Here is where the rhetor effectively ends the speech, on a somewhat upbeat note (despite the content of the talk), empowering her listeners to take a vested interest in mental health in order to (implicitly) prevent another situation like the one at Columbine.

If we're to apply Burke's rhetorical model to this portion of the artifact, and make use of the five elements of the pentad, then in Sue Klebold's interpretation of the events leading up to her son's death, Dylan's agency lies in the how he committed the acts of the massacre - and here, she remarks it as his finding access to guns, despite her never keeping them in her home.

This is a poignant narrative situated within the artifact, that like others previously mentioned, offers the rhetor's audience of listeners a different perspective on how the rhetor was effected and coped with the events of the massacre.

Here is where the rhetor delivers more anecdotal information to her audience of listeners, allowing them to gain more perspective on who was affected by the massacre at Columbine and how (beyond the shooting victims and their families). The timeframe the rhetor gives the audience enables them to make sense of how long and how frequently she has been suffering since her son’s participation in the shootings and his subsequent suicide. Of rhetoric that relies heavily on narratives, Foss says that “the choice to tell a story in a communicative situation suggests intimacy” (Foss, Sonja K. "Narrative Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. 307-54. Print.). Throughout the speech, Klebold is remarkably open and intimate with her audience of listeners, and in this passage especially, since she details her struggles with her mental health.

One may also think of this as a strong evocation of what’s known as pathos, (an emotional appeal) because of the way that intimacy demands vulnerability, and garners a strong sense of empathy from an audience of listeners.

Foss says that “rhetoric does not simply provide a name for a situation… it also represents a creative strategy for dealing with that situation or for solving the problems inherent in it.” Relying on Burke’s method for theorizing rhetoric usage, Foss goes on to say that when delivering a speech, a rhetor reveals “the worldview… or what Burke calls the terministic screen,” of the rhetor herself, through the use of particular language and vocabulary that constitutes “a reflection, selection, and deflection of reality.” Through the use of cluster criticism, one may sparse out the way that the rhetor imagines the world and the type of impact it has on her rhetoric by looking for “associational clusters” - or, in other words, terms within an artifact that circulate (or cluster around) a central point being made by the rhetor (Foss, Sonja K. “Cluster Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. 65-96. Print.).

In this passage, for example, Klebold speaks openly on the topic of mental illness to her audience before ultimately making the implicit argument that by paying attention to the mental health of our loved ones, we may be able to prevent massacres like the one at Columbine. However, a careful reading of the associational cluster terms surrounding “mental illness” in this passage gives us a clear sense of where she stands on the subject before she even makes her argument: health, violence, misunderstanding, help, destructive, fear, anger, hopelessness, crisis, murder-suicide

The rhetor deconstructs the idea that if a person is well loved, that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't vulnerable to mental illness - thereby deconstructing the idea that only someone who is unloved is capable of committing suicide. This simple "if...then," argument is an effective, logical appeal, and a rhetorical strategy known in Aristotelian rhetorical criticism as relationship; namely, cause and effect ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric).

Following the latter sentence, this is a strong logical appeal through the use of empirical data on suicides in the United States.

In this passage, the rhetor talks about the likelihood of her son's ongoing depression and his reluctance to seek help for it. If we're to look at the associational clusters in this passage, the rhetor gives us a sense of how she imagines his depression felt and why he may not have sought help: perfectionistic, self-reliant, triggering, debased, humiliated, mad, complicated, rage, alienation, vulnerability, fragility

In this passage, the rhetor talks about the decision to commit suicide as one that's decided upon when in a precarious mental state. If we're to look at the associational clusters in this passage, the rhetor gives us a sense of how she interprets the decision to commit suicide as one that comes from a lack of rational thought and a total loss of control: emergency, impaired, self-governance, logic, distorted, pain, reality

If we're to apply Burke's rhetorical model to this portion of the artifact, and make use of the five elements of the pentad, then in Sue Klebold's interpretation of the events leading up to her son's death, the scene is one in which her son, Dylan suffered from "ongoing depression... was perfectionistic and self-reliant and... less likely to seek help from other. he experienced triggering events at... school that left him feeling debased and humiliated and mad." We may then think of the scene as driving the purpose behind Dylan's act - at least from the perspective of the rhetor.

Through the delivery of the speech's first lines, the speaker is subtly invoking pathos - or in other words, an emotional appeal to her audience, based on an Aristotelian model of rhetorical criticism ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). She opens with an appeal to anyone in her audience who can recall the last time they heard the voice of a loved one, and her use of the word "darkness" is deliberate - using it to foreshadow the doom that was to come, but that which she at the time had no knowledge of. It asks the listener to consider her epistemic position on the morning of the massacre. These simple opening statements are an effort to stir empathy in her audience of listeners. As the mother of one of the Columbine shooters, not opening with these lines would have made it difficult for her audience to sympathize with her.

Here, the rhetor invokes logos - or in other words, a logical appeal to her audience, based on an Aristotelian model of rhetorical criticism ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). In delivering her audience mental health statistics, she's able to convey the severity of the mental health crisis in the United States and, perhaps get them to regard it with more seriousness.

If we are to refer to Aristotle's topics of invention, then this would be an appropriate place to mark the rhetor's use of relationship - and in particular, antecedent and consequence - to invite her audience to consider that the event of the massacre was am indirect consequence of her son's suicidal thinking. An Aristotelian description of relationship explicates that "what follows may not be cause by what preceded it, but will naturally flow from... earlier conditions" ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). While not explicitly invoking that there is a direct correlation between her son's suicidal thinking and the massacre, she marks his suicidal thinking as the antecedent that ultimately had a role in informing the consequence.

If we're to apply Burke's rhetorical model to this portion of the artifact, and make use of the five elements of the pentad, then in Sue Klebold's interpretation of the events leading up to her son's death, "his desire to die" would be his primary purpose that drove him to commit the act (i.e., the massacre).

The rhetor, yet again, invokes pathos in the form of energia - a term that refers to the vigor of an emotional expression ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). Her use of "with all of my heart," marks said "vigor" and thereby strengthens the appeal.

The rhetor continues to evoke pathos, or in other words, what Aristotle would call emotional appeals to her audience of listeners. Here, she invokes a particular figure of pathos known as adynaton - or in other words, "the expression of the inability of expression" - an emotional appeal in which the rhetor remarks on their inability to put something into words on the premise of its sheer significance.

Aristotelian rhetorical criticism would mark this as a clear use of division - the topic of invention that is more or less "a method of amplifying or of clarifying by describing a whole and its constituent parts, or the parts that make up a whole" ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). The rhetor describes what will follow: the outlining of "three challenges" she is met with when talking to strangers who didn't know her before the massacre.

The rhetor, again invokes epiplexis, a figure of pathos in the form of a rhetorical question that expresses lamentation and/or grief over the situation she's describing ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric).

Here, the rhetor offers her audience more anecdotal information nestled in an emotional appeal. Foss argues that “narratives involve audiences in ways that other forms of discourse do not because they are intersubjectively sharable” (Foss, Sonja K. "Narrative Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. 307-54. Print). The rhetor describes a sharable situation that those in her audience who are parents may find relatable: their role in their children becoming "healthy, responsible adults," being their number one priority, and the tragedy of feeling like a failure when they don't live up to their potential and expectations.

The rhetor continues to evoke pathos, or in other words, what Aristotle would call emotional appeals to her audience of listeners. Here, she invokes a particular figure of pathos known as epiplexis - or in other words, a rhetorical question that expresses grief, or even appears as a chatisement to oneself ("The Forest of Rhetoric." Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric). How could she not know of her son's intentions, and what does it say about her involvement as a mother? By being open about her implicit shame, she offers the audience a different perspective on Columbine and invites them to share in her grief as a mother.

The rhetor's choice of language here is important, as it will serve to bolster her argument later on in the speech that advocates for increased awareness of mental health to prevent more mass shootings like the one at Columbine.

Here is where the speaker provides anecdotal information that puts the first few lines of the speech into context, and is a primary example of narrative rhetorical criticism. Foss says that “Narratives organize the stimuli of our experience so that we can make sense of the people, places, events, and actions of our lives. They allow us to interpret reality because they help us decide what a particular experience is about and how the various elements of our experience are connected… Narrative, then, constitutes “both a way of knowing about and a way of participating in the social world”” (Foss, Sonja K. "Narrative Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. 307-54. Print). Having this section follow the speech’s opening lines is a conscious decision by the rhetor, and marks a sequence of events so that her audience can make sense of what's already happened as she delivers her larger message in relationship to it.

Pentadic criticism, developed by Kenneth Burke, “gives to the analysis of human motivation through terms derived from the study of drama.” Burke believed that in our deployment of rhetoric, we “constitute and present a particular view of our situation, just as a play creates and presents a certain world or situation inhabited by characters in the play.” In the field of journalism, for example, journalists deliver information by way of answering what we’ve come to understand as the most important questions when passing on knowledge and telling a story: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Rhetors, in less than explicit terms, do something similar — in their quest to imbue their listeners with knowledge or newfound understanding of a situation, they do so “using the five basic elements of a drama—act, agent, agency, scene and purpose." It’s these five elements that fulfill what Burke calls the pentad. Rhetors "use rhetoric to constitute and present a particular view of… [the] situation, just as a play creates and presents a certain world or situation inhabited by characters in the play” (Foss, Sonja K. “Pentadic Criticism." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2009. 355-86. Print).

To apply this to this particular artifact, we would need to identify the pentad that the rhetor (Sue Klebold) has constructed, and ask how it informs our larger understanding of the goal of her rhetoric. This selection in particular appears to be Sue Klebold’s understanding of the act (the killing of 12 students and a teacher) and the agent(s) (her son, Dylan and his friend, Eric) — here, she names two agents because of the nature of the situation she’s describing, but as the speech goes on and we’re able to uncover the remaining elements of the pentad, we’ll find that she consistently refers to a sole agent (her son, Dylan).