Souls at All?

Lloyd Bitzer's essay "The Rhetorical Situation" explains how the rhetorical situation creates and shapes rhetoric. According to Bitzer, the situation first consists of an exigence, the imperfection or obstacle that is waiting to be modified by rhetoric; the audience, the people able to be influenced to become mediators of change; and constraints, the people, beliefs, traditions, objects, etc. that have the power to constrain decisions and actions.

To me, the most interesting part of Bitzer is not what he states about the rhetorical situation--it is what his statements imply. As Richard Vatz later responds, the situational model set up by Bitzer creates a number of implications for the nature of rhetoric itself. For example, by stating that "discourse comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterance," Bitzer claims that the situation exists outside of discourse and is not created by discourse (4). By extension, Bitzer describes the world as imbued with a discreet and objective reality that dictates the function of rhetoric: "[In the scientific realm] the world presents objects to be known, puzzles to be resolved, complexities to be understood. . . [likewise in the realm of rhetoric] the world presents imperfections to be modified by means of discourse."

Wow, those are some big implications.

Bitzer's argument and Vatz's response seem to be embodied in the climax of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go. (There is also a lovely film adaptation of the book with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley.) In the novel we are introduced to Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy--three students at Hailsham, a boarding school where every aspect of the students' lives is strictly regulated. One of the main activities of the students is creating works of art to hang in Madame's gallery. As we find out more about the individual characters and their relationships with each other, we realize that the students of Hailsham and other schools like it are genetic clones who will eventually be harvested for their internal organs.

Synopsis of the Novel

At the climax of the novel, Kathy and Tommy meet with Madame and the former headmistress of Hailsham, Miss Emily, to discuss the art in the gallery. They have heard a rumor that clones can defer their organ donations by proving that they are in love and that the artwork in the gallery is supposed to reveal the depth of their emotion. In meeting with Madame, Kathy and Tommy assume that their inevitable deaths and their opportunity for deferral is the situation. The obstacle to their lives and love, which has been set in place by the situation, compels them to exercise the rhetoric of both their art and their words on the potential agents of change--Madame and Miss Emily. The constraints of society's opinion of clones, Tommy's impending donation, and Miss Emily's former experience with both of them can all influence the outcome of the situation. Ultimately, Kathy and Tommy believe that the rhetorical situation has forced them to take action.

After speaking with Madame and Miss Emily, however, Kathy and Tommy realize that the situation hasn't created this opportunity for deferral at all. The gallery, Madame explains, was not created to reveal the souls of Hailsham students (presumably to prove the depth of their love); it was created by Madame to convince society that the clones had souls at all. Kathy and Tommy believed rhetoric to be the natural result of their situation, when, in fact, their situation (which they believed to be objective reality) was actually created by rhetoric. In speaking about the gallery, Madame bestows on it a significance that, while not enough to convince society that clone do have souls, is enough to spread through the clone community as a rumor of hope. Rhetoric, then, creates a situation in which Kathy and Tommy believe they have the power to take action.