Reading and answer questions

Sample Rhetorical Analysis on “When Prisoners Protest” by Wilbert Rideau

Link to Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/when-prisoners-protest.html

When Wilbert Rideau wrote the article, “When Prisoners Protest,” that was published by the New York Times on July 16th, 2013, he did so in response to the ongoing protests of 30,000 inmates in the California prison system. Prisoners had begun protesting by way of a hunger strike on July 8th, 2013, with the aim of bringing change and reform to a broken penal system, especially regarding the use of isolation as a punishment for inmates. 

Prison reform was something Rideau had been fighting to reform for decades, due to spending 12 years of his own life in solitary confinement within the Louisiana Department of Corrections. As a nineteen-year-old, black man, Rideau was convicted of murder after a botched robbery and sentenced to death by an all-white, all-male, Louisiana jury in 1962. Rideau appealed his conviction, and in 1963 the US Supreme Court ruled to throw it out, calling his last trail nothing more than a, “kangaroo court.” Rideau went on to be retried twice by all-white, all-male juries, resulting in two more death-sentences and, eventually, two more overturned convictions by higher courts. Finally, in 2005 Rideau received a fair trial with a jury of mixed-race and mixed-gender, and his murder conviction was replaced with manslaughter. The judge gave Rideau the maximum sentence of twenty-one years, sadly, Rideau had already served forty-four, thus his release was finally granted. 

After serving forty-four years for a crime with a maximum sentence of less than half of that, with twelve of those years spend in solitary confinement, Rideau left prison with a desire to prevent others from experiencing what he did. Since his release, Rideau has spent his time fighting to reform the justice and prison systems through his work on the Board of Directors of the Capital Appeals Project of Louisiana, where Rideau and others oversee the appeals of every death sentence in the state of Louisiana. Rideau is also a journalist, writer, and member of the Board of Advisors for a group invested in minimizing the use of solitary confinement known as Solitary Watch, among being a part of numerous other groups and organization aimed at creating positive change in justice and prison systems.

Rideau uses his article, “When Prisoners Protest,” to further his agenda for prison reform, and begins by outlining the likely outcomes of protesting, highlighting that unless conditions were truly deplorable, it isn’t worth prisoners risking the inevitable consequences that come with protesting: loosing privileges such as visits, phone time, recreation time, and purchasing commissary, nor receiving an indefinite sentence of isolation. Rideau details the mental anguish that comes with serving your time in solitary confinement for years at a time, not knowing when, or if, you will ever return to the general population. It also cites, “paranoia, depression and sleepless,” nights as some of the likely disorders to accompany one’s time in solitary confinement. He goes on to point out that it is not just an issue of those serving time, it is an issue that every citizen of the United States should care about. Because, as Rideau states, many of those who are serving years in isolation will one day be released and return to society, where they will interact with the other members of that society—us and those we love.

Through the use of logos, ethos, and pathos, Rideau effectively communicates the importance of reforming the current use of solitary confinement as a punishment in his article, “When Prisoners Protest.” From the very beginning of the article, Rideau employs use of logos. When he states that we all live in, “a world where authorities exercise absolute power and demand abject obedience, prisoners are almost always going to be on the losing side, and they know it,” he is appealing to our logic. He wants us to understand how bad conditions must be, conditions so deplorable that the prisoners, whom have the most to lose and least to gain, wouldn’t take to protesting unless they believed it to be the only way. Much like how the Declaration of Independence convinces the people of the United States of America that this is their only option, that every other means has been explored and failed, and that they wouldn’t be doing this unless it was absolutely necessary.

Rideau conveys the urgency to create change that’s felt by inmates by highlighting that prisoners wouldn’t take to protesting unless the situation truly called for it, due to the fact that they will lose every comfort they now have just to make a point. Unless the benefits outweigh the risks, it wouldn’t be worth pursuing the cause. Rideau further employs logos by emphasizing the sheer number of protestors, “30,000 inmates in the custody of the California Department of Corrections, went on a hunger strike to demand improvements in prison conditions. Prisoners’ biggest complaint was the runaway use of solitary confinement, the fact that thousands of prisoners are consigned to this cruelty indefinitely, some for decades…” He goes on to emphasize that the protests didn’t take place in just one prison, these protests, “involved almost two-thirds of the State’s penal facilities.” Communication between prisoners is extremely difficult and also strictly forbidden in any formal way, such as writing or phone calls. This leaves us to deduce that conditions were so terrible, and inmates so afraid of unfair punishment, that by word of mouth alone, spanning the entire state of California, inmates were able to organize a large-scale protest—an impressive feat to say the least. 

As readers, we have to ask ourselves, as Rideau intends, how bad would conditions have to be to cause a chain of events to take place involving this many prisoners in this many facilities? Rideau drives the argument home through his compelling use of logos by emphasizing that not only those directly affected by the issues at hand—those who are currently in solitary confinement—are protesting, but also, “thousands of inmates not directly affected by solitary confinement,” joined ranks with their fellow inmates and put everything they held dear at risk as well. Humans don’t go out on a limb for those who don’t deserve it, oftentimes we don’t do it for those that do, so why would the most immoral of society take a stand for someone else? For fear that these unjust punishment could be doled out to them, the way they had seen passed down to those around them, they took up the cause and chose to do something to promote change. Even as laymen in the arena of prison affairs, Rideau’s clear appeal to our logic forces us to conclude that the system is flawed and punishments must truly be unjust. Why else would prisoners wage a war that they knew couldn’t be won?

Rideau goes on to further his point through the use of ethos. He states, “I know something about solitary confinement, because I’ve been there. I spent a total of 12 years in various solitary confinement cells. And I can tell you that isolating a human being for years in a barren cell the size of a small bathroom is the cruelest thing you can do to a person.” By telling us that he has been there and done that, we know that he truly understands the heart of the issue and the consequences that come with it. However, even more than just living the experience, Rideau has moved on and done great things with his life. He began fighting this fight in 1973 while still in prison, writing for a Louisiana prison’s version of an inmate newspaper. Instead of getting out of prison and leaving it all behind him he continued to fight for the improvement of prison systems in general, but also, specifically for the minimization of the use of solitary confinement through his work on the Board of Advisors in the group, Solitary Watch, details of which can be found on his website,  www.wilbertrideau.com.

The humanitarian work Rideau has went on to be a part of puts to ease any reservations the reader might have in reference to his motives. We know he isn’t an angry and bitter ex-con looking to make the system out to be the enemy. More than ten years since his release, he is still advocating a peaceful resolution to a legitimate problem. This all adds to his credibility rather than taking away from it, as some might argue. Finally, the fact that you find this article in both the online and printed version of the New York Times, as a reader you can surmise that Rideau must have some credibility or they wouldn’t have published his work in the first place. Rideau goes on to cite two other men that have spent decades in solitary confinement. “There are men like Thomas Silverstein, in the federal prison system, who has been in solitary for 30 years, and Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who have been in Louisiana cells for some 40 years each.” Regardless of their crimes that landed them in prison, and their offenses for which they’re serving time in isolation, forty years is far beyond what any decent human being would consider acceptable punishment. This gives further credibility to the claim that isolation without guidelines is a major problem. Because of this, we are able to conclude that due to the reality that solitary confinement sentences of this length exist, there is undoubtedly a problem with the system.

Rideau’s reference to number of years spent in solitary by Silverstein, Woodfox, Wallace, and himself serves a purpose beyond adding to the ethos to his argument. He uses these extreme periods of isolation to pull at the heartstrings of his audience. And it works! By bringing the readers’ emotions into the mix, Rideau’s appeal to ethos gives way to pathos. Rideau appeals to the compassion and humanity found in all of us, and paves the way for the reader to arrive at the conclusion he intended: sanctions involving isolation are far too long and damaging, and reform is needed. Rideau assists his appeal to pathos by brushing over the fact that he, Silverstein, Woodfox, and Wallace are all men that were sentenced to prison because they committed serious crimes, crimes that resulted in loss of life for another. He also chooses not to discuss the reasons behind their solitary confinement. He does this in hopes of preventing the reader from being swayed by these ugly truths. By limiting the information he gives in reference to these men, he is able to more successfully appeal to our pathos. 

Rideau goes on to outline the effects of long-term isolation on prisoners; stating that even he, with only 12 years of isolation, lost his, “feeling of connectedness to the world… [and] ability to make small talk.” He went on to describe one living in solitary confinement as living, “entirely in your head, for there is nothing else.”  He even went as far as describing how he continually, “counted the 358 rivets that held [his] steel cell together, over and over… every time the walls seemed to be closing in.”  He describes the madness that comes from being separated from all human contact. He drives the point home by telling the reader that those who’ve spent years in isolation will one day leave the walls of the prison and re-enter society to work and live among the reader, themselves, and all those whom they love. This last appeal is the ultimate appeal to pathos. Rideau closes with these thoughts knowing that there is nothing human beings hold dearer than the lives of those they love, knowing that people will do almost anything to save those lives, and knowing that fear drives people to action.

By following Rideau in his article from one point to the next, it is not a difficult to arrive at the understanding that a problem does exist in the corrections system of the US, and that solitary confinement, without clear guidelines as to what warrants its use and limits as to how long it can be implemented is a major problem within the penal system. Rideau uses real life examples of when the use of solitary confinement moved from punishment to cruelty, and also showed us that protestors wouldn’t have taken issue with the system if the problem hadn’t already reached the point of infringing on human rights. He also used his own experiences as a prisoner in isolation and his credentials as an activist, journalist and advocate of change and reform in the justice system to give the readers reason to believe that he is, indeed, credible and thus gives credibility to his argument. It is through these means that Rideau employs logos, ethos, and pathos to successfully argue the importance of reforming the current use of solitary confinement as a punishment in his article, “When Prisoners Protest.”

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