Columbine Figurative Language

Female Down
Not every school shooting begins with a white male who is mad at the world. In fact, they almost rarely start with that scenario. Dave Cullen’s non-fiction book titled Columbine was written to clarify all the misconceptions about the Columbine shooting. A passage from “Female Down” informs the readers how the shooting began. Through syntax, diction, and figurative language, Cullen creates a pathos and logos appeal while achieving his purpose.
A variety of sentence structures are used to achieve the purpose. From the beginning to the end of “Female Down”, Cullen creates a logos appeal. In order to form this appeal, he uses quick, short sentences to explain how the shooting began and there are a few brief paragraphs with only 2-3 sentences. For example, he writes, “Danny’s face hit the concrete sidewalk. Death was almost instantaneous” (46) as its own paragraph. Cullen continues to have 2 more short paragraphs following the given example. The short paragraphs give the reader the exact story on who was shot first, and who died first. The shorter sentences also speed up and condense the story and make it easier for the readers to understand and to dissolve any errors the media reported. Longer …show more content…
He describes the students as “a wave” (48) and “targets” (45). This helps the readers visualize how the students came flowing out of the building when the shooting took place. Also, the students and staff were not literally targets, but that's how Eric and Dylan viewed them. By describing the students as targets, readers can get more of an idea of what was going through Dylan and Eric's minds and what they thought of other people. Cullen also repeats the words “he” and “they” when talking about Eric and Dylan (45-48). He intentionally does this instead of using unified words to set them separate from the school and society, and so the readers know that the shooters were different from the

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