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Warrior's Don't Cry is obviously a factual novel, howerver, Beals,because she lived through the tortures that she is writing about, is able to emotionally grab the reader and draw out feelings of sympathy, horror, astonishment, and many others based on her use of the rhetorical appeal of pathos. Because the opression and violence that the Little Rock Nine, as well as their families and communities faced was so horrible, Beals' realistic account of what went on during the time of the integration of Central High School makes her writing in need of no extra help pulling the heart strings of the reader, however, the vivid images that Beals is able to create help the reader to understand the fear of those being attacked and the animosity of their attackers. "Under siege, Elizabeth slowly made her way toward the bench at the bus stop. Looking straight ahead as she walked, she did not acknowledge the people yelping at her heels, like mad dogs. Mother and I looked at one another, suddenly conscious that we, too, were trapped by a violent mob." (50) The use of the simile "like mad dogs" ties into the reader's fear and creates a sense of panic because of the hatred that these white people openly showed and acted upon before the black students even entered Central High School. Beals also attracts the readers emotions by telling this story in a way that the reader is able to actually feel her suffering, maybe not physically, but emotionally right along with her. Her constant repetition of the newspaper headlines and the discouraging news that the press spread as well as the format in which she quotes a conversation that she had with a "caller" that was only one of many contacting her every hour, threatening to kill her in her own bed. "...I know where you live, Twelfth and Cross. We gonna get you tonight...'long about midnight...I heard the receiver click, and he was gone. Did he know where my bedroom was? Would he come over now? Did he have a bomb? I couldn't tell Mama and the others that he knew so much about us, so I choked back my tears." (61) The fact that Beals claims that she couldn't tell her family for fear of frightening them, the reader adopts that feeling of loneliness just as she has, feeling as though there is no one to turn to and being terrified by the uncertainty of even the next few minutes. She doesn't even feel safe in her own house, and those feelings definitely translate to the reader. When Beals' mother tells her "I'm gonna leave a change of clothing hanging outside your bedroom closet door. If somebody ever gets into our house late at night, you grab those clothes, go out the back door, and run as fast as you can down to Ninth Street." (62) a seed of uneasiness is planted in the reader and throughout the rest of the story that feeling grows and eventually the stress that Beals is feeling each day and night whether she's sitting in class or next to her grandmother who is armed with a shotgun, takes over the reader as well. "I struggled to push him back and to keep the dark curtain of unconsciousness from descending over me." (26) Both the reader and the author are afraid of what might happen next. Beals does a spectacular job of really including the reader in her thoughts and feelings. Without these emotional connections, the validity of this book wouldn't be as solid to as many people because the fact that the reader can feel and see all of the horrid things that are happening to Beals as a teenager during this time, adds to her story and makes the reader appreciate what she's saying and going through more than they would if they weren't somehow emotionally attached to her story.
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