Anybody can write and persuade a certain audience, based on how the writer wants their audience to look at the situation. In Steve Earle’s essay “A Death in Texas”, he persuades his readers that he wants to believe that Johnathan Wayne Nobles was rehabilitated. In the essay, Nobles was a changed man within faith from becoming a religious man within the prison walls. Prison guards learned to trust Nobles with his quick-witted charm and friendliness. Steve persuaded himself that Johnathan was a changed man from the words that they had exchanged over the years on paper. Reality states that no matter how much someone changed in the present, it doesn’t change what they have done in the past. Earle describes in the essay “There he will be pumped full of chemicals that will collapse his lungs and stop his heart forever” (Earle 73). He’s persuading the audience with horrid emotion with facts of a lethal injection that will happen to Johnathan. What Earle doesn’t describe is how gruesomely Johnathan’s murders were. In this world everyone has a chance to know right from wrong, even if someone was brought up wrong in the society. Johnathan was not rehabilitated, maybe at one point accepted his past, but he was still a murderer and a …show more content…
Nobles growing up did not have best home life a child should have. Still that leaves no excuse to murder two young innocent women and almost a young man. Some people argue that Johnathan was not in his right mind because he was high on drugs. In a way, it’s like saying someone made him do it. It is possible for anything or anybody to make someone else actually do something they didn’t want to? If the murders were premeditated, the drugs could have been a cover up. Nobles knowing, he might get caught, would make people feel like he only did it because of drugs were in his system. This goes back to people craving attention and doing anything to get
The book Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?, written by independent journalist and private investigator Ethan Brown, tells the horrific true story of the bayou town of Jennings, Louisiana located in the heart of the Jefferson Davis parish. During the four year duration between 2005 and 2009, the town of Jennings was on edge after the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women were found in the filthy canals and swamps. The victims became known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” For years, local law enforcement suspected a serial killer, and solely investigated the murders based on that theory alone. The victims were murdered in varying manors, but when alive they all shared many commonalities and were connected to
Persuasion is a natural method many people use to influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors in a situation. Many include, bribing parents to buy clothes to even lending someone money. Either way, people all over the world use words or phrases to convince or sway a person into believing them. Just as many people have used rhetorical appeals to persuade someone, Anthony also uses the rhetorical appeals; heartfelt pathos, questionable logos and evident ethos in William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar to convince his audience that Caesar was not ambitious and that Caesar was innocent
The death penalty, a subject that is often the cause of major controversy, has become an integral part of the southern justice system in recent years. The supporters and opponents of this issue have heatedly debated each other about whether or not the death penalty should be allowed. They back their arguments with moral, logical, and ethical appeals, as seen in the essays by Ed Koch and David Bruck. Although both authors are on opposite sides of the issue, they use the same ideas to back up their argument, while ignoring others that they don’t have evidence for. Koch and Bruck’s use of moral, logical, and ethical persuasion enhance both of their arguments and place a certain importance on the issue of the death penalty, making the readers come to the realization that it is more than just life and death, or right and wrong; there are so many implications that make the issue much more 3-dimensional. In dealing with politics and controversial issues such as capital punishment.
While reading essays, it is usually quite simple to notice when the author is attempting to make the reader agree with what they believe. As shown in “Bring Back Flogging” Jacoby makes convincing points to the reader to believe that capital punishment isn’t working and that we should bring back flogging because of the social problems it is causing. Jacoby uses a couple of different ways to convince to the reader, such as when he says, “Meanwhile, the price, of keeping criminals in cages is appalling – a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year”. When reading this line in the essay, you then start thinking about how much money these inmates are taking from tax dollars when it could be going to other things that benefit us such as education. One of the most
In “The Death Penalty” (1985), David Bruck argues that the death penalty is injustice and that it is fury rather than justice that compels others to “demand that murderers be punished” by death. Bruck relies on varies cases of death row inmates to persuade the readers against capital punishment. His purpose is to persuade readers against the death penalty in order for them to realize that it is inhuman, irrational, and that “neither justice nor self-preservation demands that we kill men whom we have already imprisoned.” Bruck does not employ an array of devices but he does employ some such as juxtaposition, rhetorical questions, and appeals to strengthen his argument. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of supporters of capital punishment such as Mayor Koch.
The board also uses rhetorical techniques to persuade the reader to agree with the opinion presented in this article. For example, the main rhetorical device used is pathos, an appeal to the reader’s emotions. By telling the story of two young men whose lives have been metaphorically taken away, and almost literally, the board shows that the justice system is flawed and there’s no guarantee that everyone on death row is actually guilty, this
In the beginning of this excerpt when Synge relates the anecdote of the Connaught man who killed his father, he suggests that this experience relates the “primitive feeling of these people…that a man will not do wrong unless he is under the influence of a passion which is as irresponsible as a storm on the sea…[and] they can see no reason why he should be dragged away and killed by the law.” While this seems to be an accurate assumption for the majority of cases, this is a potentially dangerous statement. The premise of this argument rests on the notion that the accused murderer feels remorse and is forever changed by their action. Yet this argument falls apart and would be frankly naive if the person who committed the crime is deranged and knowingly and unreservedly killed the person. If this were
I truly believe that Jonathan Nobles was rehabilitated. At the beginning of the story his behavior was terrible. He would cut himself with a razor blade, but not in an attempt to kill
Imagine yourself in a poorly lit, four-by-four concrete block. No window to look out and gaze upon life outside of the place where you have been sentenced to die. The only objects in your possession are a small television set, a needle thin mattress, and a pillow that is next to useless. But you feel grateful; because not everyone gets a mattress or pillow in their cell. You’re considered one of the lucky ones. However, three days a week you can step outside into your own cage connected to the back of your cell. With all of that in mind, finding a purpose for your life is exceptionally hard to find in prison alone, but in solitary confinement? Whether your sentence gets overturned or not, you will have to live with the death row phenomenon the rest of your life.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is unified by various themes throughout the work. The plot is driven by two major themes in particular: honor and ritual. Honor is the motivation for several of the characters to behave in certain manners, as honor plays a key role in Colombian culture. There were repercussions for dishonorable acts and similarly, there were rewards for honorable ones. Also, ritual is a vital element within the work that surrounds the story line’s central crime: Santiago Nasar’s death.
Karr 's famous epigram plus ça change, plus c 'est la même chose stuck with me throughout reading Stephen Ash 's A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War. In 1866, during the uneasy aftermath of the Civil War, Memphis was swept by an orgy of racial violence. How did it start? Armed white policemen sparked a confrontation with a group of young black men – many of whom were Union veterans. Sound familiar? By the time the situation was brought under control, the grim tally was: 46 African-Americans and three whites killed, 75 blacks injured, five black women raped, 100 blacks robbed, 96 homes destroyed, as well as four black churches and twelve black schools burned to the ground. Of the African-American
In the essay, Death and Justice, by Edward I. Koch makes his argument of why he supports capital punishment by the examination of his opposition’s arguments that are most frequently heard. Koch claims the death penalty is just and supports his claims by rebutting the arguments. Koch believes that capital punishment is a mean to uphold justice, until another form of punishments are found as a better solution. Other punishment would be inadequate and therefore unjust for the crimes that deprive someone else life.. Robert Lee Willie and Joseph Carl Shaw committed murders before the murder, they were executed for. If theses individuals had received the death penalty in the beginning, than maybe an 18 year old woman, and two teenagers could still
He probably didn’t intend to kill JonBenet but out of great anger and jealousy it happened.
Sherene H. Razack’s article The Murder of Pamela George introduces the idea of colonial violence within a spatialized justice system by exploring the trial of a murder of a native woman who worked as a prostitute.
There are many ways to decide what makes a man guilty. In an ethical sense, there is more to guilt than just committing the crime. In Charles Brockden Browns’ Wieland, the reader is presented with a moral dilemma: is Theodore Wieland guilty of murdering his wife and children, even though he claims that the command came from God, or is Carwin guilty because of his history of using persuasive voices, even though his role in the Wieland family’s murder is questionable? To answer these questions, one must consider what determines guilt, such as responsibility, motives, consequences, and the act itself. No matter which view is taken on what determines a man’s guilt, it can be concluded that Wieland bears the fault in the murder of Catharine Wieland and her children.