Liang 1

Lyndon Liang

Professor Crosby

English Composition 3, Section 48

10 December 2017

Analysis of My Love Letter

My love letter to my girlfriend serves to show her that I love her. I demonstrate my love

to her by appealing to her emotions and discussing how we express our love to each other. I also

discuss my true feelings by boosting my credibility through honesty. My piece pushes the limit

for what qualifies a piece as travel writing by redefining the exploration of otherness. As a

whole, my love letter encourages my girlfriend to love me the way I believe I do by convincing

her that we are meant to be together by means of an expression of my love for her.

I wrote my love letter as a wholly pathos appeal to my girlfriend to inform her of my love

for her. Because my letter is based on my thoughts and emotions regarding my relationship with

her, it is heavy with pathos elements. I crafted my letter such that it discusses my love for her

and makes multiple attempts to make that pathos appeal successful. Originally, my love letter

consisted of a few short-lived attempts to accomplish the goal of the love letter. For my final

draft, I expanded my paragraphs to show more passion and added more of them to strengthen my

argument. I added the paragraphs that begin with Before I met you, I was looking for someone

who suited me just as you do, and To me, falling in love is a new concept, because these form

strong arguments that could potentially be very rewarding to my love letter as a whole in

fulfilling its purpose of informing my girlfriend of my love for her and convincing her to think

that we are perfect for each other.

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My letter is very direct to its audience in its structure and language. One love letter

writing guide calls for writers to Share your real feelings...Remember to say I love you!

(Brown). Following this advice, my letter begins with a straightforward I love you. This

immediately establishes that the rest of the piece will surround what I love you means to me by

discussing how I do so. The conclusion also begins by stating To me, you are a godsend,

indicating that I, the writer, very strongly (and nearly absolutely) affirm my thoughts and

emotions that I write in the love letter. By being extremely direct in language and structure, the

letter strikes a formal, firm tone, and thus attempts to build up my credibility as a lover through

an ethos appeal.

I wrote a love letter to communicate my love to my girlfriend. This is because love is

better articulated through written words than spoken ones are. With a love letter, there are a

couple of conventions that my letter satisfies to be considered a love letter. Primarily, the

substance of the letter must deal with the subject of love and the goal is to communicate the

writers thoughts and feelings to a loved one. Manifestly, love is the broad topic of all love

letters. Secondary qualities include elegance, complimentary close, and telling the loved one that

you love him or her (Biguenet). My letter, consisting of all of these qualities, would be

considered to be a love letter.

Since there are no individual words to describe the way people feel love other than the

word love itself, I must find a way to describe it in my own personal way. The body of the

love letter collectively forms a pathos appeal, as that is the purpose of the letter. For example,

my letter asserts that we share so many interests and come from similar backgrounds, which

implies that my girlfriend is someone suited for me. This implication and its following

explanation notes to my girlfriend that I really believe that we should be together in an attempt to
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convince her to think the same way. When I state in my letter that my girlfriend and I go

together like barbecue sauce and beef brisket, I intend to reproduce the same effect, this time

through a metaphor; however, my metaphor puts the emotional buildup from the beginning at

jeopardy. Another love letter writing guide advises to use a comparison or metaphor to Food is

a good choice, but be careful when discussing food by analogy, since food may be more

attractive on the plate than on the page (Biguenet). Because the barbecue sauce and beef

brisket comparison may come off as strange, the letter has the potential to spoil the emotional

appeals that precede it. I also explain to my girlfriend in detail how I love her; the letter states

that I look forward to seeing you every day and that Im extremely grateful that youre my

girlfriend to inform her of the ways that I do so. My letter also states Though we havent been

together for a long time, I can imagine spending a future with you to express her strong

emotional impact on me as a way to appeal to her emotional side. I continue by listing her

attractive qualities, such as [being] so understanding and forgiving, being so kind, so genuine,

and so caring, and [giving] me emotional support that I otherwise would have to make a call

home to get. By listing these positive, attractive qualities, the letter makes a mixed appeal of

pathos and logos to my girlfriend by getting on her good side. Through all of these primarily

pathos-based appeals, the letter reassures my girlfriend that I do truly feel love for her and

convinces her to reciprocate similar feelings to me.

Finally, my love letter ends with my complimentary close with much love to the edge of

the universe and back. Since the complimentary close of a love letter should be extravagant, I

came up with the phrase in order to express my love extravagantly, but not with punctilious

formality (Biguenet). I took the common saying love you to the moon and back and stretched

to the moon to the most extreme, literal length to add this rhetorical extravagance to my love
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letter. This flair adds one last pathos appeal to my girlfriend, which informs her of the extent of

my thoughts and feelings about her and our relationship.

My target audience is my girlfriend, assuming she is a sympathetic audience; I chose her

to be my audience because I want to inform her of my love for her and to convince her to love

me back the way I do. To effectively communicate my love for her, I must write eloquently and

pay attention to [my] words; for example, [she] doesnt smell good, but her fragrance

is enchanting (Biguenet). Because I would not want to spoil the emotional atmosphere that the

letter provides, I crafted my piece carefully such that I avoided words that had the potential to

become a mishap or misunderstanding. An unintended audience may include my girlfriend if

she is either in a bad mood or has a negative opinion regarding our relationship, which would

make her a hypothetically hostile audience. To cover this unintended audience, I added the

paragraph reminding her that I dont know how somebody could be so understanding and

forgiving as [she is] as a logos appeal to use logic to reason her out of a hostile perspective

towards my letter.

My piece is written in the context of modern love, in which people are taking a more

progressive, deeper emotional perspective of love. The letter is also part of a collective free

love movement, which advocates for peoples freedom to love individually (Poldervaart).

Because I am free to express my love in my own way, loosely from traditional love, I express

myself as honestly as I can and format my love letter in my own image. Because of this, I did

not include a salutation, which I consider to be an optional, non-crucial component of a love

letter. My love letter is therefore a contribution to a larger-scale discussion regarding love in the

modern age.
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My love letter fits the working definition of travel writing. My piece explores a sort of

movement through space and time under the influence of love. I write in my piece about how I

felt over time asx I fell in love with my girlfriend. I heavily explore otherness when I discuss

how I feel differently from being in a relationship compared to how I felt when I was not. For

example, I state in my letter that Months ago, I had no idea what it felt like to fall in love with

someone to serve as a starting point for a discussion regarding how I feel and act differently

when in love. After this, I discuss how I gained a new perspective as a result of my newly-found

love. Because I am now in love, Meeting [my girlfriend] allowed me to learn about how to love

the way we do and to explore the wonderful things love does to us. This shows how I have

learned new information about falling in love through the exploration of love. Because my

love letter meets these standards, it satisfies the requirements that qualify the working definition

of what it means for rhetoric to be considered travel writing; thus, my piece fits in the genre of

travel writing.
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Works Cited

Biguenet, John. A Modern Guide to the Love Letter. The Atlantic, 12 Feb. 2015,

www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/a-modern-guide-to-the-love-letter/3

85370/.

Brown, Laura M. Heres How NOT To Write A Love Letter. Huffpost, 16 Apr. 2014,

www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-m-brown/love-letter-writing_b_5155402.html.

Poldervaart, Saskia. The Recurring Movements of Free Love. International Institute of Social

History, 2000, The Recurring Movements of Free Love,

www.iisg.nl/womhist/polder.pdf.