Bowling for Columbine Documentary Codes and Conventions
Essay Preview: Bowling for Columbine Documentary Codes and Conventions
Report this essay
what are the codes and conventions used in the documentary bowling for columbine?The narrative voice in any text is the medium through which the writer communicates messages to the reader in an attempt to encourage a response to people, places and ideas. This process can be clearly seen in the poem “The Wholly Innocent”, by Bruce Dawe, and in the short story “Rory”, by Kate Walker. The poem delivers powerful messages about abortion through the voice of the endangered fetus, while the story tells us about the pain experienced by a young person as he sees his brother slowly dying of leukemia. Both texts use a range of language and generic conventions in order to generate reader response.
The topic of abortion is very controversial in society because people have strong opinions both for and against the termination of a pregnancy. Bruce Dawes poem expresses his view on this topic and the language he uses clearly positions the reader to disapprove of this brutal practice. This view is shown using strong emotive words. For instance, the powerful terms used in the lines “Now down in the bucket thrust/Anonymous as mud” tell us that the fetus was forcefully thrown into a bucket like it was something worthless which makes the reader feel sympathetic towards it. This type of vocabulary influences the positioning of the reader easily.
In addition to attacking our society for allowing abortion to be a legal practice, the text is also trying to create a sense of guilt in the mind of the mother of the fetus. The innocent voice of the unborn child is pleading with its mother not to terminate its life in the womb.