Rhetorical Analysis of “Telephone Poles” by Eula Biss
Eula Biss’ article “Notes from No Man’s Land” (2018) has a chapter where she talks about Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone invention. And how the idea that every home in the country could be connected through a network of wires and telephone poles set at a hundred feet apart was met with initial opposition from different groups who were against the setting up of poles. Biss demonstrates how the poles later were associated with the lynching of members of the black community.
Biss’s development of pros in the text is beneficial because she has successfully used logos, pathos, and ethos to demonstrate to her audience the connection between this great invention that was meant to bring people closer and the lynching of black people in the telephone poles.
Biss uses logos to prove that the telephone poles had no bearing in the increased number of black people lynching. She states, “The poles, of course, were not to blame. It was only coincidence that they became convenient as gallows, because they were tall and straight, with a crossbar, and because they stood in public places. And it was only coincidence that the telephone poles so closes resembled crucifixes.” These statements logically explain how the telephone poles had no role in increasing the number of people hanged in them, they only happened to be a convenient place for the perpetrators of the heinous act because it served their purpose of sending a public message.
Biss also uses pathos to appeal to the readers’ emotions to provoke a sense of understanding in the wholesome idea behind telephone poles. “When I was young, I believed that the arc and swoop of telephone wires along the roadways were beautiful. I believed that the telephone poles, with their transformers catching the evening sun, were glorious…I believed that the telephone itself was a miracle.” This statement goes to show how the telephone poles were a sign of great hope to connect people that were far apart. Instead, the dream they carried was stolen by the use of poles to commit crimes to other humans. The idea of racial difference brought so much hate is brought out in the text when Biss talks about the postcards that were made from photos of burned blacks hanging from telephone poles with warning messages like ‘This is the barbeque we had last night.’ In another part of the text, she explains of a black man in Greenville, Mississippi, who was hanged from the telephone pole for being accused of attacking a white telephone operator. While in the real sense, what the man did was ask for time to pray.
Lastly, Biss uses ethos to establish logic in the handling of telephone poles as lynching tools by saying, “The lynchings happened everywhere, in all but four states from shortly before the invention of the telephone to long after the first transatlantic call.” This statement clearly shows that the poles did not trigger the black people killing in the United States they were already happening before and after the poles were set up. It was unfortunate that the poles only acted to amplify the racial segregation that was happening. Bill also addresses the notion that lynching is a practice embedded deep into the American Culture and that the telephone poles only offered a place to carry out their executions. She says, “Lynching the first scholar of the subject determined is an American Invention. Lynching from bridge, from arches, from trees standing alone in fields, from trees used as public billboards, from trees barely able to support the weight of a man, from telephone poles, from streetlamps, and from poles erected solely for that purpose. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, black men were lynched for crimes real and imagined, for whistles, for rumors, for ‘disputing with a white man,’ for ‘unpopularity,’ for ‘asking a white woman in marriage,’ for ‘peeping in a window.'”
In this “Telephone Poles” excerpt, Eula Biss can effectively persuade her readers of the no relation the telephone poles had in the lynching of black people. The strategic implementation of the three appeals of logos, pathos, and ethos only reinforces the idea of how telephone poles were a sign of new beginnings and a change in how humans separated by distance would still be linked through telephone connections. When the first telephone was installed in the white house President Rutherford B. Hayes pronounced it to be one of the greatest inventions to be made since creation. The famous businessman Thomas Edison reiterated how the telephone “annihilated time and space, and brought the human family in closer touch.” This indeed was a significant invention that would change the dynamics of human interactions despite the lynching and hanging that was associated with telephone poles. They also brought great hope. Biss alludes, “One summer, heavy rains fell in Nebraska, and some green telephone poles grew small leafy branches.”