One might say “An Insatiable Emptiness” is hard to read for how detailed and private does it depicts the struggle Lau suffers bulimia. Through using first person narration Lau traces her traumatizing early life experience and how has family coping twisted the conflicting psychological state within her. Lau expertly narrates the self-denying situation she is trapped in as the cause of the inescapable ritual of bulimia. It seems to this young woman that throwing up things from her stomach would eventually clear her past as well. Yet after years and years of purging and binging, the conflicts stay and they had gone worse. The purpose of this essay is to seek out how Lau uses rhetorical appeal and narration to argue that bulimia is not a way to solve psychological traumas. “An Insatiable Emptiness” will be dissected into four sections according to its content in order to examine each part in depth. The analysis will cover the main idea and the strongest rhetoric devices used in the section. Each section contributes in different degrees to the message conveyed by the author throughout the whole article. The first section summarizes the origin of Lau’s purging and binging. The second criticize the pervert family environment that leads to the conflicts in her teenage. From the third section, Lau finally realizes the consequences caused by bulimia. Last but not least, in the fourth section she ended her active seeking of purging and binging and concludes what bulimia had brought upon her. Paragraph 1-4 of “An Insatiable Emptiness” begins with ethos since it appeals mainly to the psychological activities of the narrator. The statement “I” has been repeated over and over again to ensure the narrator’s incontestable right to speak, and has given a direction where the essay will be led to. Lau, knowing herself better than any other, is the most authoritative person to speak of her involvement to bulimia. Focusing so deliberately on the mental status as the start of both the essay and Lau’s sickness, she emphasizes the self-exploring nature of the article. On top of that, Lau creates cynical contrasts to the later sections in paragraph 1-4 through depicting details of the starting point to her bulimic habit. Lau admits she “was too young to believe [she] was anything but immortal”, which later on has been proven untrue (157). Lau has not shown the slightest attempt to justify her silly beliefs from her early age. She is surely not immortal, therefore the way she phrases the sentence makes it sounds ridiculous. Also, Lau believed she “had earned it the way other women earn washboard stomachs and lean waists from hours of sit-ups and crunches at gym” (158). This unrealistic hallucination of thinking purging and binging as a “smart and practical way of coping with things” is put down to form a contrast in the later passage where she discovered how damaging bulimia truly is (Lau 157). Furthermore, in section 1 (paragraph 1-4), Lau taunts her early thoughts on bulimia by using euphuism.
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Description such as “I love the feeling I had after purging, of being clean and shiny inside like a scrubbed machine, superhuman” appear frequently in this section of the essay (Lau 157). Lau ridiculously compares her bulimic-damaged self to a “superhuman” and “scrubbed machine” (157). The comparison seems to have a sarcastic undertone in it due to the incorrectness of this metaphor. The word choice in the specific sentence, “I would cram clusters of bananas into my mouth, or tubs of ice cream that lurched back up my throat in a thin and startlingly sweet projectile”, gives it an illusive cheering mood, while this content is in fact sick (Lau 158). It is authentic to think Lau has done it purposefully just to point out how absurd was it to think bulimia is good. On top of that, in paragraph 5-15 Lau adopts pathos appeal, conveying the audience to understand her suffers in family coping. Lau appeals to the distressing emotion of the audience by revealing she “was in despair”, that she “hated what was happening to [her] body” (158). She has repeated “hate” many times throughout the passage. The strong words display the intense anger she endured. Lau’s mother has been presented in a cruel way. Lau states her mother will “ridicule” her
Description such as “I love the feeling I had after purging, of being clean and shiny inside like a scrubbed machine, superhuman” appear frequently in this section of the essay (Lau 157). Lau ridiculously compares her bulimic-damaged self to a “superhuman” and “scrubbed machine” (157). The comparison seems to have a sarcastic undertone in it due to the incorrectness of this metaphor. The word choice in the specific sentence, “I would cram clusters of bananas into my mouth, or tubs of ice cream that lurched back up my throat in a thin and startlingly sweet projectile”, gives it an illusive cheering mood, while this content is in fact sick (Lau 158). It is authentic to think Lau has done it purposefully just to point out how absurd was it to think bulimia is good. On top of that, in paragraph 5-15 Lau adopts pathos appeal, conveying the audience to understand her suffers in family coping. Lau appeals to the distressing emotion of the audience by revealing she “was in despair”, that she “hated what was happening to [her] body” (158). She has repeated “hate” many times throughout the passage. The strong words display the intense anger she endured. Lau’s mother has been presented in a cruel way. Lau states her mother will “ridicule” her