how he performed an experiment trying to kick a bad habit that he and many others have, multi-tasking. Jacobs uses extensive evidence in his writing to help the reader understand what he is doing and why. He uses evidence from ranging from primary sources- an interview with a scribe- to books, a lot of books. With this evidence he shows his purpose more and more, Jacobs is trying to inform the public of the dangers of multi-tasking. While the main focus is his struggle to focus on a single task at once the purpose becomes clearer when he puts ominous quotes, or in this case a summary, such as, “Multi-tasking shortchanges the higher regions of the brain, the ones devoted to learning and memory.”  It is an essay that is filled with logos. He uses this rhetorical appeal very nicely so that the reader is properly informed. Jacobs does an excellent job of scaring the reader with his striking facts and statistics then diffusing the situation with some form of humor or good will leaving the reader with a sense that this is a very serious issue, but not overly afraid of what is to come. The structure of the chapter is also interesting, Jacobs splits the chapter up into twelve different sections. The most of these sections are devoted to his personal experiences in his experiment, but there are a few more sobering and factual sections. Through these sections the Huxley model is shown in different lights. There are the sections that focus on his experiment. Theses sections show the inner self and have some abstract and poetic pieces in them where the author makes the reader feel good and makes light of the situation and oncoming problem that effects many of us today. He keeps objectivity to a lower degree, but does not exclude it completely so that the reader can always have the idea in the back of their mind. As you probably have guessed the sobering more factual sections are much more objective and only have minor moments of subjectivity. With these sections the author can really get his point across.