Freedom Writers Diary

Freedom Writer’s Diary in Irony

“Well, Jeremy was arrested” (Freedom Writers 183). How does someone who horribly raped and murdered a young girl fit into a book that preaches peace and change for the better? The juxtaposition of violence and peace resonate throughout this passage, giving rise to a paradigm in pathos that epitomizes the message of the book, The Freedom Writers Diary. Logos and ethos are also used in conjunction with irony, but not to the same extent. This passage is one, out of 150, student’s diary entry that takes a passage from their life and compares the world around them to the Freedom Writer’s goals.
“There were media vans in front of the school and the first thing I thought to myself was they were there to welcome the Freedom Writers back and to write an article about us. But they weren’t” (Freedom Writers 183). In order to understand this entry, we must first understand the context that it’s in. The Freedom Writers originally went to Washington D.C. to present their idea of their diary to the U.S. Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, to see if he could get it published for the whole world to read. The point of this diary is to let other people know that they can change, no matter what background they’re from and that peace and respect are always better for everyone rather than hatred and segregation.
While they were in Washington D.C., they not only did that, but they visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Holocaust Museum and held a candlelight vigil for peace. The same night as the vigil, a rape and murder were taking place in Vegas and being carried out by another student from their same school. “Apparently Jeremy had brutally raped and murdered a seven-year-old girl in a Nevada casino…While the father gambled, Jeremy and his friend hung out in the arcade…Jeremy began playing tag with the little girl, followed her into the women’s restroom, where he raped and murdered her in a bathroom stall. The friend…left and did nothing to stop this crime” (Freedom Writers 183).
This passage highlights two things: pathos and juxtaposition. The pathos used here is a paradigm which the writer highlighted, but warned the reader not to follow. The paradigm here is that there is a young man, with nothing to do and a corrupt mind (mentioned later in the passage) that led to a horrific act. This can be generalized to all young men who have nothing to do and have “child pornography on [their] computer” while “abusing drugs” that with these conditions, all young men will commit such crimes (Freedom Writers 183). However, the writer of this diary entry also mentioned that the media focuses on these types of things. “No wonder young people are so easily stereotyped” (Freedom Writers 184).
The other part, juxtaposition, has two distinct passages that also use pathos. “It’s ironic that while the Freedom Writers were taking a symbolic stand against violence in our candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument, a murder was being carried out” (Freedom Writers 184). This passage was mentioned earlier. The second one deals with the media in this diary entry. “It makes me sad that this horrible murder moved the Freedom Writers’ story to the back cover, while Jeremy’s got the front page” (Freedom Writers 184). The juxtaposition comes in with both of these passages in the overlying message: that tolerance and peace are the better way to go and that the Freedom Writers are trying to establish that fact through their writings and their works. Yet, the world keeps on focusing on the negative, the horrible, and the treacherous. Putting these two concepts side by side really force that issue out in this diary entry.
There are two other points to make about this diary entry that haven’t been touched upon yet: the ethos and logos. The ethos here is kind of subtle. “There were media vans in front of the school and the first thing I thought to myself was they were there to welcome the Freedom Writers back and to write an article about us” (Freedom Writers 183). This was already mentioned, yet this same passage is applicable to ethos. This sentence established the strong character of the Freedom Writers: they were well known by now. This entry was written in the spring of Junior Year 1997. After two and a half years of being together, the Freedom Writers had made a name for themselves and were well connected as the remedial English class that had risen to new heights and taking on the world’s problems. When a reader reads this passage, then, she expects to understand the point of their entry and what lessons she’ll learn from it.
Logos is also a brief interlude within this diary entry. “Jeremy had a dark side to his personality. He had child pornography on his computer, and he was abusing drugs. This is a lethal combination. Although not an excuse, such things can make a person with such a dark and disturbed side commit acts they may never have if not under their influence” (Freedom Writers 183). While the writer saw this as an enthymeme and put two and two together, the reader can also see this as a form of logos: obvious logic that spells out why Jeremy did these things and what one should do to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
In conclusion, pathos, ethos and logos are used in conjunction within this diary entry in order to make the reader more aware of what the Freedom Writers are trying to accomplish. Their values of tolerance, justice, peace and love are sharply contrasted with the violence, hatred, intolerance, racism and segregation in their lives and the world around them. This diary entry epitomized that very feeling in juxtaposition.
Bibliography
Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell. The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Print.