http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/07/soldier.sperm.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText
Summary
This article describes an incidence in which a war widow from Iraq has had the sperm of her late husband frozen four days after his death. Sgt. Dayne Darren Dhanoolal died on March 31st in Baghdad and his widow requested a temporary restraint on the embalmation of his body by the military until sperm could be extracted so that she could still bear his children. Though the mother of the sergeant did not agree with this wish, the request was granted and the widow has acquired the sperm. The widow’s justification is that the couple had always talked about having children, and children were very important to her late husband. She seeks to fulfill his wish by being inseminated with his sperm, though doctors say it is unlikely the sperm is still viable.
Analysis
Though this article could have been an emotional piece on the humanistic side of the war in Iraq, the author writes it in a dry and informative manner. This may have to do with the fact that it appears as an article on CNN, but I feel that the widow’s actions should receive a better storytelling. In a war that has taken so many lives, the article focuses on the people who are against a woman trying to add one more life to the world in memory of the one that she has lost. The concept is both romantic and eccentric: a war widow who wants to fulfill her husband’s last wish of having children by preserving her late husband’s sperm. The author, however, is not effective at capturing this side of the story and instead focuses strictly on logos and ignores the pathos and ethos that I feel the topic requires.
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3 comments:
Wow that is such an interesting article. It shows how life really can come from death. It is unfortunate that the author decided not to make the story a bit more emotional and what not because that would really stir the audience's emotions regarding the subject and would really make them see a different side to war and death. Your summary is very concise and to the point, allowing me to fully understand what the article was about. I also like your analysis because you bring up a different issue of the war and how it should have been portrayed rather than how the author portrayed it.
i think that by taking a neutral standpoint, this author offers all sides of the perspective. It appeals to readers who, like the soldier's mother, are against it. It appeals to those who, like the widow, support it. and it tells the basic facts of the situation. It is kind of wierd...but I admire the widow fulfilling the soldier's and her wish.
This is a really interesting story. I liked that you stayed true to the clinical and logical structure of the article in your summary, but still expressed an opposing viewpoint in your analysis and called for a more complete argument than the article provided.
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