Introduction
Moving In is a story written by a woman about her own life. The main point is her problems with family and how she established family ties with two people who once were strangers: her husband and his father, who became her own father-in-law. She argues that family is essential for everyone, as one is vulnerable without close people who can help in any situation. The author emphasizes the necessity to care for each other in hard situations, showing the recent COVID-19 pandemic as an example.
Analysis
Moving In is a narrative that describes one’s life continuously, starting from several facts from early life. The text is written from the first-person point of view, following the chronological order of events, exploring the author’s life. The text is dedicated to family problems: a lack of strong family ties in the author’s life and how she found her family in her 30s. The author uses examples from her early life to explain her position: for example, she “left home at 16 and struggled to obtain housing, briefly finding stability in a group home” (McKenna). As she broke relationships with family early, she strived to earn money for living and, despite having many friends, she felt alone.
Her point is that family is essential in human life, and family members should always help each other in trouble. She “feels acute rage thinking of all of the individuals and families who have struggled in similar, and more pronounced, ways due to barriers in accessibility, exacerbated by other forms of systemic and individual discrimination” (McKenna). To communicate her ideas, the author uses mainly ethos and pathos as rhetorical strategies. She appeals to her emotions connected with various life events as a confirmation of her points and emphasizes that the readiness to help is extremely important in the family.
Interpretation
As one can see, the text is a first-person narrative describing the author’s problems with family and how, eventually, she managed to solve them. Chronological order enables her to show how her issues started when she was a child and how she used to live without a family. In her 30s, she found her husband and his old father, who became a part of her family. Most of the text explores how it was possible, starting with how they “began a weekly ritual of playing Scrabble” with her new father-in-law during the COVID-19 pandemic (McKenna). Eventually, they started to live together, and despite all their differences, she was happy to find a father.
The author debates the role of the family in one’s life based on her own example. In her opinion, the family is essential for human life, and it is crucial to find a family. She admits that living with her father-in-law was “challenging at times, particularly due to giving up the privacy of our marriage” (McKenna). However, the author is firm in her persuasion that family is important: she emphasizes the necessity of caring for each other, especially in hard times, such as during the pandemic.
The author states that those “feelings of anger, amusement, respect, and love are evidence that I am finally, in my late 30s, learning how to have a father” (McKenna). In addition, she tells that “my father-in-law’s health, safety, and dignity remains paramount in our lives,” meaning that her connection with her husband’s father became highly important to her (McKenna). In that way, she promotes the idea that connection between family members is important and that they should always care for each other.
Evaluation
The text aims to show how the author found people who became close to her and, eventually, became part of her family: her husband and his father. The author’s position is that the family is essential to everyone, and family members should care for and help each other. The text’s strengths include vivid examples and strong ethical arguments that strengthen this position. An example is a situation when her husband supported their father by “ordering him masks he could breathe well in after he experienced problems with other medical masks” (McKenna). The main weakness is a lack of objectivity, as the text is based only on the author’s own position and opinion. The primary text value is the documented personal experience that can be compared with other people’s experiences and analyzed. There are various opinions about the family’s role in one’s life, but all people mostly confirm the necessity to support each other.
Conclusion
All texts serve various purposes, and their structure, rhetorical strategy, perspective, and value depend on those purposes. Moving In aims to tell a story of a woman who had problems with her family and left her home at 16, but eventually found people who became her true family in her 30s. It is written from the first point of view, and the author’s emotions, feelings, and memories are its basis. Most of the story is dedicated to her relationships with her husband’s father, who became her own father-in-law too. The author argues that family is an essential part of human life and that it is vital to help each other in all situations, which guarantees a happy life.
Work Cited
McKenna, Emma. “Moving In.” This Magazine, 2022. Web.