The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty - Literary Analysis Essay

Introduction

The Singer Solution to World Poverty was a story that was done by a renowned Australian author by the name of Peter Singer and published on September the 5th 1999, in a famous magazine called The New York Times. The writer of this story is renowned due to his efforts and contributions to the philosophy of values and ethics. Peter Singer is considered one of the most influential philosophers who have been impactful to the respect of animal rights coming up with formations regarding abortion and mercy killing, commonly known as euthanasia (Singer 19). And because the story was published in the magazine targeting the readers of that magazine, perhaps, the writer was aiming a larger conversation about the inequalities existing between the wealthy and the poor. He intended that his story would be read by a larger audience to instill the values of assisting the needy people.

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The story begins when the writer recounts the plot of a famous film by the name Central Station where the main character is Dora. This actor is given $ 1000 to take a young boy of 9 years who was helpless to a particular address for the host (Singer 19). Dora takes the child and uses some of the money given to her on buying a tv. After providing this boy, the neighbors would tell her that a group of gangsters would turn up and kill the boy in an attempt to harvest his organs. She did not believe in these sentiments and chose to ignore them. Later, Dora has a confrontation with the moral decision where she had to choose between keeping the money or ignoring the horrible fate of the poor boy or going back for his rescue. After having a compulsion to make a decision, Dora thought that she could no longer ignore the fate of the poor boy, and she needed to rescue him from the death or ignore everything and leave the boy to die for the benefit of her wellbeing and comfort (Singer 21). The story extends an analogy of being selfless and morally guided in helping the needy at a time when they need the help most.

The story employs several instances of pathos throughout where some of them are more advanced and successful than others. The writer incorporates the story of Bob, a young man who is made to take a hard decision between murdering a child or ruining his luxurious vehicle. In this instance, another layer of abstraction to the story of Dora and the homeless boy is added (Singer 23). In Bob's matter, he does not even require to see the face of the child before making his decision. The story then requires the reader to consider how much willing Bob was in rescuing the life of the child. Peter Singer recounts the scenario and says that it can swiftly become absurd if it is pushed further. This writer urges the wealthy people to spare some money and wealth after taking care of all their wants and contribute this money to help in the fight against poverty and to do the opposite by killing the child directly.

In his story, Peter Singer employs appealing pathos to insist on the people and the reader of the story that any amount of money that seems excess after facilitating their needs, be donated to charity, and help provide various necessities to the less fortunate people. He draws the plight of a starving child and a moral requirement to give finances to charity to facilitate the feeding of such children and assist those languishing in abject poverty to make appeals to others. Appealing logos are also employed in the story by the writer with the most critical one being that which gives the exact amount that is needed to help a two-year-old sick child to transform into a six-year-old healthy child (Singer 24). Later in the story, the writer issues statistics of gross national aid that goes out for foreign assistance together with the amount recommended by the UN. Generally, the writer outlines the need for people to make charitable donations and to help the poor. Peter Singer, through his work, is a staunch humanitarian philosopher who targets a broader audience of the people who are wealthy to educate them on the need to give and assist the less fortunate people.

Works Cited

Singer, Peter. The life you can save: How to do your part to end world poverty. The Life You Can Save. org, 2019.