Ashraf Rushdy on the Moral Authority of Photography and the Effect It Has Upon A Population's View of a Tragedy

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In 1998 a man named James Byrd was drug from a pickup truck in Texas and dismembered. Ashraf Rushdy wrote an essay to examine the moral authority of photography and the effect it has upon a population’s view of a tragedy. Rushdy’s argument is that in 1955 when Emmett Till was murdered his mother allowed photographs of her son’s mutilated corpse to be shown across the nation. These photographs had a significant effect upon the course of the civil rights movement. Rushdy asks why the photographs of James Byrd were never displayed to the public and provides a compelling answer to this question. He provides the answer through the use of persuasive appeals, diction, and the visual effects provided through the use of photographs throughout the essay.
When first looking at the essay there is a very noticeable aspect to first page of it; that would be the picture of Emmett Till’s deformed body lying bloated and lynched within his casket. The picture strikes an unforgettable image in the reader’s head that is meant to instill the question of how exactly someone could do this to another human being none-the-less a 14 year old teenager. The visual invokes some strong feelings that most people cannot ignore or suppress; those feelings include disgust, anger, fear, and sadness. These feelings are evident in the picture due to the graphic nature of the image and the memories it invokes in readers of past situations they had endured. Being a part of the first page of the essay is what makes this rhetorical device so effective, this puts an image into the reader’s mind of what the African American descent had to endure during the time period and continued to endure for years to come. The image itself had an enormous impact on the civil rights mo...

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...within the headquarters of journalism trying to prevent the world from seeing the cruelties it has to offer by censoring the paper and television making the story seem less than what it actually is. All Rushdy is trying to prove within this article and by using these anecdotes is that by showing the world what is truly happening it will spark an outcry from the people which will eventually lead to a change.
Overall, Rushdy’s essay is laden with a multitude of rhetorical devices which make his essay very effective because it leaves the reader with a lot of emotions. Doing that is the best device in itself because it will leave an impact upon the reader typically being positive because of how it makes the reader feel about the subject matter being discussed. This essay was very efficient of achieving its purpose all because of the many different rhetorical devices.

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