Reviewing Thanks For Not Killing My Son English Literature Essay

With hundreds of newspaper publications printed every day, television and internet, you might ask yourself “Why would I need to read a short essay published in a college English book?” Well, I will tell you the true story about this short essay. More importantly, I will tell you why you should read it. The essay “Thanks for Not Killing My Son” by Rita Schindler stands out from the crowd because it is emotionally intense, abundant in visual sentences, and very thought provoking.

First of all, Rita Schindler combines attention-getter and persuasion techniques in just 38 lines, each of them delivering full-impact feelings, making this essay emotionally intense and effective. The Torontonian mother, whose son was cruelly beaten by some strangers, wrote the essay’s title in a way that immediately catches the reader’s attention. “Thanks for Not Killing My Son” is not used as a form to express gratitude to someone, but is instead used as irony. The constant repetition of the “thank you” will make you wonder at the mother’s non-violent response to her son’s beating, and will also build emotion. However, by the end of the essay, when the mother’s thanking becomes a pattern, you begin to understand the compassion of a loving parent. Using implied fright through the entire essay, Schindler creates another kind of emotion for the reader. When Schindler says “…thank you for his eyesight, his hearing and his hands which you could have easily crushed” (8), you may think that a similar attack can really affect you or someone you care about. The argument raises to a climax in the final point, which suggests the ultimate loss to parents, the death of a child. When the author says, “You could have kicked him to death, but you only left him to die. Thank you.” (Schindler 11), she alludes to what might well have resulted from the actions of the attackers. By the time you finish reading this essay, it’ll reveal you a final emotion; the mother leaves death to the end, since it’s a thought she would not ever like to experience.

Secondly, you will find this essay abundant in visual sentences, making this another effective way to grab your attention. As soon as you start reading it, I can assure you that you’ll realize how powerful those visual sentences are. “He was left lying in a pool of blood from an open head wound” (Schindler 3) is the beginning of the third paragraph and reflects immediately the ferocity of the attack. Moreover, it’s not just the brutality of the attack itself, but the fact that they leaving someone lying unconscious in a park alley in the middle of December. Reading further, you realize that this idea of using visual sentences becomes more frightening because the author has used examples of actual events instead of talking in general about the nature of violence (Schindler 5, 6, 7, 9).

Finally, the essay is very thought-provoking making it relevant to our times, because it raises questions about law enforcement, kid’s education, or revenge. Since the attack against his author’s son happened “sometime between 1.30 p.m., Dec. 8, and 1 a.m., Dec. 9,…in the Victoria Park-Terraview area” (Schindler 3), the first thought that may cross your mind would be about the sense of security and law enforcement on the streets of Toronto. You might think about this when you read this sentence: “when his friends were talking about revenge, I heard him say, “No, I don’t want someone else’s mother to go through what mine has.” (Schindler 10). Our society needs to change the way we enforce the law, so revenge should not be our concern. The essay is also relevant to our times because it makes you think about today’s parental guidance related to street violence. You may say that there is no connection between those two, but when “five guys and two girls…beat [up] one person” (Schindler 9), these act definitely shows that parental guidance was not effective in this case. Any parent must exercise constant guidance and attention to their kids, and you can found this idea in the last sentence of the essay: “I hope that someday you’ll have children and love them as much as I love mine, but I wouldn’t wish on your child what you did to mine.” (Schindler 13).

In conclusion, when reading “Thanks for Not Killing My Son” you will discover an emotionally intense, thought-provoking essay that is full of visual sentences. Giving you those reasons to read Rita Schindler’s essay, we should make an effort and prove that the following rhymes from a well known song are wrong, and we can change this amazing world that we live in. “There’s something wrong with the world today. I don’t know what it is. Something’s wrong with our eyes. We’re seeing things in a different way, and God knows it ain’t His. It sure ain’t no surprise. Livin’ on the edge.” [1]