Violence In Paret's Fight

Humans have continuously been drawn to being entertained by or participating in acts of violence since Cain killed Abel for their father’s inheritance to present-day club fights where Paret, a Cuban club fighter, was killed. Violence is used as a form of defence and as a form of reward which is seen by Griffith’s need of satisfaction through defeating his opponent, Paret. When the reader begins reading about Paret and his fight with Griffith, the sentences are longer in order to correspond to the long moments of anticipation that Mailer and the crowd experience as they watch to see whose favor the fight will end in. With the change from the beginning of the fight to when “Paret got trapped in a corner”, the sentence structure becomes sharper …show more content…
Mailer’s word choice steers the reader to visualize Paret as a capable competitor whose fighting style is reflective of his admirable characteristics. The diction’s effect sometimes deviates, but it always moves the reader toward similar conclusions about Paret that Mailer made. Throughout the events of the fight, Mailer never uses negative diction when describing Paret — even when it was obvious Griffith was winning. This is seen with the phrase “then Paret began to wilt” which is applied when recounting the first steps towards an eventual downfall. This metaphorical wilting produces an image of a slow decline that softens the upcoming and inevitable scene of impossibility of Paret’s death. Mailer compares Paret’s death to “a large ship which turns on end and slides second by second into its grave”, cushioning the shock of a moment no one thought would ever arrive. Due to word choice, the reader can sense the respect that Mailer had for Paret, making this report not another account of a misfortune, but of a tragedy that had an immense emotional effect on those who were witnesses and those who later learned of the loss of