Project 2 Final Draft
Bryan Bowers
TR 9:30-10:45
The song “Zombie” by the group “The Cranberries” holds within the context of it, the
authors disdain of war and its aftermath and attempts to inform on this. The author uses
many persuasive devices , which are found in Gideon Burton’s “the Forest of Rhetoric” to
do this. They use logos which draws on the audience’s logic, they use pathos to elicit
emotional responses, and they use ethos which establishes their own credibility. Through
identifying the elements of this song, it shows that the author is making an argument that
blames war because it creates people that become psychologically scarred from the war
and behave like zombies. Those zombie-like people become full of emptiness and
constantly relieve the war in their mind.
The author uses the persuasive devices; pathos, logos and ethos, to make their argument
against war and its aftermath sound appealing to the audience. To elicit emotion in the audience
the author mentions mothers losing children to war, and also how people can be uncaring about
war because it’s not them or their family in danger. Drawing on logic, the author seems to be
against war and blames it, stating that war creates people who are full of emptiness and act like
zombies, because they continually remember that war. They probably mean something like Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. The author also says that all this fighting has not stopped since 1916,
which was during World War 1.The author describes a lot of things that are seen in a war, so that
makes them seem as though they have actually been there, which establishes their credibility.
The directed audience that seems to connect to this author most would be veterans or people
going into the armed forces.
The author uses other rhetorical devices along with pathos, logos, and ethos. The author also
uses examples, epizeuxis, and barbarism. When the author states that the people are fighting,
they use examples to support the line about fighting. When they say that “they are fighting”, they
give examples of how by saying "With their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their
guns", which emphasizes the "they are fighting" line. The author uses epizeuxis, which is the
repeating of a word or phrase with no words in between, which draws much attention to it. The
author often repeats "in your head" with no words in between, to emphasize that the people who
have become psychologically scarred because of the war repeatedly relive the war in their head.
They also do this with the "zombies" line to emphasize that they seem to act like zombies now,
full of emptiness and almost dead like. The author also often uses barbarism to change the
pronunciation of words, such as "zombie" which draws attention to those words. They also move
around a lot of syllables to change the sound of the words, which makes them more memorable.
A line they did that they changed that I enjoyed was when they pronounced “since nine
teensixteen”, instead of “nineteen sixteen”, which drew my attention to that. After seeing that
year, and this song talking about war I surmised that they were referring to World War 1 (19141918).
The way in which the author uses the music itself also pushes their agreement by
giving it an imperative feeling. The fast paced music and rhythm work together with the quick
sentence fragments to make the song seem imperative. The language is made of short sentence
fragments that will often list things that would be seen in war. For example, those are seen when
the author says “Child is slowly taken. And the violence caused such silence”, in which the
author describes children getting hurt and after the battles it is quiet. The instruments that make
up most of the song are guitar and drums, which are both loud, fast paced instruments, which
help give the song that imperative feeling.
The author’s argument that war creates zombie-like people has been shown in the
context of the song “Zombie”. They used persuasive devices to show it, by drawing on emotions,
logic, and establishing their own credibility. They also used other rhetorical devices which were
examples, epizeuxis and barbarism, all of which emphasize and draw attention to important
areas. All of this paired with the fast paced rhythm and quick sentence fragments, this song does
give off a post war trauma sensation. The author has successfully used rhetoric to make a point.
Works cited
AZlyrics, The Cranberries Lyrics- Zombie,
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cranberries/zombie.html , 2000, 10/1/2012
Burton, Gideon, The Forest of Rhetoric, http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm , 2/26/07,
10/1/2012