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An Argument, Its Elements, and a Student’s Analysis of the Argument
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Nicholas D. Kristof (b. 1959), a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, grew up on a farm in Oregon. After graduating from Harvard, he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he studied law. In 1984 he joined the New York Times as a correspondent, and since 2001 he has written as a columnist. The editorial that follows first appeared in the New York Times in 2005.
For Environmental Balance, Pick Up a Rifle
Here’s a quick quiz: Which large American mammal kills the most humans each year?
It’s not the bear, which kills about two people a year in North America. Nor is it the wolf, which in modern times hasn’t killed anyone in this country. It’s not the cougar, which kills one person every year or two.
Rather, it’s the deer. Unchecked by predators, deer populations are exploding in a way that is profoundly unnatural and that is destroying the ecosystem in many parts of the country. In a wilderness, there might be ten deer per square mile; in parts of New Jersey, there are up to 200 per square mile.
One result is ticks and Lyme disease, but deer also kill people more directly. A study for the insurance industry estimated that deer kill about 150 people a year in car crashes nationwide and cause $1 billion in damage. Granted, deer aren’t stalking us, and they come out worse in these collisions — but it’s still true that in a typical year, an American is less likely to be killed by Osama bin Laden than by Bambi.
5 If the symbol of the environment’s being out of whack in the 1960s was the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching fire, one such symbol today is deer congregating around what they think of as salad bars and what we think of as suburbs.
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So what do we do? Let’s bring back hunting.
Now, you’ve probably just spilled your coffee. These days, among the university-educated crowd in the cities, hunting is viewed as barbaric.
The upshot is that towns in New York and New Jersey are talking about using birth control to keep deer populations down. (Liberals presumably support free condoms, while conservatives back abstinence education.) Deer contraception hasn’t been very successful, though.
Meanwhile, the same population bomb has spread to bears. A bear hunt has been scheduled for this week in New Jersey — prompting outrage from some animal rights groups (there’s also talk of bear contraception: make love, not cubs).
10 As for deer, partly because hunting is perceived as brutal and vaguely psychopathic, towns are taking out contracts on deer through discreet private companies. Greenwich, Connecticut, budgeted $47,000 this year to pay a company to shoot eighty deer from raised platforms over four nights — as well as $8,000 for deer birth control.
Look, this is ridiculous.
We have an environmental imbalance caused in part by the decline of hunting. Humans first wiped out certain predators — like wolves and cougars — but then expanded their own role as predators to sustain a rough ecological balance. These days, though, hunters are on the decline.
According to “Families Afield: An Initiative for the Future of Hunting,” a report by an alliance of shooting organizations, for every hundred hunters who die or stop hunting, only sixty-nine hunters take their place.
I was raised on Bambi — but also, as an Oregon farm boy, on venison and elk meat. But deer are not pets, and dead deer are as natural as live deer. To wring one’s hands over them, perhaps after polishing off a hamburger, is soggy sentimentality.
15 What’s the alternative to hunting? Is it preferable that deer die of disease and hunger? Or, as the editor of Adirondack Explorer magazine suggested, do we introduce wolves into the burbs?
To their credit, many environmentalists agree that hunting can be green. The New Jersey Audubon Society this year advocated deer hunting as an ecological necessity.
There’s another reason to encourage hunting: it connects people with the outdoors and creates a broader constituency for wilderness preservation. At a time when America’s wilderness is being gobbled away for logging, mining, or oil drilling, that’s a huge boon.
Granted, hunting isn’t advisable in suburban backyards, and I don’t expect many soccer moms to install gun racks in their minivans. But it’s an abdication of environmental responsibility to eliminate other predators and then refuse to assume the job ourselves. In that case, the collisions with humans will simply get worse.
In October, for example, Wayne Goldsberry was sitting in a home in northwestern Arkansas when he heard glass breaking in the next room. It was a home invasion — by a buck.
20 Mr. Goldsberry, who is six feet one inch and weighs two hundred pounds, wrestled with the intruder for forty minutes. Blood spattered the walls before he managed to break the buck’s neck.
So it’s time to reestablish a balance in the natural world — by accepting the idea that hunting is as natural as bird-watching.
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Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing
What is Nicholas Kristof’s chief thesis? (State it in one sentence.)
Does Kristof make any assumptions — tacit or explicit — with which you disagree? With which you agree? Write them down.
Is the slightly humorous tone of Kristof’s essay inappropriate for a discussion of deliberately killing wild animals? Why, or why not?
If you are familiar with Bambi, does the story make any argument against killing deer, or does the story appeal only to our emotions?
Do you agree that “hunting is as natural as bird-watching” (para. 21)? In any case, do you think that an appeal to what is “natural” is a good argument for expanding the use of hunting?
To whom is Kristof talking? How do you know?
THINKING CRITICALLY Drawing Conclusions and Implying Proof
Look at Nicholas D. Kristof’s essay above. Provide two examples of sentences from Kristof’s essay that use each type of conclusion or proof.
| INDICATOR OF CONCLUSION OR PROOF | EXAMPLES | TWO EXAMPLES FROM KRISTOF’S ESSAY |
| Transitions that imply the drawing of a conclusion | therefore, because, for the reason that, consequently | |
| Verbs that imply proof | confirms, verifies, accounts for, implies, proves, disproves, is (in)consistent with, refutes, it follows that |
To complete this activity online, click here.
OK, time’s up. Let’s examine Kristof’s essay with an eye to identifying those elements we mentioned earlier in this chapter that deserve notice when examining any argument: the author’s thesis, purpose, methods, persona, and audience. And while we’re at it, let’s also notice some other features of Kristof’s essay that will help us appreciate its effects and evaluate it. We will thus be in a good position to write an evaluation or an argument that confirms, extends, or even rebuts Kristof’s argument.
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But first, a caution: Kristof’s essay appeared in a newspaper where paragraphs are customarily very short, partly to allow for easy reading and partly because the columns are narrow and even short paragraphs may extend for an inch or two. If his essay were to appear in a book, doubtless the author would run many of the paragraphs together, making longer units. In analyzing a work, think about where it originally appeared. A blog, a print journal, an online magazine? Does the format in some measure influence the piece?
Title By combining “Environmental Balance” with “Rifle” — terms that don’t seem to go together — Kristof starts off with a bang. He gives a hint of his topic (something about the environment) and of his thesis (some sort of way of introducing ecological balance). He also conveys something of his persona by introducing a rifle into the environment. He is, the title suggests, a no-nonsense, hard-hitting guy.
Opening Paragraphs Kristof immediately grabs hold of us (“Here’s a quick quiz”) and asks a simple question, but one that we probably have not thought much about: “Which large American mammal kills the most humans each year?” In paragraph 2 he tells us it is not the bear — the answer most readers probably come up with — nor is it the cougar. Not until paragraph 3 does Kristof give us the answer, the deer. But remember, Kristof is writing in a newspaper, where paragraphs customarily are very short. It takes us only a few seconds to get to the third paragraph and the answer.
Thesis What is the basic thesis Kristof is arguing? Somewhat unusually, Kristof does not announce it in its full form until paragraph 6 (“Let’s bring back hunting”), but, again, his paragraphs are very short, and if the essay were published in a book, Kristof’s first two paragraphs probably would be combined, as would the third and fourth.
Purpose Kristof’s purpose is clear: He wants to persuade readers to adopt his view. This amounts to trying to persuade us that his thesis (stated above) is true. Kristof, however, does not show that his essay is argumentative or persuasive by using many of the key terms that normally mark argumentative prose. He doesn’t call anything his conclusion, none of his statements is labeled my premises, and he doesn’t connect clauses or sentences with therefore or because. Almost the only traces of the language of argument are “Granted” (para. 18) and “So” (i.e., therefore) in his final paragraph.
Despite the lack of argumentative language, the argumentative nature of his essay is clear. He has a thesis — one that will strike many readers as highly unusual — and he wants readers to accept it, so he must go on to support it; accordingly, after his introductory paragraphs, in which he calls attention to a problem and offers a solution (his thesis), he must offer evidence. And that is what much of the rest of the essay seeks to do.
Methods Although Kristof will have to offer evidence, he begins by recognizing the folks on the other side, “the university-educated crowd in the cities, [for whom] hunting is viewed as barbaric” (para. 7). He goes on to spoof this “crowd” when, speaking of methods of keeping the deer population down, he says in paragraph 8, “Liberals presumably support free condoms, while conservatives back abstinence education.” Ordinarily, it is a bad idea to make fun of persons who hold views other than your own — after all, they just may be on to something, they just might know something you don’t know, and, in any case, impartial readers rarely want to align themselves with someone who mocks others. In the essay we are looking at, however, Kristof gets away with this smart-guy tone because he not only has loyal readers but also has written the entire essay in a highly informal or playful manner. Think again about paragraph 1, which begins “Here’s a quick quiz.” The informality is not only in the contraction (Here’s versus Here is), but in the very idea of beginning by grabbing the readers and thrusting a quiz at them. The playfulness is evident throughout: For instance, immediately after Kristof announces his thesis, “Let’s bring back hunting,” he begins a new paragraph (7) with “Now, you’ve probably just spilled your coffee.”
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Kristof’s methods of presenting evidence include providing statistics (paras. 3, 4, 10, and 13), giving examples (paras. 10, 19–20), and citing authorities (paras. 13 and 16).
Persona Kristof presents himself as a confident, no-nonsense fellow, a persona that not many writers can get away with, but that probably is acceptable in a journalist who regularly writes a newspaper column. His readers know what to expect, and they read him with pleasure. But it would be inadvisable for an unknown writer to adopt this persona, unless perhaps he or she were writing for an audience that could be counted on to be friendly (in this instance, an audience of hunters). If this essay appeared in a hunting magazine, doubtless it would please and entertain its audience. It would not convert anybody, but conversion would not be its point if it appeared in a magazine read by hunters. In the New York Times, where the essay originally appeared, Kristof could count on a moderately sympathetic audience because he has a large number of faithful readers, but one can guess that many of these readers — chiefly city dwellers — read him for entertainment rather than for information about how they should actually behave.
By the way, when we speak of “faithful readers” we are in effect saying that the author has established good ethos, has convinced those readers that he or she is worth reading.
Closing Paragraphs The first two of the last three paragraphs report an episode (the home invasion by a buck) that Kristof presumably thinks is pretty conclusive evidence. The final paragraph begins with “So,” strongly implying a logical conclusion to the essay.