Is exposing young children to violence in literature beneficial to their development? The article, “Does Violence Have a Place in Children’s Literature?”, by Megan Creasey delivers insight on how violence placed in children 's stories can be beneficial to their development. Creasey appeals to logic by providing statistics on why violence in literature can be a good thing. However, the article was lacking in diversity of point of views. Sources used by Creasey, compiled a clear image on the pros of violence in literature but, not on the cons. The information itself was well presented and coincide with Creasey’s thesis to show beneficial traits of having violence in children’s literature.
By integrating paraphrases throughout the article, Creasey gives the reader a background on how long violence has been present in literature. Evidence of children’s stories containing violence date back to Victorian and didactic literature. While it has been present in writing for ages, “It’s only in recent decades that the place of violence in children 's books has been so
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Creasey wrote about many different topic points pertaining to how violence should be delivered to children. While most pieces of literature pertaining to violence has been deemed worthwhile, it still is important to monitor how much violence children are exposed to. As humans, violence will never be fully eradicated from our primal behaviors. So it is best to make sure children learn about how to handle violence and find other ways to deal with those situations, instead of going through life thinking violence is the only solution. Creasey’s points stayed concise throughout the article, showing us how learning about violence in a controlled environment, like literature, can benefit the child throughout their
Geoffrey Canada, the author of Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun; A Personal History of Violence, grew up and worked his entire life near or in the underclass society. Through his keen observation on behavior of children in these regions, he has noticed how with the introduction to guns, in particular to children created even more dangerous neighborhoods. Throughout his lifetime in New York, he tells us that violence has changed to be less organized and the social stability of the children is tested with (fire) power that they are too young to fully understand, it was an evolutionary decent. His observations on the violence that children can commit to each other parallels well with fictional story Lord of the Flies written by Nobel prize winning writer, William Golding. Golding, like Canada, looks what kind of environment is needed for violence to prevail in children. Although Golding’s 1954 book Lord of the Flies is fiction, it describes our current impoverished America’s epidemic on violence very well.
It has been happened frequently in today’s society that parents and teachers try to keep children away from violent media. Children are taught that violent is not right and dangerous. In the article, “Violent Media Is Good for Kids”, Gerard Jones asserts that allowing children to violent media instead of banned it can bring great benefit to children during their growing stage. By watching violent media, children learn to overcome fear, control the rage and prove the real self from the superheroes in the story. Jones believes that violent entertainment can assistance children to fulfill emotional and development need. In my opinion, Jones develops a persuasive argument because of his strong emotions, considerable evidences and reasonable assumptions.
Violent Media is Good for Kids, by Gerard Jones, is an article which makes many claims to support the argument that a controlled amount of violence could be beneficial for a young, developing child. Even though the topic of this article can be controversial, the claims serve to support the argument in many noteworthy ways. It is written in such a way that it tells a story, starting when the author was a child and working its way to adulthood. In this case, the author uses, what I believe to be just the correct amount of rhetorical strategy, and fulfills his goal of writing the article. This argument is interesting and, at the same time, effective.
Guns do protect us, but they can also be very dangerous to us if used improperly, for instants when a teenage boy went to school and shot one of his classmates looking for revenge against a librarian. Books on the other hand aren’t as dangerous to us, but they can put thoughts in children’s heads if the book is very graphic. There is no need to h...
How is it that in the year 2016 violence is not only increasing but is also being accepted at a startling rate? Most teenagers in modern days believe “that it was acceptable for a boyfriend to act aggressively towards his partner in certain circumstances.” (Statistics). If teenagers today believe that acting aggressively towards your partner is okay, will they grow to believe that other forms of violence are acceptable as well? Will they create a world where domestic violence, rape, and murder are “no big deal”?
A question that arises in almost any medium of art, be it music, film or literature, is whether or not the depiction of violence is merely gratuitous or whether it is a legitimate artistic expression. There can be no doubt that Michael Ondaatje's long poem The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a violent work, but certain factors should be kept in mind before passing it off as an attempt to shock and titillate; certainly, the poem does both of these, but they are not the primary purpose of the work. For one thing, social context needs to be considered; Billy lived in the "Wild West", a time associated with range wars, shoot-outs and great train robberies. The entire legend of Billy the Kid has been built around his criminal activities and notorious reputation; indeed, the more popular this myth becomes, the more people he is accused of having murdered. If anything, it was a cultural fascination with violence that "created" the legend, perhaps even more so than anything the "real" Billy ever did. Michael Ondaatje comments on this phenomenon and actually offers an alternative vision of who Billy the Kid was; perhaps he was not just a blood-thirsty killer but a man who, due to circumstance and human nature, was continually being pushed over the edge. Ondaatje is more concerned with the motivations behind the acts of violence than the acts of violence themselves: "A motive? some reasoning we can give to explain all this violence. Was there a source for all this? yup -" (54). If they shock, it is to shock the readers out of complicity and encourage them to think about the nature of violence and their own capacity for it.
In “Violent Media is Good for Kids” Gerard Jones introduces us to his fearful and lonesome childhood. He lived in a world where he was taught to be the violence fearing, and passive boy his parents wanted him to be. But, when one of his mother’s students gave him a Marvel comic book, his fearfulness was transformed into inspiration. He found a way to escape these discouraging feelings through the “stifled rage and desire for power” (Jones 285) that he had newly found. The popular comic book hero “The Hulk” freed him from his passive and lonely persona. Throughout the article he cites his testimonies and the testimonies of others as examples; and shows how they used violence as a positive realm for “overcoming powerlessness.” (Jones 287) Ultimately, Jones is trying to convey the message that violent media can provide kids with psychological tools for coping with the problems that they face as they grow. Although there are slight hints of biased evidence, “Violent Media is Good for Kids” should be considered for the top prize for persuasive essays.
Kellerman, Jonathan. Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1999. Print.
In “Violent Media Is Good for Kids,” Gerard Jones states that violence is good for children. Even with all the bad things people have said about the media and the effect of violence on kids, it has helped many kids reveal their feelings and their fears. In Jones article, he uses his own experience as an example of himself when he was a kid. Also, he uses his son and other kids experience as an example. Most kids use their imagination to pretend to be a protagonist they like. From reading this article it has helped me understand more that not all media violence are harmful for children. Violent media have helped kids express their feelings in a good way. With my own experience as a kid, I can relate to Jones experience. In his essay he uses diction, tone, organization and examples.
The reasons behind the rare violent outbursts of children remain some sort of a mystery. As we saw in Kip Kenkel’s story, it is easy for kids today to get wrapped up in violent popular culture. Today, extremely violent movie scenes and music lyrics about murder and violence plague children.
This paper will discuss the American society’s views on the ethics of violence from the eyes of a group of young black men and women whose observation of American ethics was questioned based on the interpretation of the people who are processing the violence. In the article Ethical Violence written by Dale Campbell, he questions Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian who was murdered during WWII, and his theory about flexibility in moral law:
As a culture, again with religious fundamentalist and perhaps politically-correct feminist exceptions, we pretty much take these literary forms for granted in terms of their violent and seemingly antisocial content. Parents lovingly read their children to sleep with images of forced drudgery, painful mutilations, and vengeful retribution. Teachers and preachers alike use these quasi-historical and metaphorical tales of aggression and hostility to inspire and enlighten. Little thought, if any, is given to the possibility that we are putting dangerous ideas into the heads of our youth that will result in violent displays of antisocial mayhem. And, in fact, there seems to be little evidence that this true. For the most part, our children seem to have a healthy relationship to these stories in which the violence and sexuality does tend to help th...
In wake of the mass shooting in Orlando Florida, the United States is faced with a nationwide dilemma. Violence has taken over this country in ways that would seem unfathomable to citizens in Canada or almost anywhere in the United Kingdom. Why is there so much killing within this country? It is often said that the youth is the future, so it’s only right to say that the youth of the past is causing this violence in the present. A child’s upbringing definitely has some effect on who they become when they are older. Fairy tales are a part of most children’s lives and as they become adults those tales are still somewhere in their mind. After reading the Brothers Grimm’s Tales versions of “Snow White” and “Bluebeard”, it is evident that these tales constantly use the theme of death to show readers how violence can solve one’s problems.
Violence in Things Fall Apart In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe uses violence as a means to portray the struggle between change and tradition. A scene which accurately captures this struggle within the novel is the murder of Ikemefuna. Within in the scene the reader is both exposed to the traditions of Umuofia and the Ibo culture as well as, the struggle and moral hardships these traditions place on the people of the tribe.
...onditions that ensure an adequate counterbalance increasing consumption in some cases, end up having a negative effect on children. Children learn best through demonstration followed by imitation, with rewards for doing things the right way. While not all are affected the same way, it can be said that, in general, violence in the media affects attitudes, values and behaviors of users. You run the risk that children end up understanding that it is reasonably practicable to resort to violence. The fear is that the models of aggressive behavior can be considered suitable. Thus, in an investigation, a good proportion of children (third) defined as normal acts of violence they had seen him mightily little. It is not; here is a risk of direct imitation, but rather a change in terms of reference: where extreme violence appears to be normal any more light may seem harmless.