Close Reading #4

Mourn, and take action on guns

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/opinion/zuckerman-connecticut-shootings/index.html?hpt=op_t1

     On the morning of Friday, December 14th, a tragic elementary school shooting took place in Newtown, Connecticut. News regarding the incident was updated at an hourly basis. In the midst of numerous articles, an editorial written by Ethan Zuckerman went viral on CNN. While many writers took a stand either on the gun policy or mourn, Zuckerman was able to argue for both; throughout his editorial, one can see and feel the specific detail, perfect word choice, and strong syntax supporting his debate on how the people should balance both mourning and action from the tragedy.
     According to statistics in the past, "2012 is likely to be the worst year for mass gun violence in U.S History." Zuckerman's first few paragraphs list previous shooting incidents in the states with precise detail. He states that "homicide rates are going down, while shootings are increasing ... 47% increase over 2001." By including other factors of death and numerical data, Zuckerman is able to reach his point within the beginning of his article: nothing has improved. Zuckerman doesn't only provide detail with statistics, he brings out information that are buried under politics. For instance, he gathers perspectives from all sides including the National Rifle Association, lobbying groups, and the U.S convention. Zuckerman paraphrases with evoking detail of their excuses regarding the gun laws. This is evident when he describes U.S as "too polarized or divided to make any meaningful chances to our broken and inadequate gun laws." The adjectives he uses to describe each word in his sentence provides enough detail for the people to feel guilty.
     For Zuckerman's belief of both taking action and mourning to happen, the article must be intriguing and evoking. His article seems to do just that by his perfect word choice. In the beginning, he uses informal diction by writing in first person and involving the social network, Facebook, to reach out towards the readers. He uses words like "tragedy" instead of massacre which sounds much sympathetic. By doing so, it allows for more agreements that "there is no better way to mourn these senseless deaths than to demand we change our laws". Towards the end of his writing, Zuckerman uses strong, persuasive diction to draw in the readers. He "urges you to ignore those calls," calls that demand for a time to mourn rather than debate about gun laws. He makes his point clear that in order to prevent anymore innocent deaths, people should do both at once.
     Many syntactic sentences are found within his arguments. In order to balance mourning and taking action, he uses literary structures to provide emphasis. In his phrase, "so long as we assume gun control is impossible, we don't talk about gun control. So long as we don't talk about gun control, gun control is impossible" has anadiplosis, anaphora, and parallelism. All three of these literary elements contribute to a stronger voice in Zuckerman's writing. Another use of syntax in his article is, "NRA's most powerful weapon is not campaigns, primary battles, nor political advertising. It's silence." This is a common use of syntax; most often used to provide emphasis by placing the most important last. When reading this quote, it allows that fact to sink into the readers. By using simple syntactic structures, Zuckerman provides in-depth reasoning and arguments to support his opinion.
     In response to Zuckerman's editorial, some may still just mourn, just fight for law change, and some may do both. Zuckerman does a phenomenal job supporting his opinion with more than enough detail, diction, and syntax. He believes that the only way this incident could differ from other shootings is by the outcome. By using literary elements to voice his opinion, it will influence many to take charge of not only the innocent deaths that occurred on Friday, but past tragedies that were lost in silence as well.