Friedan's magazine report "The Problem That Has No Name" is a piece of expository prose. Here, the writer objectively discusses the issue and the situation, and reports different people's ideas, while she doesn't give her own views. The writer acts as a camera and tries to be as objective as possible. Her report is narrated from first person objective point of view.
The title of the text serves as a means of provoking the reader's attention. It talks about an unnamable problem and this is strange enough to arouse different question's in the mind of the reader such as: "What is the problem?"; "Is there any such problem with no name?"; … etc. Therefore, the reader is persuaded to read the article in order to answer his own questions. Moreover, the reader gets more interested when, after finishing the first paragraph, he realizes that even then he has no idea what the problem is.
There is no sign of the writer's personal views in the article; therefore, she is objective. Her report looks like a camera view. Her camera starts a journey from her own office to different parts of the country. She traces the problem everywhere. The direct quotations prevent her report from being subjective and it remains objective and documentary. At last, the text ends open ended and without any conclusion. Thus, it leaves the reader to decide about the true nature of the problem.
She is also indirect which is the best way to effectiveness. She does not directly state that the problem is widespread. On the contrary, she implicitly shows the range of the problem by moving from the old ranch houses in the country to modern apartments in big cities.
This report could simply be changed into a narrative if there was a tightly knit plot with certain characters shown through a series of events and dialogues instead of scenes and quotations.
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