Under the sea, Tyson Smith, Gavin Bush

Tyson Smith Gavin Bush

Under the Sea

Rhetorical Analysis of The song "Under the Sea" within the film of "The Little Mermaid"

Who Delivered it?

Sebastian the Crab Delivered the speech, being known as a court composer and serves at King Triton’s bidding

The BAsis

The song "Under the Sea" is a plea by the crab Sebastian, along with other sea creatures he encouters, attempting convincing Ariel to remain sea-bound, and resist her desire to become a human in order to spend her life with Prince Eric, with whom she has fallen in love with.

Ariel

Audience

The intended audience of the song was of course:

Context

Start

a young mermaid named Ariel, who is captivated by the world upon the surface. When she falls in love with a human prince.

Escalation

Ariel hopes to further explore the world past the surface and meet with the prince

Song

the crab Sebastian attempts to convince Ariel to remain sea-bound, and resist her desire to become a human to spend her life with Prince Eric.

Exigence

Stop

Stops Ariel from swimming away to the surface

persuasion

Sebastian begins listing and talking about all of the good things "Under the Sea"

Reason

All this is done by the hope of stopping Ariel from going to the surface

Choices

Imagery

Sebastian has great use of imagery

In the song, Sebastian's creative word usage, and dynamic diction creates many vivid images Ariel could think of like.... "The seaweed is always greener"

Personification

Many of the fish or sea creatures get personified.

"The newt play the flute The carp play the harp The plaice play the bass And they soundin' sharp The bass play the brass The chub play the tub"

Dangers

Problems with "the surface" such as where they "work all day" or the fish in the fish bowls on land.

Pathos

"Down here all the fish is happy As off through the waves they roll The fish on the land ain't happy", he does this to hope to make Ariel feel the surface isn't safe.

Ethos

"Nobody beat us Fry us and eat us In fricassee" states "us" due to speaking for all fish in the sea including ariel too.

Logos

He lists all the good things about being under the sea whislt down playing the life on the surface.

Tone

The tone sebastian delivers the song with seems very determined but also joyful in hopes to keep ariel Under the sea.

You can easily see the tone shift when he speaks of the Surface to a less jovial tone in comparison to his happy demener related to being under the sea.

It was clear throughout this analysis you could tell Sebastians true motive was to create a bad image in the name of the surface, whilst creating an image for the sea that there's no better. He used many forms of rhetoric when it came to appeals, choices or even his forms of figurative language.

Thank you!