Persuasive Essay
The preeminent role of literature in society’s development cannot be doubted. Through reading, people obtain valuable means of developing a sense of beauty and imagination. Moreover, the reader can visit many places which he or she might never be able to see in reality. However, the most crucial role of literature is allowing the reader to cultivate sympathy and compassion. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel depicting horrendous places and events, which lets the reader feel the hardships of war without experiencing it in person.
Is it possible to imagine the planet without wars and their devastating aftermath? Hardly has any historian who investigated the heroic contribution of soldiers felt not hopeless. Vonnegut, in his turn, was not only a soldier but also a writer whose mastery of the written word was powerful as a weapon. Although the novel contains some science-fiction elements, the author managed to portray the pain, suffering, loss of hope, and value of freedom as they were experienced by him and his comrades. In the very beginning, one of the characters ironically compares writing “anti-war books” to writing “anti-glacier” books, meaning that both are unstoppable (Vonnegut, p. 4). This exchange, however controversial, embodies the significance of literature for contemporary people. Even though the author does not believe in the world without wars, he helps others to see how damaging they can be not only in the material sense but also in the spiritual one.
Without the ideas inculcated in Vonnegut’s book, it would be impossible for people to understand many aspects of war. The author speaks of warfare, suffering, freedom and imprisonment, foolishness, masculinity, and, most of all, of time. This is another peculiarity of Vonnegut’s book: there is no chronology of events, the narrator jumping from present to past and future all the time. He is “spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun” (Vonnegut, p. 29). And this feature, however freaky and fantastic, is the embodiment of literature’s contribution to society’s development. The author shows that the monster of war cannot be put into a time or space frame and kept within it. Instead, it is overwhelming and penetrating, its unexpectedness being one of the major tools in the hands of its creators. Vonnegut’s book helps the modern reader to feel the dread of the war without being physically present there.
The Explanation of the Choices Made
In my persuasive writing, I employed emotive language as well as rhetorical and figurative devices. Also, I used a variety of syntactic and grammatical forms to make the essay more engaging to read. Finally, I added quotes from the text to justify the point I made in the essay. With the help of these approaches, I attempted to gain the effect of convincing the audience of the rightness of my argument.
Particularly, I included such figures of speech as a rhetorical question (the first sentence in paragraph two), metaphor (“the monster of war”), and simile (“word powerful like a weapon”). I also used litotes (“felt not hopeless”) and emphatic phrases (“in the very beginning,” “however controversial”). At the phonetic level, I opted to add some instances of alliteration or consonance (“Hardly has any historian who … heroic … hopeless,” “feature, … freaky and fantastic”). All of these devices helped me not only to convey my thoughts but also to prove the ideas I was discussing. A variety of tenses and the inclusion of direct quotes make the essay look engaging and logical.
Work Cited
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel. Dial Press, 2009.