When writing an essay on a book, what exactly does its "Emotional Appeal" mean?

Answer 1

The emotional appeal of a book is related to the author's tone and purpose. Tone refers to a writer's ability to create an attitude toward the subject matter of a piece of writing. The author's purpose will determine what sort of tone he/she uses. If the author wished to make you laugh, a humorous /ironic /satirical tone will be used. If the author wishes to make you cry, a sentimental / pathetic /
melancholy tone will be used.
So the purpose and the tone combine to exert an emotional appeal to the reader's feelings.

"Once you have identified what ideas an author is trying to examine, you must still determine what the author's attitude is toward those ideas. An author's attitudes are revealed in part by the tone, or overall mood, of the work. In writing, as in conversation, tone is not so much stated as implied. In reading we depend solely on the emotional overtones of the words to infer the attitudes of the author."

Answer 2

Emotional appeal describes how emotion is used to present the themes of the story.

You can tell when emotion is being used by seeing which characters, places and items have our sympathy, working out *why* they have our sympathy, and by asking what they represent in the story's themes.

For example, in /The Lord of the Rings/ our sympathies are firmly with the hobbits. Partly it's because they have such a big job to do, and partly it's because they're small, cute, funny and loyal. When the hobbits talk about their home in the Shire, the Shire gets our sympathy too. In the theme of rural simplicity (The Shire) vs modern industry (Isengard and Mordor), the emotional appeal of this story is to rural simplicity.

Why does emotional appeal matter? It matters because it helps make the audience take a position on the themes of the story. I might prefer to live in a city than in the country, but the /Lord of the Rings/ makes me want to protect and care for the countryside. Emotional appeal can also make us *dislike* something, in the same way. Just as with advertising, emotional appeal changes minds.

The other main kind of appeal is intellectual appeal. This comes about from looking at problems and solutions in the story. We look to see the difficulty of the problem, the cleverness of the solution. Intellectual appeal can also be used to make a case about a theme. For example, in /Lord of the Rings/, the hobbits win by persisting and having faith, even when they could have despaired and given up many times. So intellectually, that story makes us prefer persistence over abandonment; faith over despair.

Answer 3

The emotional appeal of a book is related to how you identified with the characters.

In a good book, you will be able to feel that the main character could have been you in another life, or but for the Grace of God. So if you identify with the character, that is- seeing yourself in his/her shoes, you are connecting emotionally with the character.

So the emotional appeal is if you identified with the character, you would care what happened to him/her.

This is the emotional appeal- that you cry when the character is hurt, laugh when they laugh, and feel triumphant when they overcome adversity.

For instance: When Harry Potter is told that he is a wizard and will be going to Hogwarts, didn't you have a smile on your face?

The emotional appeal of Harry Potter is that we all feel somewhat abused in everyday normal life, and we all feel that we are secretly, privately, in some way- special. We are all waiting for our post owl.

Answer 4

If you get caught up in a book as in it makes you choke up a bit during sad events or laugh out loud when it is funny it has emotional appeal. They are asking you to point those things out...how the author reached his reader and made them respond in some way.

Answer 5

When they say 'emotional appeal', it means what your feelings on the book are. How it affected you. Was it heartbreaking? Touching? Funny? Etc.

Also, it is how well you liked the book because of the emotion in it.

Answer 6

what you got out of the book .