In
his 2011 article “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” Christopher Hitchens details his
traumatizing experience as a willing victim of water boarding. A controversial
topic, Hitchens explicates the negative impact of the technique by recounting
his own exposure to the torture method. Throughout his article, Hitchens successfully
utilizes the rhetorical devices pathos, logos, and ethos to expose the grim nature
of water boarding and to denounce its use by our nation.
Hitchens hooks most of his readers
with his skilled use of pathos, also known as an appeal to emotions. The full
article is sprinkled with diction such as “flail,” “lashed,” “darkness,” and “gasping,”
setting an uneasy tone to the piece overall. Hitchens’ proficient use of
language allows the reader to experience just what he had experienced, drawing
on our fears by relating his experience water boarding with the torture scene
in 1984, in which you are forced to
confront what you personally believed to be “the worst thing in the world.”
This strong use of language forces the reader to feel sympathy for Hitchens,
almost pleading with him not to go through with such an arduous task. However,
Hitchens pursues his ambition, and is immediately plunged into a horrifying
circumstance. He describes himself as having “fought down the first, and some
of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject
prisoner to my gag reflex.”
Logos, or an appeal to logic, is
similarly weaved throughout the piece, expertly placed in just the right ways
so as to force the reader to re-evaluate what they are reading. Hitchens
informs us that water boarding is not a simulation of torture: “You feel that
you are drowning because you are
drowning – or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled
conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the
pressure.” In reference to the safety waver he had to sign before undergoing
this activity, this heightens the idea that death is very much possible from
this technique. Although it leaves no physical markings on the body, it is
still very painful and can harm one internally. In addition, Hitchens is
concerned after realizing that he is unable to recall the exact events that
occurred while the cloth was over his face. He believes that he had spoken the
safe-word previously agreed upon, but instead had just gone limp in a state
that signals the onset of unconsciousness. He ponders that “now I have to
wonder about the role of false memory and delusion.” He later sums up this
point by stating that “[water boarding] may be a means of extracting
information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information.” When put
in this vastly terrifying position, you will say absolutely anything to stop
the torture. However, this may end up being the opposite of helpful, especially
if they are wrongfully captured and truly don’t have any information to give.
The final technique utilized by
Hitchens is ethos, or an appeal to ethics. The first paragraph of his article
begins with his statement that water boarding was “something that Americans
were being trained to resist, not to inflict.” By stating the terms as such,
it forces the reader to understand that we are trying to protect ourselves from
this type of harm from other countries. Therefore, why would we pass along this
torture method and perform it on enemies of our own? He later goes on to say
that, under the same terms that Abraham Lincoln viewed slavery, “If water
boarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”
In closing, Hitchens is able to
successfully utilize rhetorical devices in order to demonstrate the
shortcomings of water boarding as a torture technique. Hopefully one day our
nation will truly take these thoughts and ideas into serious consideration, and
then our nation will be a better place.
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