Thanks For Not Killing My Son English Literature Essay

With hundreds of newspaper publications printed everyday, television, and Internet, you might ask yourself why do you need to read a short essay published in a college English book. Well, I decided to 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, Rita Schindler combines attention-getter with persuasion technique in just 38 lines, each of them delivering full-impact feelings, making this essay intense and effective. The title is written in a way that immediately catches your attention. “Thanks for Not Killing My Son” it’s not 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 also builds emotion in the end. However, by the end of the essay, when the mother’s thanking becomes a pattern you begin to understand the patience and compassion of a loving parent. Using implied fright through the entire essay, Schindler creates another kind of emotion for the reader. When she says “…thank you for this eyesight, his hearing and his hands which you could have easily crushed.” (Schindler 8), you may think that a similar attack can really affect you or someone you care about. The whole 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. However, by the time you finish reading this essay, it’ll reveal to you a final emotion; she leaves death to the end, since it’s a thought she would not like to ever contemplate or experience (Schindler 11, 12).

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 this essay, I can assure you that you’ll realize how powerful those visual sentences are, and you don’t have to read too much. “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 cruelty of leaving someone unconscious lying on a park alley in the middle of December. Reading more, you realize that this idea of using visual sentences becomes more frightening because the author has used specific 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 and it raises many questions for you to think about. 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”, the first thought that will cross your mind will be about the sense of security and law enforcement on the streets of Toronto. You can think about this when you read this sentence: “…when his friends were talking about revenge, I heard him say, “No, I don’t wan’t someone else’s mother to go through 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. Apparently, you may say that is no connection between those two, but when “Five guys and two girls …beat one person” 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, reading ‘Thanks for Not Killing My Son’ you will discover an emotionally intense, full of visual sentences, and thought-provoking essay. Giving you those reasons to read Rita Schindler’s essay, let’s make an effort and prove that the following rhymes from a well known song are wrong, and we can change our amazing world that we are live in.” There’s somethin’ 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. We’re livin’ on the edge.” [1]