Contrast of Mencken and Kroll

These two essays, although they adressed that same issue, were extremely different in their argumentative techniques. Mencken's essay was not as effective as Kroll's depsite the fact that he primarily used a logos based argument, which is generally better than ethos or pathos. This is because Mencken's argument simply wasn't as easy to accept as Kroll's, and he didn't develope his idea enough to get his audience to buy into this unpleasant reasoning. His main point, the claim that we need the death penalty to satisfy our primal need for katharsis, is not one that people will readily accept. People don't like to consider themselves as savage or unevolved, and to convince them that they are such would require much more persuasive skill than Mencken displayed. Kroll, on the other hand, appealled to a much more agreeable mentality that most people generally like to think they have. His deeply emotional appeal subtly antagonizes the supporters of capital punishment while somehow allowing us to sympathize with a convicted murderer. As he told the story of his friend's execution, he presented in a way that transformed it into a murder of a fellow human being. Very few people would be in support of cold-blooded killing, and, by describing an execution to make it seem like just that, he makes his argument much easier to swallow. The persuasive skills are much more effective in Kroll's essay than in Mencken's because we are morally obligated to agree with Kroll, and Mencken just doesn't have the development to get us to buy his idea. Also, being a moral issue, a pathos appeal was probably a more apt choice than a logos appeal. All in all, these two very different essays had two very different levels of success.