Analysis Of Gerard Jones's Essay Violent Media Is Good For Kids

Sara Sharif
English 112
Megan Bushar
03/26/14
Violent Media is Good for Kids
Gerard Jones' essay, "Violent Media is Good for Kids," has an epic tone that is straight out of the comic books that he writes. It is a passionate, well-written appeal to pathos that should be very effective at grabbing the attention of his readers. In the course of developing this appeal, he also includes appeals to both logos and pathos, making his argument something more than a simple tug on the heartstrings. Though not without its problems, this essay presents a strong argument in favor of the benefits of violent media such as comic books. Recent events have driven the debate over violence into the center of the national attention once again. There are many arguments

It will speak most to people who suffered from similar problems themselves, or who know somebody who does. In other words, it will establish the most sympathetic bonds with those who are most inclined to agree with his argument already. This approach is not as likely to sway those who are already inclined to hold the opposing point of view as much. The fact that the author has a strong bias in favor of such violent media is obvious: he establishes it in the first paragraph. This does not invalidate his argument, as his argument is partly a description of how he arrived at those views in the first place. However, it will cause some people who are instinctively inclined to disagree with him to dismiss the entirety of his argument out of

Although it is not intended to be a logical argument, the logical problems that it suffers from provide easy fodder for opponents to use to tear it down. Specifically, the essay seems to commit the fallacy of the lonely fact. Although the conclusions that he draws are sweeping, applying to all children, the sample he uses is actually very small. He relates a few personal stories. He relates the opinions of people who have studied the subject. Compared to the size of the group in the conclusion, all the children in the world, this is an incredibly small sample. It can easily lead to accusations of cherry picking by opponents of his thesis. His argument would have been much stronger if he had been able to include the results of some analysis of relevant statistics taken from large sample populations. These facts could easily be incorporated, via summary, without interrupting the overall flow of the essay or its emotional