The Grey Rhetorical Situation

Disclaimer: This blog post covers nearly the entire plot of the movie The Grey. If you have yet and want to see the movie, read with caution.

One aspect of Bitzer's "Rhetorical Situation" that stood out for me was the concept of movement. As Bitzer states, "A rhetorical audience consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change" (Bitzer 8). A true rhetorical situation is comprised of the need to move the audience into action and change. This idea of a rhetor's place in the rhetorical situation is to move the listeners into action is clearly exemplified in the movie The Grey.



To setup the beginning of the film: The main character Ottway, played by Liam Neeson, experiences a plane crash in the freezing wilderness of Alaska, presumably. By night, the remaining survivors, now sheltered by one half of the plane, realize they are prey of hungry wolves. The next day, after one of the former survivors was eaten by a wolf, Ottway, an expert hunter of wolves has to convince the group to move away from the crash site and into the woods. He explains that if they are near the wolf den, the wolves will continue to savagely attack them.

Here in lies Bitzer's "rhetorical situation." Here these survivors are in a life threatening situation and Ottway is now in need of persuading the other survivors to move, change their location, in order to save everyone's lives. As Bitzer states, "It is the situation which calls the discourse into existence" (Bitzer 2). Ottway would never find himself persuading these group of men to do anything regarding survival if it were not for this particular situation. To further relate to Bitzer, Ottway has altered reality for the survivors, convincing them that there is a wolf den nearby, when that was not real to them before, and to move away from the crash site.

The end of the film, however, will prove Vatz's point that Ottway's rhetoric is not a result of the situation, rather that it shapes the situation and the eventual outcome.

As the survivors move into and through the woods, Ottway continues to persuade the group to move in the direction that they do. Eventually each supporting character dies throughout the journey till Ottway is left alone. Now on his own he decides to walk into the woods, away from the river they had been following, to safely bury all of the wallets of the people from the plane as he accepts that he will not survive to return these wallets to the victims to their families. Here he finds himself in the middle of the wolf den. After persuading everyone to move away from the crash site for fear of it being near a wolf den and continue to move forward in hopes of moving away from the den, Ottway finds himself directly in the center.

It could be argued that getting to the wolf den was Ottway's goal along. In which case, Vatz's point that, "the rhetoric controls the situational response" (159) and that the rhetor creates the situation, and a need for moral responsibility, becomes abundantly relevant. Ottway abused his rhetorical prowess to guide all of the survivors to more harms way, the very thing Vatz warns about.