Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski was a hero to some while a degenerate to others. He found beauty in the ugliest aspects of life. He spoke of violence and drunkenness, and did it with pride. In “My Madness” Bukowski has created an opinion on life that’s raw, vulgar, and to the point. He had a non-sympathetic attitude in this passage and a non-sympathetic attitude in his life. Bukowski employs no purpose to create a purpose in his literature that inspires the reader with his loud and outspoken style. He tells of his struggles in life and how he has used them for his advantage in writing. His style and tone are where he shines and he uses them to his advantage in everyway to attract the reader and keep them interested.

Bukowski tended to write about what seemed to be nothing. He wrote poems and short literature that where on the negative sides of nothing. He has written and published a few books of stories and poems throughout his life. An underground “cult” following of readers has formed who sometimes live theirs lives according to Bukowski’s works. At the time of this passage, he had been writing for a little over 30 years. He speaks mostly about his own life and hardships he faced throughout. Because of this, he is a credible source of his own experiences.

Bukowski is not for everyone. The vulgarity of his writing keeps many people away. Others on the other hand like and relate to his vulgar and raw writing. It’s hard to establish a definite audience for Bukowski because it really can be anyone. The only people his audience might not include are females. His audience can’t be classified by their station in life or social class. Rather his audience is defined by their state of mind. Whether or not they agree and relate is the main factor to determining his audience. To generalize, I would say his audience would be young to middle age men who are unhappy with their currents station in life.

The purpose is another aspect of his writing that is difficult to define. In this specific passage, his purpose might be to persuade people to write with a passion as strong as his own. On the other hand he seems to glorify the idea of not caring about the world around him and gives the message of giving up on trying in life. Mostly he is attempting to persuade his audience to form or build upon their state of mind similar to his own. In this passage another purpose for him would be to inform his audience on the hardships he faced in the process of becoming a writer.

Bukowski’s argument in “My Madness” is that if you have a passion for something, fulfill that passion and don’t look back. He supports this by telling his own story of fulfilling his passion of writing. While his story is based around writing, it can be applied to all things in life. This argument is very strong throughout the passage but he keeps the reader occupied with other aspects of his argument. The most prominent, is how he presents his argument to the reader.

The rhetorical appeals that Bukowski uses in this passage are emotion