Essay Review

The essay reviewed here is titled “The Language Police: Can we Stop Them?” by Diane Ravitch. The author is trying to argue that it is unfair and unconstitutional to censor the books that go into the schools for the children’s benefit. She does this using ethos, pathos, and logos very effectively. She uses ethos when she lists different authors that have had their literature censored without their permission, Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 had 75 pieces taken out of it for the sake of political correctness, and he was very against this. The book itself was about book burning and censoring the books to make everyone happy. The author effectively uses Pathos in her statement as well, she talks about how when we limit what the children can read we are limiting experiences for them and as such limiting the thoughts they can form and in a sense censoring their freedom, and as such making you feel bad for the children. Logos is something the author uses at high amounts toward the end of the essay. She talks about how we live in a free country and as such we have to deal with insulting things and the lack of political correctness as a price for freedom. We may not like everything said but there is nothing you can do about it when you live in a free country, the best way to deal with this would be something along the lines of the statement “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The author used the three tools of a good argument very effectively she started with famous authors to give herself a voice of authority, then brought in some emotion to get the reader to want to continue and ended with some logic so the reader can come up to the same conclusion with all of the evidence. She did a great job with her information, quotes, and tone to create a very persuasive essay.