Death Penalty Essays

Mencken and Kroll used two very different approaches to persuade their audience. In their arguments, Mencken was almost completely logos while Kroll used mainly pathos. In Mencken's essay, he spends the majority of the time explaining 'katharsis' to support his claim (directly) that capital punishment is justified in certain circumstances, whereas Kroll uses a personal anecdote to indirectly show his opposition towards the way executions are carried out. Kroll's argument is much more effective because instead of using logic and facts to state an opinion, he gives an emotional account of the impact of the issue. For example, in Mencken's essay, the last paragraph starts off with, "the wait, I believe, is horribly cruel". These words have hardly any effect on readers. It's common sense that waiting to be executed is not pleasant and Mencken's argument gives no support for how it is "horribly cruel". Saying the same exact message, Kroll writes, "when they brought Robert in, he was grim-faced, tired and ashen. Beyond the horror of having stood at the brink of the abyss just two and a half hours before, he had been up for several days and nights. He was under horrific pressure". Kroll's argument of the same message is much more effective because instead of thinking of a hypothetical criminal, Kroll provides us with an image of a real person that has gone through the slow wait to be executed. Kroll uses the method of painting a picture for us through descriptions, whereas Mencken only leads us through a series of logical thought. Because pictures stand out much more in our memory than a single train of logic, Kroll's essay is much more effective.