Rhetorical Analysis of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream”

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Rhetorical Analysis of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream”

Paintings and other artworks are often regarded as diaries, providing a glimpse into an artist’s mind and as such, a picture of what is happening in real life. One piece of artwork that qualifies in serving this purpose is Edvard Munch’s The Scream, one whose rate of reproduction today is, perhaps, only paralleled by that of the Mona Lisa. Reading through Munch’s life journey, it becomes clear that ‘The Scream’ offered a kind of reflection of what was happening in his life. This paper presents a rhetorical analysis of the piece, thus exploring how well Munch has employed ethos, logos, and pathos to convince the audience as to the artwork’s thematic purpose.

Azeem (2015), in his exploration of several of Munch’s pieces (and how they reflect the psychological turmoil he was going through that time), briefly recounts the artists’ tribulations. At about the time he painted The Scream, Munch had left Norway for Germany due to financial woes and a feeling that his work was not receiving the credit and appreciation it deserved. Azeem (2015) writes, “Munch’s paintings seemed to reflect the persecution he was feeling: his art moved away from the theme of death and seemed to shift towards his increasing feelings of anxiety “(52). Therefore, an accurate and precise rhetorical analysis would appreciate these themes and interrogate how Munch communicates them in the piece under focus. The Scream is shown in figure 1 below:

Figure 1: Edvard Munch’s The Scream

Source: Azeem (2015)

Examining the piece under focus, one clearly notes the artist’s philosophy of using textures, lines, metaphors, and colors to communicate themes and convey expressions centered on various human phenomena. In art, symbols are thought to have a closer connection to reality as opposed to words. In this painting, Munch has used undulating lines as well as expressive color waves as symbols of his anguish. True as it were, the broader paradigm of human life encompasses different emotions such as pain, envy, love, frustration, and suffering just to mention but a few. Here, Munch does well as far as the use of pathos (appeal using emotion) is concerned, for indeed, suffering/anguish and anxiety are the greatest themes of the piece. The painting depicts intense anxiety as would border the artist’s dread of the life circumstances he was facing that time. After all, the painting is largely thought to be autobiographical (Shabi, 2013). On the use of pathos in this painting, a connection is noted with the style adopted by many artists of the impressionist era; they continually admired color phonology and nature (natural landscape), concepts around which they based their form of art that emphasized self-expression. Many artists were able to find ground for self-expression more so in a world they thought was very harsh. Comprehending Munch’s background and life situation when he painted this piece, and analyzing his use of texture, line(s), and colors) in the painting, there is no doubt that The Scream qualifies as expressionism’s blueprint linking emotional and psychological aspects of human life. The distorted images besides the array of exaggerated colors yield a sense of alienation, loneliness, dread, and anxiety. By and large, Munch has used the appeal through emotion to depict the turbulence in his life at the time.

Examining the painting’s basic images (not necessarily through an artistic lens), one sees a person in the foreground, screaming. Seemingly, the two people in the background have walked away from him/her, and now he/she is on his/her own. These use of these pronouns in this manner is preferred because to a large extent, the image is alien-like and takes a unique form that can neither be said to be female nor male.  Going by the presentation by Prideaux (2005) that Munch ultimately intended to explore and express his own emotions and psychology, one easily relates what is depicted in the scene to a real life situation as would be logically imaginable. By depicting alienation as he has in this painting, Munch has employed logos, which is the appeal to logic. Logically, any person facing suffering and who has been disserted is likely to go through such emotional and psychological turbulence as has been depicted in the painting. His extent of use of symbolism can also be said to work to the same effect. For example, the red color in the background can be considered to be logically related to the 1883 eruption of volcano in Krakatoa. It must have reinforced Munch’s imagination of nature to be screaming and therefore his decision to subsequently incorporate that into an artistic form as would be expected of a typical impressionist. For a person who feels disserted and alienated, Munch does well to depict the subject in the background as helpless and “seemingly being pulled into the painting’s eerily sentient background” (Shabi, 2013: par 6).

A deeper exploration of the artist’s use of logos draws attention to the painting’s horizontal lines in the background whose direction appears to be opposite to that of objects in the foreground as well as the subject. With the painting’s main themes already understood, the artist uses these completely different direction of lines to show the two sided nature of many situations in life. For instance, it is logical (and as such a fact) that where there is no war or turbulence then peace reigns. Other opposing phenomena include hate and love, courage and fear, and sorrow and joy among others. In a way, the artist is communicating all these at once through his use of line(s) in the painting. His painting style, as is typical of impressionism and post-impressionism, enables the audience to, through logic, discover new meanings and relationships among many life phenomena as may be implied in the artwork.

Last yet important is the relevance of ethos (to this painting) as a mode of persuasion. Ethos entails an appeal to ethics and is mainly dependent on expertise and credibility as techniques for persuasion. While it may not be immediately clear to a viewer who is innocent of Munch’s reputation as one of the greatest artists of his time, there is no doubt that The Scream has over the decades continued getting attention and credit because of Munch’s position in the world of art. For a viewer who is aware of Munch’s life journey and the positioned he earned himself in the art arena, there would be no doubt that the artist’s reputation and credibility would serve to reinforce the piece’s thematic purpose. The assumption would be that an artist of Munch’s caliber had to produce a quality piece full of meaning(s). On his part, Munch knew his reputation would boost the piece’s ratings for, according to Temkin (2012: 2), he “housed the drawing in a gilded frame bearing a plaque with a text hand-lettered in red paint, signed “E.M.”

In a word, Munch’ painting, The Scream may not be exhaustively described and analyzed in the limited scope of this construction. Nevertheless, this arguably brief rhetorical analysis gives insight into the piece’s thematic purpose and connection to Munch’s own life. Besides employing various approaches characteristic of impressionism, Munch’s use of ethos, logos, and pathos in the painting is unmatched.