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Karina Ruiz-Diaz

English 103

Professor Granillo

December 4, 2019

Penalty of Love, Life in Prison

Rachael Graham Lussos claims “a cake decorated to celebrate a birthday or other event—

is an example of epideictic rhetoric and a potential medium for activism” (Graham 1). These

days you cannot have a birthday, wedding, or celebrate good times without a cake, but the cake

means more than it being a tasty pastry to share with everyone. Let us analyze some of the

rhetorical and semiotic aspect behind a particular cake, “Prisoner of Your Love” cake. The cake

is a plain, white two tier cake and has pink broken hearts, pink and purple flowers, and a big pink

heart behind the couple at the top of the cake with prison bars coming down in the middle of the

heart. The figurines of the couple include a bride standing tall with her back to the groom with

one hand on the prison bar and the groom sits sad with a ball and chain strapped to one of his

ankles. The problem with the cake is that its take is a dark turn to what is supposed to be a happy

moment in a couple’s relationship in taking this important step of marriage and it does this in

through pathos, but in logos and ethos the cake presents what the ideal marriage looks as

structured by society. The cake is pretty and girly in its presentation which makes the bride the

focus of the cake, but the features of the cake tell the story of what a marriage might mean for a

bachelor and it may not exactly be happiness. Wedding cakes tells a story of two people happily

coming together and joining forces in life until death do them part, but this cake is portraying

marriage as a way to “tie down” a man and how he is a prisoner of the woman’s love.
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In a way this “wedding cake” is most like a cake made for a bachelor party and the role

of the cake is a message that marriage is like a prison. The audience of this cake is the groom-to-

be, maybe for a bachelor party that his friends are throwing for him. This cake can cause

insecurity in the groom-to-be about going through with the marriage. On the cake there are pink

hearts all around, but if you look at the hearts a little closer it can be seen that they are in fact

broken hearts. In the textbook “Critical Theory Today,” Lois Tyson talks about how “semiotics

examines the ways linguistic and nonlinguistic objects and behaviors operate symbolically to

“tell” us something” (Tyson 204). It is a fact that hearts (the symbol) are characters that stand for

the human heart organ, which people believe is where the feelings of love derive from. This cake

has broken hearts on it. This can be interpreted as a sadness for either the groom “losing his

freedom” and devoting his life to one person, his future wife-to-be. This could also mean the loss

of a friend for a group of guys that are always together. When someone gets married, priorities

change and people change. A broken heart can also mean that someone in the relationship is not

happy or even in love; very important in a marriage to have both happiness and love. The

symbolic hearts have been around for a while and because they are a lot easier to draw or with a

push of the heart emoji on electronics it has become so easy to express love these days, but it is

not as strong or truly heartfelt sometimes and many times misused. Someone might be in love for

a couple weeks, 6 months, 3 years, or 20 years whether in a relationship and/or married, but

nothing can guarantee the loss or absence of love from one or both parties at any given time. The

heart symbol plays a very important role in society and on this cake it is displaying the opposite

of being in love and looking forward to marriage, so although the hearts on the cake are

representing a negative message, it serves as support for the message on the cake which is

“Prisoner of Your Love”.

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The cake has ethos present in the sense that it is ethical to do right by marrying the

significant other and solely committing to that person for the rest of their lives. The fact that this

is a wedding cake serves as a reminder that marriage is a crucial step in a relationship and in

society’s eyes. Lois Tyson claims “Despite the very different ritual forms in which different

cultures express important aspects of community life, it seems that all human cultures have some

codified process of, for example, mate selection, kinship ties, and initiation into adulthood

(Tyson 203).” No matter where on the Earth someone is, marriage all around the globe is an

ethical practice between couples. Marriage seals the deal in relationships and the culture behind

it is similar anywhere on the planet. The message is targeted at unmarried couples and even

single people. The cake argues that marriage is the end game for any relationship and that it

looks like this wedding cake. Marriage is an accepted and ethical ritual worldwide and this is

what helps the cake support its argument.

The semiotic of the couple figurines at the top of the cake can be considered that logic

behind what society says is a marriage; between a male and a female. Jonathan Silverman and

Dean Rader, authors of “The World Is A Text,” state that it is “important thing to realize,

however, is that our culture has come to a common understanding that a number of random signs

and symbols—a cross, a red octagon, a round green light, a stick figure with the outline of a

skirt—stand in for or symbolize specific concepts” (Silverman 13). The cake assumes that the

audience will agree that in fact a couple should be a man and a woman. This is logical because

by the nature and in order to reproduce a couple must be a male and a female. It assumes that all

marriages are heterosexual couples. And it is simply through the couple’s figurines at the top of

the cake that the speaker structures this logic, just putting it out there. In many cultures, if not all,

due to the influence of religious beliefs lead many people to believe that this is the only
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legitimate way for a marriage to be seen as correct in the eyes of God, or gods (depending on the

religion). But, nonetheless, similar almost all around the world.

The fallacy this cake presents is the false dilemma fallacy. The false dilemma fallacy is

when one person is presented with two choices, but in reality there are more options as well but

not presented to the person as alternatives or in some cases maybe not given more than two

choices. The cake could argue that a man must marry a woman or not marry at all. Maybe the

hidden message behind the “Prisoner of Your Love” is the story of a man who happens to not be

in love and is forced to conform to society’s idea of getting married and commit to one person

for the rest of his life and maybe he is not ready for that kind of obligation. The man on the cake

has a ball chained to his ankle and the expression on his face is filled with sorrow. The fallacy

interferes with the cakes original message that a marriage is the step taken by a happy couple and

is an intended commitment for the rest of the couple’s life on Earth. Today’s more open minded

society, it can be seen that in fact there can be couples that are together but not exclusive,

couples who live together and are not married, married couples that are forced by certain

situations to be together (family affairs and benefits), happy married couples, toxic relationships

and marriages, and several other types of relationships/marriages. Marriage is not something to

take lightly, but with the existence of divorce, as a way out of such a commitment, marriage has

lost some of the value there is behind it. In a way this cake is poking fun of the idea of a man

being “tied down to one person” in a marriage, but wedding cakes are supposed to represent

celebration of two people joining each other in life through sacred matrimony; two opposing

ideals are being displayed in this one cake as it is cut into and examined carefully.

The cake is making a statement about marriages, but it is easy to misinterpreted or

overlooked as it does this through ethos, pathos, and logos. Not a lot of people will look past the
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“funny” image of what marriage will look like. There is so many directions this cake’s

arguments can go but people have to be a little more open minded and see the endless

possibilities. Generalizations about what society thinks a marriage looks like are derived by the

design of this cake. In a world that is constantly changing it is important to look at those changes

and at the very least acknowledge them even when there is disagreement and most of all respect

them. This cake has many ideas on marriages and it should only be seen with an open mind and

not harassed or persecuted.

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Works Cited

Graham Lusssos, Rachael. “Have Your Epideitic Rhetoric, and Eat It Too.”

Silverman, Jonathan, et al. The World Is a Text: Writing about Visual and Popular Culture.
Broadview Press, 2018.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.