TOW #20: Article: Death at the Garden by Jonathan Coleman

Reading Goals:

- Define all unknown vocabulary words as I am reading

- Don't read only to find rhetorical devices (read for context as well)

Writing Goals:

- Thorough and flowing analysis for my examples

- Not to sound repetitive 

- Adequateness 

Death at the Garden 

By: Jonathan Coleman

      The sport of boxing has always been a hazardous one, leaving each opponent at their wits end as the final bell dings. With blood and sweat exuding down the boxers faces, no one in the roaring crowd would  have expected the outcome of the match between Emile Griffith and Benny Paret. Jon coleman, the author of several books, developed this essay from "What He stood For: The Many Worlds of Angus Cameron" and displayed the vividness and severity of the fight he had witnessed. To express a moment of death and a moment Coleman and his future mentor Angus shared, Coleman uses vivd imagery and a first person point-of-view.

      Angus Cameron was a legendary Knopf editor, who eventually became Jon Coleman's editor and publisher of his many books. Ironically, both men had witnessed the grusome fight between Emile Griffith and Benny Paret but neither of them would know it until 13 years later, when they actually met.   Anyhow, Coleman's use of imagery precisely portrays the significant moment these two people shared and the intensity of the Griffith vs. Paret fight. "The fight was a slugfest, and Paret nearly ended things in the sixth round. But after six more rounds, things ended for Paret as Griffith punched him senseless against the ropes, sending him into a coma into which he never emerged."(Coleman) Picturing the moment as Coleman describes it, any reader could grasp the severity and ferocity of the fight. After all, Paret ended up dying. "Some part of Benny Paret's death did reach out to all of us. I had not witnessed death before, and what I remember most clearly was the hushed silence in the arena as Paret was moved, ever so carefully, from the floor of the ring onto the stretcher, beginning procession down the aisle of the Garden where I was sitting and where, as it turned out, Angus was, too." (Coleman) With the use of adequate and sensible adjectives, Coleman describes the scene with great precision, helping the reader have a full understanding of what had happened. Also, in addition to expressing a moment of death, Coleman includes how Angus was there as well, experiencing and witnessing the same, unreal moment. 

      Connecting to Coleman's handling of vivid imagery, he also wrote the essay in a first person point-of-view. By using first person, Coleman appeals to the audience's emotions because they are able to read the essay as if they were the ones who wrote it, and as if they were the ones who experienced the Griffith vs. Paret fight. The expression of death and the connection Coleman and Angus shared from the fight can be fully understood through the use of first person. "And instead of talking to many boys back at boarding school about the fight, or to anybody, really, I kept quiet for quite some time, until Angus and I had the occasion -- and, for me at least, the need -- to speak of it years later." (Coleman) The audience can appeal to the way Coleman felt after witnessing the fight as he immediately connects it to his first official confrontation with Angus. 

       In conclusion, Jon Coleman uses vivd imagery and first person point-of-view to express a moment of death, and a moment he and his future mentor, editor, and publisher, would share. Any athlete or person could be the audience here, perhaps more specifically someone who can connect to the context, that is, boxing. This was a moment that Jon Coleman would carry with him forever, just like Angus Cameron did.