Close Reading Assignment 4

Death in Connecticut
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/death-in-connecticut.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0


In the editorial, Death in Connecticut, the author discusses the Newton, Connecticut elementary school shooting and the push for gun control that accompanies it.  The article appeals to pathos from the reader to emphasizes the importance of gun control through its use of emotional details, rhetorical questions, and dramatic word choice.

The topic of the article, an elementary school shooting, lends itself to a method to draw emotion out of the reader, and the author capitalizes on the fact by emphasizing specific details.  The children killed are described as "little more than babies".  The parents too who "agonized for hours before taking their traumatized children home."  These details provide information that allows the reader to step into the shoes of the parents, waiting to hear about their young child.  In this way, the author appeals to the sympathies of the readers and perhaps try to turn them towards increasing gun control.

Rhetorical questions are also used throughout the editorial as a method of obtaining the reader's agreement in increasing gun control and the tragedy of the shooting.  The beginning of the article asks questions about the children.  "What are their names? What did they dream of becoming? Did they enjoy finger painting? Or tee ball?"  These give life to the children, making them less statistics and more living, breathing humans, whose lives were tragically cut short.  It makes the reader think of them even more as individuals and not simply names or numbers.  In this way, the author appeals still more towards the compassion of the readers and makes his points more understandable.

Finally, the word choice used by the author create a sense of the horrors of shootings and the lack of gun control.  Words like "torn away" and "traumatized" emphasize the horror and tragedy in the shooting and may plant the seed in the reader's mind that something must be done to prevent more of such horrors from occurring.  The stance on continuing the current freedom of gun ownership is debased, describing the Republicans who support that belief as "mired" in their ideology, a word implying stubbornness and entrenched in something distasteful.  Equally condemning is the description of an argument that the teachers would be better off if they had guns as "grotesque".  The automatic connotation of such a word is disgusting and unpalatable.  Such word choice deeply conveys a disgust of the current system and provides support for the author's argument towards gun control.

Through these techniques, the author discusses the tragedy that took place in Newtown, Connecticut and points out society's need for increased gun control in an effort to prevent future shootings.  The editorial argues to push readers to support those who want to make the nation a safer place.