Analyzing Ted Rall's Text B

Text A is an informative booklet written by the Frank Fenner Foundation in 2015. Its purpose is to stimulate thought and discussion about the way forward to a healthy and fair society and it introduces the concept of biosensitivity. The text is not complete though, it is only a prologue to the next chapter. Text B also discusses the theme of nature and a healthy planet. However, text B is a cartoon and does not explain biosensitivity. Text B is a cartoon by Ted Rall, published in The Los Angeles Times on the 23th of March in 2009. Both texts talk about nature and the way we treat our planet. This commentary will analyze the two pieces in terms of content and purpose, point of view, tone and mood.

While sharing the same theme, text A and B

Text A is formally written and the atmosphere of the text makes the reader feel informed and prepared to read the next chapter, but also persuaded to donate to the foundation. Text B, on the other hand has a sarcastic tone, ideal for a cartoon. The audience of text B usually read cartoons for a quick laugh or a short message. Text B delivers that short message with a lighthearted tone. It discusses a serious matter, so the tone and mood of the cartoon is not what you’d expect. This is exactly why it is so effective: the sarcastic tone creates a shock for the reader. The reader realises that we are indeed not serious enough about global

The structure of Text A immediately caught my eye: the paragraphs are very short, sometimes even consisting of only one sentence. The text also contains bullet points which really stand out. The purpose of these is to give a clear layout of what the text is going to be about and to sum up some of the purposes.The text is titled ‘Prologue’, so it does not go in detail about the theme and long paragraphs are not needed. The prologue serves to be short and powerful and is meant to make the reader curious. This effect is strengthened by the structure. Long paragraphs tend to make me reader bored, especially in the introduction, which decreases their interest in reading the full text. In contrast, Text B has a completely different structure: it contains a title, the cartoon itself, which consists of three panels, and a caption. The title states the meaning of the cartoon in one sentence and the caption describes the cartoon once more. This is done with short sentences describing the situation and a question is asked. Text B is short but effective. There is not much text which strengthens the effect of the message. Both writers use structure to support the purpose, audience and genre, but do this in an entirely different