United States prisons frequently put prisoners in long term solitary confinement for offenses ranging from violence to cursing at a guard, and research shows that such punishment results in extreme psychological abuse. Atul Gawande explores the history, policies, and consequences of solitary confinement as well as the alternatives to solitary, in Hellhole, a 2009 article in the New Yorker. Gawande uses strong emotional appeals to evoke compassion from the reader, and backs up those pathos with evidence to prove the ineffectiveness and harm of solitary confinement in order to inform his readers and potentially provoke political action. Hellhole begins with a description of Harry Harlow’s famous monkey experiment in which Harlow discovered…show more content… Gawande skims the surface of many aspect of solitary confinement, but does not go in depth into any of the topics. While this is a weakness in that a simple overview of topics limits the discussion of a specific topic, it also is a strength. Most people who read the New Yorker are most likely not familiar with issues relating to incarceration, and solitary confinement is a lesser-talked about topic. Gawande gives his audience a general overview of solitary confinement to introduce them to a problem they may not have known about, and uses evidence to counter most parts of the argument for solitary confinement. Ideally, a reader who felt apathetic or supportive of long-term isolation before the article, would be swayed by the logos and pathos in the article and form an opinion opposing solitary confinement. However, Gawande does not give a call to action to the readers who may want to take a stand against solitary. He does not provide the names of any organizations that fight against solitary confinement, or tell how to politically oppose it. This is a major limit of the article. Since the article does use so many emotional appeals, it leaves emotional readers no outlet to take
