The Death Of Benny Paret Rhetorical Analysis

Boxing is an intense, raw sport that dates back to ancient Greece and the first Olympic games. The sport originated as an exaggeration of masculinity and the desire of one man to prove his physical prowess over another’s, which is exactly how the match that Norman Mailer narrates in “The Death of Benny Paret” plays out. Boxers Emile Griffith and Benny Paret are pitted against each other, and they fight it out with an eager audience egging them on. During the match, Griffith loses control and kills Paret with a series of fast paced punches, mercilessly proving his capabilities as an athlete and leaving the audience with an array of emotions. Through his characterization of the slightly inexperienced though admirable Paret, the impressively formidable
The first thing he does is pull the reader away from the classroom in which they are reading the passage and into a 1960’s boxing match. He achieves this effect is by using personal pronouns in his statements, saying “we are ringside” and “his death reached out to us”, which includes readers in the action. Doing so breaks the lens through which most emotions are felt when reading a passage. Mailer also narrates the passage in the voice of a radio announcer or a sportscaster to give the audience a heightened sense of urgency and reality by building up the events that take place. As the match begins, Mailer takes his time describing each fighter, their fighting styles, and their backgrounds while the two eye each other in the ring. When the first punches are being thrown, urgency is added as the sentences get shorter and shorter, reminiscent of when baseball announcers are on the edge of their seats when someone has just hit the ball. This crescendo in the tension felt by the audience as the fighting escalates is resolved at the climax, or the “orgy”, and the sentences consist of short clauses strung together instead of the fuller sentences that Mailer uses when introducing the two or describing Paret as he dies. Mailer also arranges the passage to align with how the spectators feel. It begins with introducing the reader to Paret, the David to Griffith’s Goliath. The reader is compelled the to root for Paret, and believe that his wits, like David’s, will help him defeat Griffith. However, as the match turns sour for Paret and he starts to lose favor with the audience, he completely disappears from the narration. There is no mention of him until the third paragraph when Mailer abruptly says “And Paret?”, jolting the reader into remembering that there’s another human in the ring. During this transition, the readers forget about Paret and