Kiersten Hellier
ENG 4320
Dr. Burmester
22 September 2014
Stylistic and Rhetorical Analysis of “The Queer Case of Luke O’Donovan” by Meredith Talusan
“The Queer Case of Luke O’Donovan” is an article written by Meredith Talusan about a
case that recently took place in Atlanta, GA. Talusan has published works for The Nation,
American Prospect and NPR predominately on trans-gender-queer matters. This article takes an
in-depth, objective look at all sides of the case through a forcible, journalistic style in hopes to
discover the “truth” about the case. The case is about a 21-year-old named Luke O’Donovan,
who was convicted of stabbing five men in a fight. According to O’Donovan, he was acting in
self-defense from a five-on-one, homophobic, violent attack. Although it didn’t receive much
media attention, this case was widely controversial, and still is.
In preparation for this assignment, my subject of analysis was very different. However,
upon reading this article, I decided that I must re-evaluate. I chose to analyze this article because
I know Luke O’Donovan and have friends and family that were deeply involved in the case. That
being said, it is difficult for me to talk about the case without having a strong bias. I liked this
article because the writer herself is a trans-gender person, but did an amazing job at writing and
investigating objectively. She is transparent with the readers, stating that she was trans-gender
and admitting that she would have been predisposed to take O’Donovan’s side, but forced herself
to be impartial. In fact, she was so objective that I had to stop myself from getting mad at her at
times while reading the article. Although I doubt I will have a career in journalism, it is
something that I’ve always enjoyed and I could see doing in the future, even just for recreation.
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Thus, if I’m ever going to write journalistically, I need to learn how to be objective and unbiased
no matter what. Additionally, I enjoyed the order in which she presented her information and the
overall flow of the article. She used simple but descriptive language in order to display different
points of the argument while making it easy to follow.
I analyzed only 1,006 words of an overall 6,958 comprising the article. Of these words,
there are 54 sentences. There are 24 simple sentences and 30 compound, complex or
compound/complex sentences. Of the 54, the strong majority of 47 are declarative, 5 are
interrogative, and 2 are imperative. This made sense to me considering the nature of the article is
journalistic, and most of the content is explaining the case. Some of the declarative sentences are
as follows:
“Prosecutor Ramona Toole argued that Luke stabbed five people without provocation at a
New Year’s party in the early morning of January 1, 2013: Andrew Mainor, Kevin Ralph,
his brother Michael Ralph, Luke Lane, and Brett Hammond.”
“The men suffered injuries ranging from wounds to the stomach and heart to lacerations
to the leg and hand, none of which proved fatal.”
Of the 5 interrogative sentences, 4 are hypothetical questions posed to the readers, and one is in
the form of a quotation by an interviewee. Of the imperative sentences, two are quotes from
interviewees. Overall, I thought the kinds of sentences were appropriate considering the nature of
this article. The majority of declarative sentences proved useful in properly and objectively
explaining the case and its details.
Additionally, in analysis of the sentence purposes, I discovered that 38 were expository,
10 were argumentative, and 6 were descriptive. Most of the expository sentences were
explaining details of the case or interviewees. Some examples are:
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“Luke stood accused of stabbing five men who he claimed were beating him up for being
queer, and faced 110 years in prison if convicted.”
“Mainor is the publisher of the Chicago Defender, a prominent African-American
newspaper.”
Also, 4 out of 10 of the argumentative sentences are posed as hypothetical questions to the
readers (as mentioned above as interrogative sentences). One being:
“Was it just the South’s habit of burying accusations of homophobia?”
I counted these questions as argumentative sentences because, although they are hypothetical,
they are speculative and relied on the opinion of the writer, which was one of the only times in
the article where she actually expressed her own opinion. The other argumentative sentences
were those made by interviewees. One example is:
“I believe this sentence is far too light.”
Furthermore, some of the descriptive sentences are:
“I was next to Luke’s sister Kate when she sobbed as the judge read his sentence, and
saw those sobs quietly intensify in the quivering of her body when Markle banished Luke
from Atlanta.”
“We’d been traveling by train for hours before the young man in dark-rimmed glasses
that matched his suit asked me what I was up to in Atlanta.”
Overall, aside from the few opinionated questions that the reader posed, I thought the sentence
purposes coincided with the purpose of the article, which was to give a well-informed, unbiased
explanation and analysis of the case.
This article contained many lengthy sentences, the longest containing 50 words.
“After the hearing, she told me she had called people she knew at both Project Q Atlanta
and the GA Voice, the two most prominent gay outlets in the area, and persuaded them
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not to run articles about the case by presenting them with evidence that Luke was the
aggressor.”
The shortest sentence had 5 words.
“It wasn’t what I expected.”
While doing calculations, I was surprised to find out that the average length of sentences was
about 18, because it seemed that some of the sentences were pretty long. Though some sentences
were long, the article was not hard to read, and the shorter and longer sentences were evenly
placed throughout the text. According to a Flesch–Kincaid readability score, this section of the
article was a 9 out of 10, meaning it could be easily read and understood by an average 11-yearold student. This level of reading difficulty in the article makes it easily understandable to the
average reader, which I think contributed to its effectiveness.
To continue, although I would consider this piece to be more of a journalistic style than
any other, there is a lot of use of first person point of view. Of the 54 sentences, 29 were in the
third-person, and 25 were in the first-person. Because the writer told the story through her
journey in Atlanta, there ended up being a significant amount of first-person sentences from the
point of view of the writer. Some of these were:
“By coincidence, I ended up sitting between Luke’s siblings and his parents at the
hearing, because I was early and the bailiff asked us to enter the court in order.”
“More specifically, I was stopping by Atlanta on my way to New Orleans then Dallas, to
visit and write stories about trans women.”
Of these first-person sentences, seven were from quotes of interviewees. One example comprises
of sentences stated by interviewee Cheryl Mainor:
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“I heard that the Southern Poverty Law Center was going to put up an article about the
case and portray it as a gay-bashing. I called them up and told them, this is Andrew. This
is my son.”
Some of the third-person sentences are as follows:
“Kevin and his friends, Luke says, then started beating him, calling him “faggot” again
and again while stomping on him.”
“Luke stabbed them in self-defense.”
The analysis of the 54 sentences in this section of the article shows that the author was writing a
lot of this article through the lens of her time in Atlanta, hence the use of the first-person point of
view. However, I was impressed with her ability to write in first-person without sacrificing her
objectivity and thought it served the purpose of the article well. This use allowed the reader to
speculate and question along with her as she examined the aspects of the case.
In conclusion, “The Queer Case of Luke O’Donovan” is a journalistic and expository
style article by Meredith Taluson that examines the case of Luke O’Donovan conducted in
Atlanta this summer. She uses mostly declarative and expository sentences, paired with both
third and first person point of view to create an objective and informational examination of the
case with lots of detail. The language was simple and easy to understand, and she presented
arguments from both sides of the case. To do this, she dispersed the different arguments one after
the other in the order of which she investigated them instead of presenting one side completely
and then the other.
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Works Cited
Talusan, Meredith. "The Queer Case of Luke O'Donovan." Medium. N.p., 17 Sept. 2014. Web.
21 Sept. 2014. <https://medium.com/the-archipelago/the-queer-case-of-luke-odonovan4be5bbcbb198>
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Kiersten Hellier
ENG 4320
Dr. Burmester
22 September 2014
Reflection
Through analysis of “The Queer Case of Luke O’Donovan” I discovered many things
about the article’s effectiveness and my own writing. Being a rhetoric and composition
concentration, I’ve had to write a lot of argumentative essays, and sometimes it’s easy to get
wrapped up in my own opinion or argument rather than looking at it objectively first. In order to
make a strong argument, it’s necessary to look at other sides of the argument in order to
strengthen your own, and although I’ve been taught this, it’s easy for me to get carried away with
my emotions.
In the article, I thought the author did a great job of looking at all sides of the argument
without including her own bias. She is transparent with the readers about her own opinions but
tries to look at the case without including them and examines the case impartially. Her use of the
first person was used to her advantage, and the structure of the sentences proved to be simple and
easy to follow. To display her objectivity, she used mostly declarative and expository sentences
rather than argumentative, which is something I need to improve on if I hope to write
journalistically at all. The average length of the sentences was not too long and the language was
simple but effective. Also, there were many long sentences as well as short, which I think
contributed to the flow of the paper. The long and short sentences were dispersed equally among
each other, with very few sentences under 10 words very close together and sentences over 30
words used sparingly. This is something I can improve on in my own writing.
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Examining the article according to this assignment forced me to look at a piece of writing
like I never have before. I’ve done a lot of analysis before to determine the effectiveness of an
argument, but I never had to examine it in this type of way. Looking at sentences individually
made me realize that every sentence should have a purpose and a function, and that I need to
start analyzing my own writing with these types of techniques.