Saturday, January 28, 2012

Kroll vs. Mencken

I found Kroll’s essay to be significantly more persuasive than Mencken’s. Mencken trivialized the opposition’s arguments without substantiating his rebuttals, stating, for example, that “the first of these arguments, it seems to me, is plainly to week to need serious refutation.” Throughout the paper, Mencken reiterates this disregard for his opposition, and furthermore leaves his interesting, albeit disturbing, argument poorly developed. His advocacy of “katharsis” is fraught with logical fallacy as he makes assumptions that the killing of a human is justified by some universal feeling of satisfaction at the death of the convict. In contrast, Kroll’s essay is striking in its subtlety. Kroll powerfully calls on human sentiments with a pathos-based appeal that contrasts starkly with the crude, abrasive Mencken piece. Although Kroll passes over questions of guilt and criminality within his specific anecdote, these omissions fail to hinder the piece, as its intent is to paint a vivid picture of the failure of capital punishment to secure justice or human dignity for all of the parties involved. Having been predisposed to Kroll’s viewpoint over Mencken’s due to more logos- based arguments, Kroll expanded and strengthened my views against capital punishment.

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