Different areas are often quite different, and difficult for outsiders to understand. One such area is South Central Los Angeles, in California. As a person from the Midwest, it is not only tricky to understand the West Coast style of life, but that particular area on the West Coast. One of the most effective ways of understanding other locations (other than one living there for a time) is to learn from someone on the inside. Anne Beatty is one of those people. Anne Beatty’s usage of ethos, pathos and logos exhibits the lives of the students for others to understand.
Beatty’s ethos is quite straightforward, she is a teacher. However her simply being a teacher is moot if she does not have any experience in South Central Los Angeles, thankfully, the author does. Two whole years of it, “In my two years in South Central”. A slightly similar comparison is that with soldiers returning from a conflict, although the general populous may sympathize with the soldier; they can not
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In my opinion, one of the most profound instances of this is “a lot of children died. Maurice, for one. Aaron, an honor-roll student who was shot four times in the heart at point-blank range. No one knew why. Brian, shot while crossing a busy street in broad daylight with his little sister beside him. Beyond the reach of our school zone, kids kept dying.” The concept of children perishing in any context is sad enough as it is, the fact that names and background for these kids is added to the tale adds to the emotional feeling. The classic quote by Joseph Stalin of “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” applies very well here. With the names of the various children, we get a feel for the loss, one can imagine children; however when the casualty count rises to a large number the mind just accepts it as a tragedy but does not link itself to the larger count as well as the smaller one. Yet even one child dead is a