Would you believe...

The question of whether or not narrative works are inherently rhetorical is pretty complicated. I think it all comes down to what one believes about rhetoric. 

By the layperson’s definition, rhetorical works are inherently deceitful and generally malicious. Because rhetoric is speech or text that has the specific aim of persuading the audience or reader to change their mind or act in some way, it is seen as a kind of speech with a dark, manipulative agenda.

On the other hand, an academic’s view of rhetoric and its function is much more complicated. In general, there is no negative aura surrounding the topic. To those who study rhetoric, it is simply speech which is meant to persuade, typically through the use of specific formal mechanisms like ethos, pathos, logos, etc. Rhetoric, to the academic, has the goal of informing the audience, persuading the audience, or calling the audience to action. 

Certainly, narrative can be used as a tool within the practice of rhetoric. One could tell a story illustrating the logistical nightmares of paying off medical bills on a minimum wage salary (logos) in order to inform the audience about our broken healthcare system. One could tell a narrative about children crying for their parents while being kept in cages in Tornillo, Texas to break the heart of the audience (pathos) and urge them to protest. One could relate the story of how they came to become involved in politics within their political speech to convince the audience that they know what they’re talking about (ethos) and to persuade them to vote.

However, that is not the question. The question is: is narrative inherently rhetorical? 

My answer is yes……kind of.

I believe the two disciplines intertwine more than they keep themselves apart. Whether or not a narrative author intends to persuade the reader to accept the implied author’s worldview, one could most certainly argue that many narratives function in this way. The most magical, fantastical world is still produced by a human being who is influenced by her own culture and upbringing, and these influences will invariably make their way into the narrative, whether acting within these influences or consciously reacting against them. The driest, most empirical of academic narratives still make an effort to inform the reader and to convince the reader of the narrator’s own credibility as a reporter of facts and an interpreter of evidence. 

Is rhetorical function contingent on the rhetorician’s (or narrator’s) intention to inform, persuade, or call an audience or reader to action? Must the author of a narrative intend to employ rhetoric in an agentive way to produce a desired action in order for their narrative to be credibly deemed rhetorical? 

I don’t really have the definitive answer to these questions.

But my instinct is no; we humans are rhetoricians as naturally (though perhaps crudely) as we are narrators.