Filling the Void an Analysis of “What Are Friends for?”

Marion Wink’s essay, “What Are Friends For?” in her book Lunch-Box Chronicles: Notes from the Parenting Underground, 1998, identifies the various categories of friends and the gains from each through a humourous context. Wink embarks on the many functionalities of a friendship which attempt to fill the voids in life. The rhetorical techniques of the essay such as classification and definition will be analyzed along with the purpose, audience, and content to reflect how people mutually benefit from friendships.

The essay begins with formulating the idea that one person can’t fulfill all our needs establishing the value of having friends. This leads to its direction for the rest of the piece of how a number of people can meet our individual needs. At first you’ll be entertained, as some of the examples develop personal relativity to our lives. A closer look will show that the piece is also very informative of the different relationships of a friendship which is enlightening and guides us to the context of which it was written in, the value of friends.

Although not stated specifically Wink’s directed audience seems to be mature women, mature in the sense that they’ve experienced some of the situated examples in the text. Wink did a terrific job in writing the essay as the audience is not limited to females; men also fall into the general audience as the classifications broadly attempt to achieve how friends benefit people. The voice and tone was very warm and pleasant, even engaging in some respects as the examples could really come to life and you felt as if you were in a conversation.

Wink’s selection of the categories, the breakdown, and methods of defining each category paired with the tone was very effective. This allowed for the broad examples to have a specificity aspect which lets readers personally relate to the essay. Friends are being defined through an extended definition; this definition is classified into categories of different types of...