Before Ethos, Pathos, and Logos: An Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis with "Be Our Guest"

Originally published October 2020. Updated October 2026 with a full video walkthrough, a step-by-step SPACE CAT lesson plan, and what to teach next.

For years, I introduced rhetoric the way a lot of us were taught to: with commercials. Pull up a car ad, hand out a sheet with ethos, pathos, and logos at the top, and let students go hunting.

And they found things! They could point to the sad puppy and say "pathos." They could spot the doctor in the lab coat and say "ethos." What they couldn't do was tell me why the advertiser made that choice, for this audience, at this moment. Which — if we're being honest — is the entire point of rhetorical analysis.

So I changed how I start. These days, I don't open with the appeals at all. I open with the situation: who's talking, who they're talking to, and what's really at stake. And my favorite way to do that is with a singing candlestick who is far more desperate than anyone gives him credit for.

This post has been around since 2020 (and the lesson has been downloaded by thousands of teachers since then), but I've finally done what I've wanted to do for a long time: I recorded the whole thing. Below, you'll find a 30-minute video where I walk you through the entire free lesson and show you exactly how I introduce SPACE CAT to students with "Be Our Guest." You'll also get the step-by-step plan, the questions I ask, and where students tend to get stuck.

Let's jump in.

Watch the full lesson walkthrough

Want the slides I use in the video? Grab the free "Be Our Guest" lesson deck here — or scroll down and drop your email in the form.

After watching the scene, we work our way through the rhetorical triangle (speaker, audience, message). Then, I add the layer of the rhetorical situation on to the triangle by discussing context, purpose, and exigence. After all that, we finally dig into the song itself and analyze for rhetorical choices, appeals and tone.

This lesson can be at least two or three class periods. It could also be something done in one class period quickly as an overview (depending on student’s past experiences). You could also use the flipped classroom model: assign the video lesson for homework, then, students come to class ready to write and analyze the next song together. Either way, I’d love to share my slide deck with you that provides an anchor to the lesson. Thanks for tagging along!

Why I don't start rhetorical analysis with ethos, pathos, and logos

Hear me out. I'm not saying don't teach the appeals. I'm saying don't make them the introduction.

Whatever students learn first, they assume is the most important thing. If day one is a list of terms, then the goal of analysis must be to find those terms — so students slap labels all over a speech, call it annotation, and stop. They did exactly what we taught them. And then we get frustrated when they can't answer why or so what.

Labeling an appeal is identification. Explaining why a speaker reached for it, given who's listening and what's at stake — that's analysis. And students can't get there until they understand the rhetorical situation first.

(I dig into this more — and walk through a second Disney song — in Teaching Rhetorical Analysis: Using Film Clips and Songs to Get Started with SPACE CAT.)

What is SPACE CAT?

SPACE CAT is the framework I use for rhetorical analysis from the first day to the last. It splits the work into two halves: the situation around the argument (SPACE) and the argument itself (CAT).

SPACE: the rhetorical situation

• Speaker: Who is making this argument? What do we know about their affiliations, biases, and reasons for caring?

• Purpose: What is the speaker trying to do? (Purpose is a verb: to beg, to plead, to distract, to rally, to undermine.)

• Audience: Who is this for? What do they believe, need, or fear? What makes them vulnerable to this argument?

• Context: What's happening in this moment? What came right before, and what's the emotional temperature?

• Exigence: Why now? What urgency pushed the speaker to speak at this exact moment?

CAT: the argument itself

• Choices: What did the speaker do — word choice, structure, examples, humor, imagery?

• Appeals: How do those choices reach for ethos, pathos, or logos?

• Tone: What's the speaker's attitude, and how does it shift?

Notice where the appeals live: tucked in the middle of the CAT half, after students have already spent time with the situation. That order is the whole idea. By the time students get to ethos, pathos, and logos, they already know enough about the speaker and audience to explain why an appeal matters.

Why "Be Our Guest" works so well

The beauty (pun fully intended) of "Be Our Guest" is that almost every student already knows it — and almost none of them have ever really thought about it.

On the surface, it's a big, joyful dinner show. But think about what's actually happening. Belle has just traded her freedom for her father's. She's locked in a castle with a beast who yelled at her and then told her she couldn't eat unless she ate with him. She refused.

And now here comes Lumiere.

Lumiere's job is to get Belle to stick around without revealing a single thing about what's actually going on. He can't tell her about the curse. He can't tell her about the rose. He definitely can't tell her that if she doesn't stay — and fall in love with the guy who just imprisoned her — he will be a candlestick forever.

That's a lot riding on one dinner. And once students see it, the song stops being a cute musical number and starts being what it really is: a desperate, beautifully staged argument. The tension between speaker and audience is rich enough for strong readers to dig into and accessible enough for students who struggle with dense text. Nobody's stuck decoding vocabulary. Everyone can get into the argument.

The "Be Our Guest" rhetorical analysis lesson plan, step by step

This lesson can stretch across two or three class periods, or you can move through it in a single period as a quick overview if your students have some rhetoric under their belts already. Here's how it goes.

Step 1: Set the stage

Before you press play, make sure everyone knows where we are in the story. Not everyone has seen the movie (or seen it recently), so I quickly recap: Belle's father is captured, Belle takes his place, the Beast is not exactly a gracious host, and she refuses to come to dinner.

The question I ask: What do you think Belle is feeling right now?

This feels like a warm-up, but it's actually the start of audience analysis. Students just don't know it yet.

Step 2: Watch the scene

You only need the song scene itself — no need to show the whole film. I usually show it once just to enjoy it (it's a great song, let them have it!) and then a second time with a job: Watch Lumiere. What does he want?

Step 3: Build the rhetorical triangle

Now we slow down and work through the triangle: speaker, audience, message.

• Speaker: Lumiere — a servant, loyal to the Beast, cursed into a candelabra.

• Audience: Belle — scared, grieving, hungry, and stubborn.

• Message: You're welcome here. Relax. Enjoy yourself.

Where students get stuck: They'll say "the audience is Belle" and stop. Push. Who is Belle right now, in this moment? What does she need? What would make her want to leave? The more detail students add here, the more they'll have to work with later.

Step 4: Layer on the rhetorical situation

This is where the triangle becomes SPACE. We add purpose, context, and exigence — and this is where the lesson really comes alive.

• Purpose: The message is "be our guest." The purpose is to keep her from leaving. To charm her. To distract her. To make a prison feel like a home.

• Context: She's just been imprisoned, and the servants are openly going against the Beast's orders by feeding her.

• Exigence: The rose. Time is running out — and Belle just refused the Beast. This might be the only chance to make a good first impression.

Where students get stuck: Two places, every year.

First, purpose vs. message. Students want them to be the same thing. I tell them the message is what the speaker says; the purpose is what the speaker is trying to do. If you can't put it as a verb, it's probably still the message.

Second, context vs. exigence. Context is everything happening around the argument. Exigence is the specific pressure that makes the speaker speak now. Once students realize what Lumiere personally stands to lose, exigence clicks — and so does the title of this post.

The question I ask: Knowing what Lumiere knows, how would you describe his attitude in this song? Hold onto those answers. You'll need them for tone.

Step 5: Analyze the song — choices, appeals, and tone

Now we bring in CAT. Students go back through the song looking at what Lumiere actually does: the spectacle, the food, the flattery, the humor, the way the entire household joins in, the way he never lets her get a word in.

Then — and only then — we connect those choices to appeals. And because students already understand Belle as an audience, they can explain the appeals instead of just naming them. He's appealing to pathos turns into He's overwhelming her with comfort and delight so she forgets, at least for a few minutes, that she's a prisoner.

That's the sentence I'm after. That's analysis.

Finally, tone. Students usually start with "happy" or "excited" — and then, with everything they know about the exigence, they start to see the cracks. Eager. Over-the-top. A little frantic. A candlestick who really needs this to work.

Grab the free "Be Our Guest" lesson deck

If you want the exact slides I use in the video — the rhetorical triangle organizer, the SPACE CAT breakdown, and the discussion prompts — they're yours for free. Pop your email in below and I'll send the deck straight to your inbox.

What to teach after "Be Our Guest"

Here's the thing about introducing rhetorical analysis: one great lesson won't do it. Students need to run SPACE CAT again and again, on texts that get a little harder each time, until the framework becomes second nature. I call this "teaching on repeat" — think of each new text as another round with the same skill, not a brand-new lesson plan you have to build from scratch.

If you're wondering what comes next, here's the order I'd teach it in:

1. Another song with a manipulative speaker. "Mother Knows Best" from Tangled is the perfect follow-up — Mother Gothel's purpose is the mirror image of Lumiere's. Here's how I teach it.

2. A song with higher stakes and a tougher audience. In "The Other Side" from The Greatest Showman, Barnum has to persuade someone who has every reason to say no. Grab the ready-to-go practice lesson here.

3. Dueling speeches. Two going-into-battle speeches from See let students compare how two speakers handle the same exigence. Rhetorical Analysis Practice: Baba Voss and Queen Maghra

4. A real speech students actually care about. Taylor Swift's NYU commencement address is the bridge from film into nonfiction speeches. Rhetorical Analysis Practice: Taylor Swift's Commencement Address

5. Students build their own arguments. Flip the roles and let them be the speaker. The Spare Change Gameshow is a low-stakes, high-energy way to practice argument.

6. Historical and political speeches. This is where the rhetorical situation gets really layered. Consider Barack Obama's 2020 commencement address, delivered at the request of the graduating seniors — what does that invitation change about his relationship with his audience? Or Elie Wiesel's "The Perils of Indifference," delivered at the White House to an audience that included the President and First Lady. That audience changes everything about how you read it. For more options, here are 20 speeches and texts for introducing SPACE CAT.

Want it all in one place? The SPACE CAT Rhetorical Analysis Complete Toolkit gives you the graphic organizers, practice texts, and writing scaffolds to carry SPACE CAT from this first lesson through a full year of rhetorical analysis — without rebuilding your materials every time you switch texts. You’ll find everything you need to teach the framework from introduction to independent analysis — games, stations, passage practice, assessments, and a full teacher guide included. Whether you're building a unit from scratch or filling in the gaps of one that already exists, this is the resource you'll come back to every single year.

You can also browse every rhetoric resource in my store.

Quick answers to the questions I get most

How long does this lesson take? Two or three class periods if you go deep with each step. If your students have some rhetoric experience already, you can move through it as a single-period overview.

Can I use this with middle school? Yes! The song is familiar, the text is accessible, and the speaker-audience tension is easy to grab onto. Younger students may need more time in steps 3 and 4 — and that's exactly where the time should go.

Is this too basic for AP Language? Not at all. I'd still use it on day one. It's low-stakes enough that students can focus on learning the framework without also wrestling with a dense text. They'll move through it faster, and you can push harder on exigence and tone.

Do I need to show the whole movie? Nope. Just the song scene, with a quick recap beforehand so everyone knows where Belle is in the story.

What if students haven't seen Beauty and the Beast? Even better, honestly. The step 1 recap gives everyone the same starting point, and students who come in fresh often see Lumiere's desperation faster than the ones who grew up singing along.

For department leads and instructional coaches

If your whole department is looking for a shared approach to rhetorical analysis, this is exactly the kind of work I do with schools. My PD helps English departments build rhetorical analysis into year-long inquiry units so it isn't just a two-week stop before the AP exam. Learn more about PD for your school or district.

And if you've ever wondered where rhetorical analysis fits in the bigger picture of how we teach reading, it's the heart of what I call the Why Realm — one of the Four Reading Realms. Watch the free Four Reading Realms training here.

Keep going with rhetorical analysis

• Mastering Rhetorical Analysis: Tools and Techniques for ELA Teaching — my home base for everything rhetoric

• 11 Best Movie Scenes to Introduce Rhetorical Analysis

• Rhetorical Analysis: A "Hands-On" Approach — when you need to shake things up without losing rigor

• 20 Speeches and Texts for Introducing SPACE CAT and Rhetorical Analysis

So now I want to know: what's the first song, scene, or speech your students analyze? Drop it in the comments — I'm always looking for the next desperate candlestick.