Sunday, October 9, 2011
Close Reading 2: In This Rape Center, the Patient was 3
In This Rape Center, the Patient was 3, touches on the difficult knowledge of child rape.
Nicholas Kristof recounts his experiences in an African rape treatment center located in Sierra Leone. Though he presents some great substantive information, he still manages to tastefully surface his subtle disapproval of child rape through the gravity of the topic. He coordinates all the aspects of DIDLS to illustrate all the grim aspects of rape, consequently revealing his opposed viewpoint of rape.
When considering diction, we can easily connect it with his language as the two aspects sort of play off of each other. His diction choice includes words like "crisis", "staggering," and "epidemic" to convey that this is really no laughing matter. These words together than provide for his overall quite serious language as he progresses on about child rape.
He uses quite shocking imagery, further enhanced by his use of detail. Instead of just telling the stories of all the rapes that he has witness, he makes it clear how victimized these poor young girls are. He uses the painful details of all the consequences these young girls have to face, ranging from losing weight and fever to death "of internal injuries sustained" from a rape (Kristof). His detail also incorporates the awfully young ages of the girls, the youngest being only 2 and a half months old. Furthermore, he includes the details of how unjustified the legal systems are to make the reading audience even more appalled at the situation. The way he presents this sullen image definitely shows his large objections to these rapes.
But Kristof doesn't stop there with his writing. Syntactically, Kristov overwhelms his audience with long flowing sentences. These sentences often have more than just one clause, and contain numerous coordinating conjunctions. He then combines these long sentences into long paragraphs for an even heavier emphasis of not only his writing but his topic in general.
In conclusion, Kristof subtly uses all the facets of DIDLS to convey his opinions against child rape in Africa. He masterfully combines diction with language and imagery with detail to integrate his own personal views into an article that actually proves to be pretty informative.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A powerful article and equally powerful analysis. Excellent work, I have to say, your structure throughout this entry flows much better in comparison to some of the other entires I have seen. Keep up the good work, I feel that as we continue with these Close Readings, we will only become stronger with each of the aspects of DIDLS.
ReplyDeleteIf that first paragraph is an introduction, its thesis needs to be changed from “all the aspects of DIDLS” to the ones that you specifically address in your essay.
ReplyDeleteI agree that diction and language are very closely related. In fact, I often have trouble keeping the two separate.
I definitely agree with you on the author’s effective use of details. His incorporation of all of those details definitely brought me shock and awe towards the rape in Africa. I definitely understood that he is very against it, from the author’s details. I think that it’s important to separate details and imagery, but I agree with your decision to put them together because sometimes it’s just too difficult to differentiate between the two.
When you discuss syntax, I would really love to see an example sentence. Right now, you just have a statement, with nothing to support it. Your reader may choose not to believe you…
Overall, good job. You answered the question, and analyzed the required number of aspects of DIDLES. Just be sure to provide examples for all of your points to support your statements.
Nice analysis!! I agree on the specific DIDLS that you chose, they were the most pronounced in the passage. However, Amir mentioned it too, but make sure you don't mention that he uses all DIDLS, if youre only going to elaborate on 4 of the 5. Throughout the piece, I kept waiting for syntax, but it never came. That's my only comment! Nice job!
ReplyDelete