“The Most Shocking thing about this picture is that for ten years, the world ignored it.”
Reading this statement we can’t help but feel real guilty that we did not know about this for so long… that this child died in the most ghastly way and we were not aware of it, because this enormous genocide was covered up for all these years by the Carbide officials to avoid the blame for those deaths and scaring these people for life; emotional and physically. The word ‘is’ in the sentence is in the present tense making us believe it is still going on.
Linked to the image the appeal included a short description of what happened to this child. “A man is burring as child” the word “is” is present tense as if the is happening now (like we are there). “He lays the little body in its grave…” little is a descriptive word suggesting young, innocent, fragile, when all it means is small.
Throughout the appeal the work “Ten Years” keeps appearing. This is because they are trying to make in known that for ten years after this catastrophe occurred nothing changed, they are still getting the help they got 10 years ago. 10 years in pain, 10 years with limited help, 10 years of being silent.
In paragraph 6 there is a repetition of a word “No”. It gives us a stronger meaning, if the sentence when like “no help of any kind, money and proper medical care…”, when it is said out loud it sounds really bland and soft spoken. But when “no” is used repeatedly in front of the list of things. There is like a deeper meaning, a bigger impact “no help of any kind, no money, no proper medical care...” making the statement stick out, because is a negative statement; it is short but strong.
Paragraph 7, “Even if you decided not to help us we want you to know about what’s been happening…” This sentence is probably miss leading us, making us feel guilty for not helping, so we would end up donating something to this cause out of the guilt.
“…the gas was pouring out over the stricken districts” the word pouring suggests continues spread of gas; like something never ending or something being poured by a container; in this case the factory was the container pouring out the toxic gasses into a sea of people.
Paragraph 13 gives an imagery of their situation during the devastating event. “People lost control of their bodies… urine and faeces ran down their legs… vomiting uncontrollably… seizures… falling dead… drowned in their blood” It gives us the imagery of chaos and distress. The people were suffering, there were unable to control their body due to the toxic gases taking effect on their bodies. There was all out confusion within them, they didn’t know what to do but drop dead and die. “by next morning thousands of corpse littered the streets” littered in this sentence propose something carelessly discarded somewhere, like something unimportant. “the railway was chocked with dead bodies” suggest the railway was stuffed, packed, which it was the railway was filled with bodies of whom were trying to get away.
Paragraph 22 -25 is an example what happened after the gas leak about some of the living victims “(Sunil’s) body brought by a truck… lucky not to be cremated alive… parent both dead (two other sibling lived)… 10 years later, weak, constantly tired… severe pain”. This gives an example on what happened to some of the victims of the Bhopal disaster, some suffer worst than this, so they are unable to work. “Unable to sleep for nightmares of the disaster haunt them” is a problem because it causes people to become paranoid and become harmful to the people around them and themselves.
“Many babies are born deformed, others mentally retarded” implying, not only the alive victims suffer; the generation after them suffers to, from inheriting cancer, certain deformities, becoming retarded, etc; their would not be able to lead a normal life, even the children after them would have problems like this because of the mutated gene.
This appeal is effective as a persuasive writing piece because its few paragraph introduction it was clearly telling us what was the point of this appeal; which was to make us aware for the Bhopal disaster and the people in Bhopal were clearly not getting the medical and the attention required, so they want us to help out by donating money to this cause.
Throughout the text the author had made countless point on the Bhopal disaster. The repetition of words, the imagery of what took place during the gas leak when one by one people dropped death for the gasses taking over their body, proves to be effective. The later event when people were having deformed children, cancer aroused from the toxic gas, was also persuasive because of the thought of the future children of these people would be effected, not just a one hit nightmare. There were even nightmares from the event ran through their minds, making them scared to sleep.
Making it all more believable, the author included living victims of the Bhopal disaster. They gave their own experience of the event. This is more believable because they were actually there when it happened and they have the emotional & physical scaring to prove it. This is a good thing because it is primary source of evidence.
Making the text more effective the author made expect criticism on the people who cause this calamity, who were the Union Carbide. The Author criticized their unlawful behavior, of not warning the people about the gas leak and than denying people help. How their cowardly behavior causes these people their live and other to live a normal healthy life.
