Skip to main content

The Cincinnati Zoo Mother Deserves Empathy, Not Judgment


There is a news about a 4-year old boy fell into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo, and after being dragged around by the 400-pound gorilla for 10 minutes, the zoo made the decision to shoot and kill the gorilla (Courtney Perry). After seeing this news and people's reactions, Courtney Perry wrote an article about it. A lot of people think the zookeepers made a wrong decision, which they should not have killed the gorilla. Because they think they that the gorilla did not do anything wrong, the mom who did not take good care of her own child deserved everything. But the author Courtney Perry said, "Can you imagine watching someone you love in the deathly grip of a predator, being thrown around like a rag doll, and standing by helplessly". She used pathos here to make her readers feel empathy to the boy and the mom, and made everyone wants to save him.

Her argument is reasonable, because when we put ourselves in the mother's shoes, we will understand the mom and why the zookeepers killed the gorilla but not just let the situation "play out".

After reading her article, I understand why the mother deserves empathy, but not judgment. Yes, the gorilla is innocent and he did not do anything wrong. But in that situation, the zookeepers had no choice. Everyone makes mistakes, the mom did not know what was going to happen, either. When the mom was worrying about her child and in deep self-accusation, they had to save the boy.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 5, 2016 at 4:43 PM

    I fully agree with Ms. Perry and her use of pathos in this article. Since this incident, there have been countless cases of people standing up for the "injustice" they believe has occurred, all the while accusing the boy's mother. I believe Perry's writing is able to show many that as humans, the life of another human is what is most important in a situation such as this. By striking a chord of pity within the readers; causing people to imagine themselves and their own loved one's in both the boy's and mother's position, they are more accepting of the death of the gorilla.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LexieOctober 5, 2016 at 5:00 PM

    I agree with this post. The mother should be shown empathy because it was not her fault that her child accidentally fell into the gorilla's cage. Obviously the mom did not want her child to be thrown around by a gorilla.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 6, 2016 at 7:29 AM

    This is a really great blog post. It is sad that this had to happen, but human life is far more important than another animal's life. It must have been a tough decision to shoot Harambe, but I think that anybody would have done the same thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousOctober 6, 2016 at 5:00 PM

    The entire "Harambe" movement has gotten out of hand. It's terrible that some do not realize or do not even care that real people were involved. It is sickening to hear derogatory phrases about a mother whose child is in a life and death situation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousOctober 6, 2016 at 6:40 PM

    I agree with this post. The mother should be shown empathy, there was nothing she could do to control whether or not her child fell into the cage. She didn't ask to be thrown into that situation, it simply happened. It wasn't her fault so she shouldn't be blamed. The post shows that she should be shown empathy and that is defiantly true

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jason R.October 7, 2016 at 5:27 AM

    The blog post is well written in that it provides background and talks about the article. In the article being discussed it is obvious that it uses pathos. I would have mentioned that it didn't really make use of the other means of persuasion.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownNovember 4, 2016 at 4:17 AM

    This article was definitely good. And I agree with it. The mother made a simple mistake. Pathos in this article is also used very good.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Open Happiness

While at the movie theaters to see The Maze Runner , I saw a commercial that featured rhetoric. The commercial begins with a young woman named Jess purchasing two Coca Cola drinks in a convenience store. One has her own name on it, and one has the name of her friend Alisha on it. The cashier watches her forlornly as she leaves, hinting that he has a crush on his customer. Jess gives the Coke with Alisha’s name on it to her friend, and together the two friends drink them. Later, Jess, Alisha and two other friends come back into the store to buy more Coke, then leave and have a good time together. Jess keeps coming back to the store with more and more friends, each time purchasing Coca Cola with their names printed on the labels. The cashier smiles and watches, but it is clear that he wishes he was with Jess.  Finally, as the cashier is closing the store for the night, Jess shows up at the door with a Coke that has the name Chris on it. She smiles and hands the drink to the ...
4 comments
Read more

Marilyn Monroe's Shampoo

While browsing on Google I found an old advertisement.  The ad was for Lustre-Crème Shampoo. It featured Marilyn Monroe, known for her beauteous looks and her parts in different movies. One of her movies was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lustre-Crème was attempting to sell their shampoo through the use of fallacies. By saying that Marilyn Monroe that tells you nothing about the actual product: it simply attracts you to the pretty face in the picture. Using this as an argument of why someone should buy your product is quite illogical. Just because Marilyn Monroe uses it doesn’t provide assurance of its abilities. They attempt using snob appeal by trying to make the audience believe that they could be like Marilyn Monroe if they use the same product as her. They use appeal to illegitimate authority by using Marilyn Monroe to promote their product. Although she herself is a customer, this is still rather irrelevant. She herself has no type of expertise in hair products and knows nothing t...
3 comments
Read more

Is Hip Hop a Cancer or a Cure?

The speech I watched was a Ted Talk presented by one of my favorite music artists, who just so happens to be a Christian rapper.  This rapper’s name is Lecrae Moore, but he just goes by Lecrae.  Over the past five years or so, Lecrae has been able to break out of the small box that Christian music and Christian rap have been put in, and he has been able to get his music out to all types of crowds.  So I was actually pretty excited when I saw that he had spoken at a Ted Talk in Nashville.  The speech he delivered was titled, “Heroes and Villains: Is Hip-Hop a Cancer or a Cure?”  In this speech Lecrae talked about how it is easy to look at certain people in history and label them as heroes or villains, but he talks about how not everyone views historical figures the same.  Lecrae started off by defining where we get the words, “Hero” and “Villain”.  Knowing the origin of these words really gave good context for what came to follow.  He then went o...
5 comments
Read more