Introduction
This story is written in the first person’s perspective and from a woman’s point of view. This woman is Gretel. Gretel is trying to un-stereotype the men rangers or cowboys, who are not treated well by the society. Gretel’s experience with the cowboys at Wyoming inspired her to share with her readers on the other side of men that the society does not know. Gretel want to covey the cowboy as more useful than just being rough and tough. She does this through vivid details and imageries that describe the cowboy. She highlights that the cowboy has another gentle and nurturing side. This way, although she is a woman, she shares about men rangers and their experiences in the society.
Body
The essay is carefully organized and developed. She starts by introducing herself and where she comes from and thus informing the reader that she has experience of whatever she is about to discuss. Later, she introduces her theme on cowboys and start describing them. The theme is developed throughout the essay by a discussion of Gretel’s attempt to un-stereotype the cowboys. She says that even though cowboys have their few weaknesses, their strengths overweigh their weaknesses.
Gretel’s audience is composed of readers of her work and especially those who hold negative attitudes towards cowboys. When most people hear about cowboys, they think of arrogant, rough and tough people. Gretel describes the other side of cowboy as being hardworking, nurturing, and compassionate. She says they are forced to act tough by the hard manual work they do. However, in real sense, they are motherly, caring and nurturing, and that is why they can take good care of the animals.
Gretel has used a woman’s perspective in this essay to convey her emotions about the cowboy. She has used a sympathetic and convincing tone to describe the cowboy and show the audience how the cowboy is somebody to be admired. This is different from the perspectives most people hold of cowboys as rough, tough, drunkards and people who cannot cope well in the societal. The essay has also used emotive language to convey the sincere blame we put on cowboys and yet they do not deserve it.
The essay has also used some words like conquest and pilgrimage to create imagery. These words are full of meaning because pilgrimage means great trek while conquest is used to mean victory. Gretel creates visual scenes in her essay by using specific details for instance; toughness is described as weathered skin, squinty in the eye, calloused hands among others. She has also used a relatively denotative formal style through intellectual vocabulary, which adds value tone and romanticizes cowboys.
Conclusion
From my own personal evaluation, the essay is quite persuading once the reader understands it. However, the reader is required to read the work more than once so as to understand it because the author has used so many descriptive words to describe cowboys. Therefore, if the reader is not accurate, he or she might see the words as repetitive. Moreover, as much as Gretel claims to have the experience of cowboys, it does not seem like she has the real experience to label and define them because she is not one of them. The writer has, however, tried to shed light and persuade the readers that cowboys are human being and deserve to be treated as people with feelings and emotions.