How Does the Author Provoke an Emotional Response to the Text 'I See a Killer Die'?

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How does the author provoke an emotional response to the text ‘I see a Killer Die’? ‘I see a Killer Die’ is an American article that addresses two major issues in present day; Capital Punishment and the use of Capital Punishment as a spectacle for the victim’s families and TV reporter Michael Tuck. The article was about Robert Harris: A double killer, sent to Death Row for twenty-five years only to be later sentenced to death by gassing in a gas chamber. One method the author uses is fact and opinion, an example of a fact is ‘Michael tries to run, but he was gunned down with four shots’ the quotation creates an emotional response because it is blunt and represents the brutality in which one of the boy’s was killed. A second example of a fact is ‘Robert Harris was sentenced to death’ which summarises and to a full extent reveals what he’s done. The reason why it’s effective is because the reader can see what the repercussions were of his actions in the fact that he was made to suffer in a gas chamber. The final example of a fact I will be analysing is the extract ‘resigned to his fate’ where it implies he lost all hope and went to his destiny which was to be killed by cyanide and die ‘frantically breathing, gasping for air’ in a way described as ‘unclean and inhumane’. Facts are an effective way of creating an emotional response because they clearly present the truth in a way that can only be conceived as concise and also straight to the point they don’t pose arguments but straightaway make the reader think about all actions that occur in the story without being biased. An example of an opinion that is used by the author is ‘I would say this was not a humane way to die’ which implies that what actually occurred in the gas chamber was unfair and not a process a human should have to go through. Human shouldn’t die like this and they should

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