In his essay The Pain of Animals, David Suzuki incorporated a lot of anecdotes in order to achieve the purpose of his text: inform people that animals can also feel pain just as humans do. The story that I hang the more with is when Mr. Suzuki talks about the trapped squirrel and that it screamed really hard because of the human chasing him at the bottom of the tree. I can relate to it because I once did the same with some friends when I was younger. When I think about it, it was not right what I was doing just as Mr. Suzuki says. Even if this anecdote is helping Suzuki to achieve his purpose, it is an informal fallacy known as appeal to pity because there is no evidence; it is only appealing our emotion.
Another anecdote which is another appeal to pity is when Mr. Suzuki talks about the fish for which people think do not feel any pain. Even if he describes so well how the fish movements were representing pain and fear, it is again an anecdote that appeals to pity since there is no evidence. David Suzuki is really smart, in this paper he wrote: ‘’ our ability to empathize with other people and living things is one of our endearing qualities’’. In the same paper, he can use his own quote by telling the anecdote about the squirrel and the fish to make us feel empathic about animals which works really well.
In The Pain of Animals David Suzuki uses other techniques than anecdotes in order to achieve his purpose. The most stunning and evident for me is the use of rhetorical questions such as : ‘’…’’. He used this kind of question several times throughout his paper. These questions are really more emotional than a real argument since we can only answer it one way or not at all. Who can really say that animals do not feel pain or that we can go over animals right back and forth like we want when we want because we ‘’need’’ it? I can’t and I believe that the majority of people who read it can’t too.
The Term Paper on Mar 2001 Animal Testing People
Sydney Rooney Ms. Beauchamp - TeeseEnglish 10-316 March 2001 Some Cat Saved Your Grandma Animal rights activists are constantly preaching about how doctors and scientists should give up testing on their cute furry little creatures because it not only causes the animal pain but also the activists' pain. They just can't stand seeing Fido and Fluffy in such nauseating conditions and being injected ...
However, even if we can consider these kind of questions as weak arguments, they work really well because we tend to acknowledge the position of Mr. Suzuki. David Suzuki used another device several times; the quotation. He used it three times and each times they were well incorporated and meaningful. The first quote is from Jane Goodall (a chimp expert), in which she tells the conditions of the chimps in labs which is really terrifying.
