KB's AP Lang Blog

 In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson uses many different methods to keep his audience interested, and invested in what he is telling them. Through his personal style of writing, he uses many rhetorical devices to make his point.  In Stevenson's Just Mercy, he makes use of pathos often. Pathos is used to invoke emotion in the audience, which he does often in his anecdotes. For example, when he talks about his phone call with Jimmy Dill, he says, "I also realized that I was crying...The harder he tried to speak, the more I wanted to cry. The long pauses gave me too much time to think. He would have never been convicted of capital murder if he had just had the money for a decent lawyer." Here, pathos is used to invoke anger and sadness in the audience as they realize the unfairness of the situation, that Jimmy Dill could've avoided this deadly situation if he had just had the money. Stevenson says this to upset the reader, and make them angry, as he feels, to get them to real...

     Before reading this book, I feel like I have tried my best to stay informed about current events, such as politics, and other things going on in the world. I found this book enjoyable to read because it gave me more information on things I already knew were true, and it gave me evidence to back my opinions.      In Just Mercy, Stevenson talks about his early experiences as a law school graduate, and the things that led him to his career today. He talked about his experiences with death row inmates and interviewing them at a young age. This affected him deeply, and led him on his journey to work with death row inmates, children, and the disabled. He talks about his own experiences as a young black man, and what he has seen other black people go through. This sheds light on the things going on in America right now, with the BLM Protests, sparked by the murders of innocent black people, such as George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and many others...