Critically Analysing Text: The Times and The Sun Articles - Essay Example

?Essay The Times and The Sun Articles Articles appearing in The Times and The Sun in January are presented in media text relative to the arrest of murder suspect Vincent Tabak for the strangulation of Joanna Yeates. The Times targets that part of the reading audience that would be sympathetic to the victim and her family and friends. The Sun on the other hand targets that part of the reading audience that would sympathise with the suspect and his family and friends. However, a small segment of The Suns’ article devotes some perspective from the victim’s family, albeit brief. The graphology of both articles ensure that the pictures used corresponds with the text. For instance The Times positioned a large photograph of the suspect below its caption reminding the audience of the parents’ source of relief. The suspect’s picture looks more like a mug shot, a sublime indication that the suspect is guilty as charged. The Sun positions a photograph of the girlfriend with the murder suspect in happier times. The picture itself is suggestive of an ordinary man and certainly not a portrait of a killer. A picture of the victim however is placed in the article, but smaller, yet provides contrast. The victim’s picture is plain and reveals very little about the kind of person she might have been. Most of all, the picture could easily be a routine snapshot taken for identification documents as it does not create an impression. Interestingly a suggestive ad for sex therapy sits alongside the victim’s picture. In any case, the rather bland picture of the victim and the continuous informal use of her name throughout the article comes across as an intention to present an average, somewhat unsympathetic individual. The term “average Jo” invariably comes to mind and could either create sympathies or create detachment. A picture of the suspect’s mother and brother also appear on the last page of the article, but with far less ambiguity than the picture of the victim. The image captures drawn and saddened faces, under which the caption reads: “Angry…mum Sonja and brother Marcel.” The article in The Times is more cohesive in its layout in that it tells a story that is easy to follow. The connection begins with a caption that clearly directs attention to the content of the article. The caption reads: Yeates Parents Tell of “Enormous Relief” at Murder Charge. Thereafter, the article reads like a narrative with facts integrated to ensure that the reader knows why the Yeates parents relieved. For instance, upon informing the audience that the parents of the murder victim are relieved, the writer immediately names the suspect, and identifies him as a neighbour of the victim and reveals that he was arrested and will be formally charged with their daughter’s murder. The article appearing in The Sun however, is not as cohesive and as such it is more difficult to follow. The caption itself is confusing and reads: Girlfriend: I Stand by Jo Accused. Unlike The Times, the language in The Sun’s caption is informal and does not read like a complete sentence. The reader’s curiosity is therefore aroused immediately, although the opening lines to the article dispels that curiosity by informing who Jo is. The caption is misleading however, as once the reader completes The Sun’s article it becomes clear that the murder suspect’s girlfriend did not directly state that she was standing by her boyfriend. This message was conveyed through the murder suspect’s family. Like its caption, the language in The Sun is also informal at times. This register however, is indicative of the kind of audience that The Sun intends to reach. For instance law enforcement are referred to as cops at least twice and in one instance, the term is used in the context of investigators’ decision to make an arrest. This tends to suggest that the decision to make an arrest was made lightly. At another point, a public relations professional is referred to as “PR man”. This use of colloquialism is clearly intended to reach a tabloid oriented audience. The Times on the other hand, avoids informal language, indicating that it expects its audience to read and interpret objective facts independent of any literary techniques. The Times’ article is more direct in its reporting and uses language intended to provide an objective representation of the family’s relief. The Sun’s article however, resorts to semantics intended to influence the way that the audience might percieve the suspect’s girlfriend. The semantics occur in descriptions and references to the suspect’s girlfriend as “blond” and as an “American blond”. Although the article does not dictate what this might mean, the average reader might form the impression that the girlfriend is either unintelligent or uninformed, therefore her support of her boyfriend does not speak to his innocence. In the regard, The Sun’s article can be perceived as sensationalizing. The article in The Times also offers more factual content with no semantics, leaving the reader entirely free to form their own impressions. This approach is more clearly demonstrated by the interjection of comments from the lead investigator who clearly indicates that information relative to the investigation is confidential. The Sun, on the other hand, makes no official representations and merely reports that the family of the murder suspect think that his arrest is nonsense. In the final analysis, the article in The Times is representative of objective reporting, while The Sun’s article is more didactic in style and presentation and clearly intends to influence the way that the audience might view the arrest of the suspect and his family’s support, particularly the support of his girlfriend. Essay 2: A Hanging by George Orwell George Orwell spent five years as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and drawing on this experience he wrote the essay A Hanging which takes place in Burma. A Hanging is a narrative discourse which begins by setting a mood by the use of connotation. While the title to the piece informs of a grim event, the tone is not set until Orwell introduces the atmosphere. Connotations such as “a sodden morning of the rains” and “A sickly light” are used and strung together with semantics as the sickly light was “like yellow tinfoil”. This technique is used by Orwell to supplant his audience into his gloomy experience with imperialism. Orwell also immediately ensures that the reader is aware that the setting is in a jail yard. This setting easily divides the two factions caught up in imperialism, a political experience that did not bode well with Orwell. The prisoners can be seen as representative of the colonized and the wardens and hangmen can be seen as the detached and cruel European colonizers. Orwell describes the prisoners and the event in the past tense, as a reflective narrative. The prisoners are described as a rather serene group, confined to small, bare cells, huddling together, yet alone with blankets shrouding them individually. The warden and hangmen come across as uncaring and at the same time carefree. Despite the depressing mood, there is a feeling of routine and resolve. The condemned man is resolved to his fate and emotionless. Likewise, the narrator and his team of hangmen and magistrates are resolved to get the hanging over with and resume their lives. Orwell however, interjects two sobering events that appear to reach at least the narrator. The sudden appearance of a dog exhibits more emotions than any of the gathering in the jail yard. The dog appears to appreciate the fact that the condemned prisoner is a living, breathing, conscious man, something no one in the jail yard appeared to notice or care about. The condemned prisoner’s hanging was after all a mere inconvenience that needed to be dispensed with so that the wardens could get on with the ordinary business of the day, such as feeding the prisoners. The second sobering event occurs when the prisoner steps gingerly to the side to avoid stepping in a puddle. This simple interjection reminds the narrator that the condemned prisoner was a living human being, and forced the narrator to take a momentary break from the mundane manner in which the hanging was being approached. For the moment he had the utility of mind to question the inhuman notion of killing a man that was healthy and alive. These sobering moments can be seen as didactic in that they are used to symbolize the colonial experience from Orwell’s perspective: the merciless emotional killing of a colony and its culture, politics and history. The narrator’s brief fixation on the utility of killing an otherwise healthy man can also be seen as a rhetorical device intended to persuade the reader to question the morality of capital punishment. This might likely reflect Orwell’s own feelings toward capital punishment, as corporal punishment was prevalent during Orwell’s childhood and he resented authority. The mood itself and the setting, contrasted with the detachment of the wardens and the hangmen can also be seen as rhetorical devices designed to draw attention to the dehumanizing nature of capital punishment. For instance, the narrator describes the handling of the condemned prisoner with a simile expressed as: “It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water”. Moreover, Orwell was a fierce advocate for socialism and had deliberately lived as a tramp for a period. As a result he became deeply aware of the class distinctions among mankind. This distinction is captured in A Hanging via the submissive nature of the downtrodden prisoner’s and the business as usual attitude of the wardens and the other officials. Indeed the introduction of the dog demonstrates the degree to which hanging a fellow human being has reduced man to such a level of inhumanity that a dog is more humane. Although the wardens and the hangmen go about business as usual and even take a drink afterward, may be seen as a catharsis, or a subtle method for releasing buried feelings about the inhumanity of the hanging. In fact the laughter that followed the event and preceded the decision to convene for a drink of whiskey can be seen as a catharsis in that the wardens and hangmen were essentially expressing their own self-loathing by suppression. Essay 3: Blessing by Imtiaz Dharker and Stealing by Carol Ann Duffy Duffy’s Stealing is self-reflective, coming across as a personal conversation with the reader. Duffy, a British poet, composed Stealing in the 1980s in response to the theft of her neighbour’s snowman and more especially in response to the uncertainty corresponding with the high rate of unemployment at the time. The poem is a narrative told in the past tense reflecting both Duffy’s own personal experience and historical context. Dharker’s Blessing is a descriptive observation told in the present tense with the use of imagery of sight and sound. The integration of the aesthetic is natural for Dharker as she is both a poet and an artist as well as a documentary film-maker. Although Dharker is Scottish Muslim, she was born in Pakistan and therefore Blessing takes on a personal tone. The first two lines of Dharker’s stanza takes the reader into what at first appears to be a drought in Pakistan. This is conveyed by the use of a simile: “The skin cracks like a pod”. Immediately, this simile conveys the connotation that there is a dire want of water. By contrast, Duffy’s narrator who is in Britain, wants inanimate objects for the thrill of it rather than out of necessity. While Duffy’s poem is set in a consistent rhyming scheme, Dharker’s poem breaks from a two line stanza and into a four line stanza which is followed by two stanzas consisting of eleven lines and six lines respectively. Despite the different styles, both poems use enjambment as a technique to connect thoughts and observations. Even son the structure of Stealing is irregular with lines often cutting into another, perpetuating the narrator’s own fractured thought process. Internal rhyming occurs in both poems. For instance in Dharker’s poem internal rhyming occurs with pod and God; ground, found and around and huts and butts. Duffy’s internal rhyming occurs less frequently in words such as head and dead and chill and thrill. Speech in Blessing flows more systematically giving way to cohesion while speech in Stealing is less cohesive as the narrator goes from stealing a snowman to explaining how his mind functions and what drives him. Despite the lack of cohesion in narration, the reader gets the inescapable feeling that the narrator is a lonely and spiteful human being. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is a casualty of the unemployment climate and wants others to feel the pain he feels. He rejoices at the thought of children crying in the morning. Unlike the loneliness conveyed in Stealing, Blessing reflects a communal feeling where both despair and joy are shared. The drought creates a common bond and the sudden flow of water likewise creates a common bond although both bonds are perpetuated by different emotions. The first bond is facilitated by want, the second bond is created by satisfaction of that want. The sudden outflow of water is described in metaphor: “the sudden rush/of fortune”. The detachment and loneliness in Stealing is likewise conveyed in metaphor: “I wanted him, a mate with a mind as cold as the slice of ice within my own brain”. In the final analysis, Stealing represents a stealth, lonely and quiet desperation as conveyed in the line: “I watch my gloved hand twisting the doorknob.” Blessing represents a more collective and communal desperation by the line: “frantic hands”. In both poems the hands are described in different ways to convey a different state of mind. In Blessing what first appears to be sadness, turns to delight when God delivers its blessing of water. In Stealing, the lonely narrator’s mood is not fixed by the fruit of his crimes. He remains inconsolable. The message conveyed in Blessing is therefore that joy comes from waiting and accepting. The message in Stealing can be seen as joy does not come from immorality. Read More