Why Blame Hollywood? Rhetorical Analysis of John Grisham's Unnatural Killers

Why Blame Hollywood? It is a safe conjecture to say that everyone has been witness to some sort of violence throughout their lives. Some may have witnessed it in person, and others have only witnessed it through media such as movies or television. Most of the time nobody has any problem with it at all. Until they are somehow affected by it, that is. As soon as that happens, they try to find someone to place the blame on. In the case of a movie, for example, if someone sees a movie that has an excessive amount of violence will that make them want to go out and act the same way as the characters in the movie? According to John Grisham the answer to this question is yes and in his essay entitled "Unnatural Killers," he tries to prove this point but is not effective. Grisham uses two different forms of rhetoric in this essay, both of which fail. First, Grisham uses personal experience to try to get his point across to the readers. This seems like it would be an effective strategy but the way Grisham uses it, it is ineffective. It may have been effective had the first victim not been a friend of Grisham 's, but since he was, entire essay is noticeably biased. Second, he uses the causes and effect analysis. He states that the only reason that the two teenagers went on their rampage is due to the movie, Natural Born Killers, which they had only seen a short time before the first murder. Both of these strategies could have been effective, but ultimately are ineffective in trying to prove Grisham 's point. Grisham begins the essay with a true story from his own personal experience about the murder of Bill Savage and crippling injury of Patsy Byers, the first of which he knew personally. This helps improve the strength of the essay but is still biased nonetheless. It seems as if Grisham is still angry about the death of a friend so he tries to blame it on Oliver Stone 's movie Natural Born Killers. This attempt fails miserably. Throughout the entire essay Grisham

Cited: Grisham, John. "Unnatural Killers" Student Guide to Composition 101 & 102 Hundemer, Malek, Lynch 2008. Pages 178-182