Rhetorical Analysis of The Gerard Jones Essay “Violent Media is Good for Kids” PDF

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English 102 Rhetorical Analysis of The Gerard Jones Essay “Violent Media is Good for Kids” Writer, Gerard Jones, in his narrative essay, “Violent media is good for kids,” argues that violent media has some benefits for kids growth and development. His purpose is to emphasize that violent media “helps hundreds of people for every one it’s hurt, and that it can help far more if we learn to use it well”. He adopts a sympathetic tone to construct his essay in order to manipulate young people and parents who have prejudice about media violent. Jones begins his essay by demonstrating his emotionally struggle childhood with violent media. In order to convince his audience how strongly Marvel Comic changed the conflict between his desires for violent media and the conception that violent media is wrong, and it freed his fear in paragraph 4 as well as it contributed to his writing career in paragraph 5. He attracts his reader sentiment in paragraph 1 by indicating a picture of himself as a nice withdrawn child controlled by his parents wish, whom “ not trusting the violent world of the late 1960s, build a wall between him and the crudest elements of Americans pop culture”. In addition, following his childhood story, Jones provides information about his own son’s experience of overcoming the fear of claiming the tree in paragraph 6 to reinforce how beneficial violent media are to kids. These evidences build a valid syllogism due to the cause and effect relationship between kids, fear, and violent media. That is violent media removes fear. Kids have their own fear when they grow up. Therefore, if kids use violent media while they grow up, they will get rid of their own fear.

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Jones cites an opposing argument in paragraph 9 which he agrees with the perception that is children need to experience those characteristics considered to be violent that are “fear, greed, power-hunger, rage” to “reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood.” His source of this supporting argument is specific enough based on his demonstrating of Melanie Moore’s quotes. Due to the fact that Moore is not only a ph.D psychologist expert has been studying children emotional and development needs, but she is also a parent who has her own experience with a daughter which Jones mentions in paragraph 10. Therefore, this supporting evidence that he made is quite convincing. In paragraph 11, although Jones’s support minor ideas are valid, his major premise isn’t reasonable and sound. He successfully develops the ideas of pop culture plays an important role in kids healthy development by suggesting that “superhero stories help kids to negotiate the conflict between the inner self and the public self”, and the violent part “helps children learn to push back against a modern culture that cultivate fear and teaches dependency”. However, the statement of “even the trashiest pop-culture story can have it own development function” that he makes is too strong and unclear. Jones’s arrangement ideas in paragraph 12 is a bit confusing due to his week supporting idea. Despite his effort of drawing attention to the opinion that violent assists kids to pass their fear and the sound syllogism in the first supporting main idea, his second supporting idea is not a strong statement. His syllogism between kids and rage is reasonable and sound because of his effective establishment the relationship of violent is a tool of mastering kids rage, and kids are obviously possess rage. Therefore, rage master kids to be strong enough to “resist greater threat”. On the other hand, Jones uses a contrast information in the second supporting idea which is “but

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rage is also the emotion our culture distrusts the most” to aid his main idea, but he doesn’t have convincing minor supporting ideas following order than just a confirm that violent eventually lessen kids natural discomfort. Paragraph 13 and 15 have similar strengths and weaknesses that Jones repeats. Even though in paragraph 13, Jones develops an interesting and realistic story about the “little girl” he knew, as well as provides an impressive and a helpful point to remind the audience that helping kids to use violent media properly would lead to a positive result in paragraph 14, his way of presents information about the “little girl” is not enough to be reliable. This similar mistake occurs in paragraph 5 when he cites his evidence as he refers to “an older girl, a middle-class “nice girl”” without any more information about her name, age, occupation. These evidences are too weak to persuade the reader minds. In his conclusion in paragraph 16, Jones summarize his writing to be one main idea that is violent media is beneficial for children grow and development. To back up his statement, he creates a contradict point by clarifying the negative effects of underestimating the profit of violent media brings to children. This strategy helps audience to avoid damaging results and would rethink about the advantages of violent media would do for kids. In spite of this effective way of persuade the audience, Jones only summarize his ideas which he already stated throughout the essay and doesn’t develop more of any information or evidence to strengthen his main idea. Therefore, in his conclusion isn’t a logical deduction from two premises. The author developing logos, pathos, ethos strategies to be in harmony. His argument has a clear thesis, examples, expert opinion which appeal to the logical sense of the audience. Simultaneously, his essay appeals to people’s emotions displays in the vivid examples that he

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provides about himself, his son, children he knew. Finally, although his later evidences don’t have a reliable source, he demonstrates his knowledge by pointing out his research with Dr. Moore. Plus, he responds to the opposing viewpoint respectfully, and the argument seem fair enough. Overall, on one hand, Jones’s work pretty succeeds to prove that violent media is a naturally significant part to shape children maturation. He proposes many valuable and realistic evidences, as well as manage to arrange his syllogism effectively. On the other hand, what makes the essay’s defect is that this essay is not one hundred percent influential to the audience because he doesn’t offer properly his evidence sources. Work Cited Gerard, Jones. “Violent Media is Good for Kids,” Practical Argument, 3rd ed., Mother Jones. June 28, 2000.

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