Effective Rhetoric in Stephen Chapman’s “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” Imprisonment methods in the United States and other western civilizations like it differ greatly from those in the eastern world. Western practices consist of convicting an individual of a crime and sentencing them to prison terms individual to each offender’s crime. Eastern practices are open, public, and gruesome. In eastern civilizations if an individual steals, they are corrected by having their hand chopped off. Other’s are flogged in public epicenters. While both practices have their faults, Stephen Chapman’s “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” defines the issues with American prisons. In the West it seems almost humorous to watch and hear the stories of “the barbaric rituals of countries
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He takes to opposing takes on the instance of punishment and not only examines their differences, but also explains their similarities and why they are useful or unsuccessful in the cultures they take place in. He then turns the tables to understand if the same type of punishments say Eastern punishment would work in Western society and vice versa. He explains through compare and contrast that while Eastern practices seem barbaric to most modern day Western individuals, they are no more or less so than Western practices themselves. He says, “Only cultural smugness about their system and willful ignorance about our own make it easy to regard the one as cruel and other as civilized” (Chapman 573). His comparison and contrast method makes his argument more effective because it strengthens his claim that Western punishments are not working in Western society, while Eastern society methods are more violent in nature, they seem to perform as better prevention than that of Western methodology. His comparison and contrast is also thought provoking, by contrasting the two punishment styles, it poses a question in his reader's mind, would a different system work better? Western cultures practices keep convicts away and hidden, and the horrors of prison out of plain view, whereas Eastern practices are open to public viewing. Some Americans can go a lifetime without knowing what goes on in …show more content…
According to Chapman, there are five functions punishments should fulfill: retribution, specific deterrence, general deterrence, prevention, and rehabilitation. First he relates Western practices to these criteria and estimates that Western imprisonment only in the punishment category, all else is not achieved through America’s current punishment system. Next, he reasons that Eastern culture’s take on punitive measures achieve all of the criteria but rehabilitation, the ability to help the criminal for life after punishment (Chapman 571). By creating a list of criteria, Chapman sets up boundaries for an argument and is able to show readers in a different way how each system’s measures compare. In some ways it is a statistical view of the information which creates a different way of illustrating the issue at large. It gives Chapman two strong legs to stand on in his argument, facts and numbers to back up his
He takes to opposing takes on the instance of punishment and not only examines their differences, but also explains their similarities and why they are useful or unsuccessful in the cultures they take place in. He then turns the tables to understand if the same type of punishments say Eastern punishment would work in Western society and vice versa. He explains through compare and contrast that while Eastern practices seem barbaric to most modern day Western individuals, they are no more or less so than Western practices themselves. He says, “Only cultural smugness about their system and willful ignorance about our own make it easy to regard the one as cruel and other as civilized” (Chapman 573). His comparison and contrast method makes his argument more effective because it strengthens his claim that Western punishments are not working in Western society, while Eastern society methods are more violent in nature, they seem to perform as better prevention than that of Western methodology. His comparison and contrast is also thought provoking, by contrasting the two punishment styles, it poses a question in his reader's mind, would a different system work better? Western cultures practices keep convicts away and hidden, and the horrors of prison out of plain view, whereas Eastern practices are open to public viewing. Some Americans can go a lifetime without knowing what goes on in …show more content…
According to Chapman, there are five functions punishments should fulfill: retribution, specific deterrence, general deterrence, prevention, and rehabilitation. First he relates Western practices to these criteria and estimates that Western imprisonment only in the punishment category, all else is not achieved through America’s current punishment system. Next, he reasons that Eastern culture’s take on punitive measures achieve all of the criteria but rehabilitation, the ability to help the criminal for life after punishment (Chapman 571). By creating a list of criteria, Chapman sets up boundaries for an argument and is able to show readers in a different way how each system’s measures compare. In some ways it is a statistical view of the information which creates a different way of illustrating the issue at large. It gives Chapman two strong legs to stand on in his argument, facts and numbers to back up his