writing an essay about violence

Essays About Violence: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Violence is a broad topic and can be sensitive for many; read our guide for help writing essays about violence.

The world has grown considerably more chaotic in recent decades, and with chaos comes violence. We have heard countless stories of police brutality, mass shootings, and injustices carried out by governments; these repeating occurrences show that the world is only becoming more violent.

Violence refers to the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy . From punching a friend due to disagreement to a massacre of innocent civilians, a broad range of actions can be considered violent. Many say that violence is intrinsic to humanity, but others promote peace and believe that we must do better to improve society.

If you are writing essays about violence, go over the essay example, and writing prompts featured below.

Are you looking for more? Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

1. Videogames, Violence, and Vulgarity by Jared Lovins

2. street culture, schools, and the risk of youth violence by lorine hughes, ekaterina botchkovar, olena antonaccio, and anastasiia timmer, 3. violence in media: no problem or promotes violence in society by albert miles, 4. my experience of domestic violence by ruth stewart, 5. a few thoughts about violence by jason schmidt, writing prompts on essays about violence, 1. what is violence, 2. different types of violence, 3. can social media cause people to be violent, 4. is violence truly intrinsic to humankind, 5. causes of violence, 6. violence among the youth, 7. race-based violence.

“Parents allow themselves to be ignorant of the video games their children are playing. Players allow themselves to act recklessly when they believe that playing video games for ten, twenty, or even thirty hours on end won’t have an adverse effect on their mental and physical health. People allow themselves to act foolishly by blaming video games for much of the violence in the world when in truth they should be blaming themselves.”

Lovins discusses the widespread belief that video games cause violence and ” corrupt our society.” There is conflicting evidence on this issue; some studies prove this statement, while others show that playing violent video games may produce a calming effect. Lovins concludes that it is not the games themselves that make people violent; instead, some people’s mental health issues allow the games to inspire them to commit violence.

“The risk of violence was not higher (or lower) in schools with more pervasive street culture values. Higher concentrations of street culture values within schools did not increase the likelihood of violence above and beyond the effects of the street culture values of individual students. Our results also showed that attending schools with more pervasive street culture values did not magnify the risk of violence among individual students who had internalized these same values.”

In this essay, the authors discuss the results of their study regarding “street culture” and violence. Street culture promotes toughness and dominance by using “physical force and aggression,” so one would think that students who embrace street culture would be more violent; however, the research reveals that there is no higher risk of violent behavior in schools with more “street culture”-following students.

“We have had a violent society before media was even around, and violence is just in our nature as human beings. Those who happen to stand against this are deceived by society, due to the fact that we live in a dangerous world, which will stay this way due to the inability to create proper reasoning.”

Miles writes about people blaming the media for violence in society. He believes that government media regulations, including age-based ratings, are sufficient. If these restrictions and guidelines are taken seriously, there should be no problem with violence. Miles also states that violence has existed as long as humankind has, so it is unreasonable to blame the media.

“It was when I was in the bath, and I looked down at my body and there were no bruises on it. None at all. I was shocked; it was the first time I had lived in a non-bruised body in many years. I don’t know if any other women who got out of violent situations felt their moment. The point at which they realised it was over, they could now get on with recovering. I promised myself that I would never stay with a violent partner ever, ever again. I have kept that promise to myself.”

Stewart reflects on her time with an ex-boyfriend who was violent towards her. Even though he kept hitting her, she stayed because she was used to it; her mother and stepfather were both violent during her childhood. Thankfully, she decided to leave and freed herself from the torture. She promises never to get into a similar situation and gives tips on avoiding staying with a violent partner.

“I went back and replayed the burglar scenario in my head. Suppose I’d had a gun. When would I have pulled it? When he ran out of the apartment? What were the chances I would have killed him in a panic, without ever knowing he was armed? Stupidly high. And for what? Because he tried to steal someone’s TV? No.”

In his essay, Schmidt recalls an instance in which a man pulled a gun on him, threatening him with violence. He chased a burglar down the street, but the burglar pulled a gun on him, leaving him stunned and confused enough to escape. Schmidt was so bothered by the incident that he got his own concealed carry permit; however, after reading statistics regarding gun accidents, he decided to reject violence outright and pursue peace.

As stated previously, violence is quite a broad topic, so it can be challenging to understand fully. Define the word violence and briefly overview some of its probable causes, how it manifests itself, and its effects. You can also include statistics related to violence and your own opinions on if violence is a good or bad thing.

Essays About Violence: Different types of violence

There are many types of violence, such as domestic violence, gun violence, and war. List down the commonly occurring forms of violence and explain each of them briefly. How are they connected, if they are? To keep your essay exciting and readable, do not go too in-depth; you can reserve a more detailed discussion for future essays that are specifically about one type of violence.

Social media is quite explicit and can show viewers almost anything, including violent content. Some sample essays above discuss the media’s effect on violence; based on this, is social media any different? Research this connection, if it exists, and decide whether social media can cause violence. Can social media-based pressure lead to violence? Answer this question in your essay citing data and interview research.

Many argue that humans are innately violent, and each of us has an “inner beast.” In your essay, discuss what makes people violent and whether you believe we have tendencies towards violence. Be sure to support your points with ample evidence; there are many sources you can find online.

Violence arises from many common problems, whether it be depression, poverty, or greed. Discuss one or more causes of violence and how they are interconnected. Explain how these factors arise and how they manifest violence. With an understanding of the causes of violence, your essay can also propose solutions to help prevent future violence.

Youth violence is becoming a more severe problem. News of school shootings in the U.S. has set public discourse aflame, saying that more should be done to prevent them. For your essay, give a background of youth violence in the U.S. and focus on school shootings. What motivates these school shooters? Give examples of children whose upbringing led them to commit violent acts in the future

Another issue in the U.S. today is race-based violence, most notably police brutality against African-Americans. Is there a race issue in policing in America? Or do they target offenders regardless of race? Can both be true at the same time? You decide, and make sure to explain your argument in detail.

If you’d like to learn more, in this guide our writer explains how to write an argumentative essay .Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this Grammarly review .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essay on Violence

Students are often asked to write an essay on Violence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Violence

Understanding violence.

Violence refers to acts that cause harm to others. It can be physical like hitting, or emotional like bullying. It’s a serious issue that can lead to pain, fear, and even death.

Types of Violence

There are various types of violence such as domestic, school, or gang violence. Each type is harmful and can negatively affect a person’s life.

Effects of Violence

Violence can cause physical injuries and mental trauma. It can also lead to societal problems like crime and unrest.

Preventing Violence

Education and understanding are key to preventing violence. It’s important to treat others with respect and kindness.

Violence is a harmful act that we should strive to prevent. By promoting peace and understanding, we can make a difference.

Also check:

10 Lines on Violence
Paragraph on Violence
Speech on Violence

250 Words Essay on Violence

Introduction.

Violence, an act of physical force resulting in harm or damage, is a pervasive and complex issue in society. It manifests in various forms, from interpersonal violence in families to mass violence in wars, affecting individuals and societies at large.

Forms of Violence

Violence takes multiple forms, including physical, mental, and emotional. Physical violence is the most visible, involving direct harm or threat. Mental and emotional violence, though less apparent, can be equally devastating, involving manipulation, coercion, and psychological abuse.

The Roots of Violence

The roots of violence often lie in power dynamics, socio-economic factors, and cultural norms. Factors such as poverty, social inequality, and cultural practices can perpetuate violent behaviors. Moreover, exposure to violence in early life often leads to a cycle of violence, as victims may become perpetrators.

Impact of Violence

Violence has far-reaching impacts, not only causing immediate harm but also long-term physical, mental, and social consequences. It hinders social development and economic growth, perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality.

Addressing Violence

Addressing violence requires a comprehensive approach that involves legal, educational, and social measures. Legal measures include laws and regulations to prevent and punish violence. Educational measures involve teaching empathy and conflict resolution skills. Social measures, such as economic empowerment and social support, can help address underlying factors.

In conclusion, violence is a significant issue with deep roots and broad impacts. Addressing it requires concerted efforts from individuals, communities, and societies to create a world free from violence.

500 Words Essay on Violence

The concept of violence.

Violence, a pervasive element in society, is a complex, multifaceted issue that demands careful examination. It is characterized by behaviors involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Violence has been a part of human history since time immemorial, with its roots deeply embedded in the human psyche, societal norms, and cultural practices.

The Manifestations of Violence

Violence manifests in numerous forms, from physical aggression and verbal abuse to systemic oppression and psychological harm. It can be categorized into interpersonal violence, collective violence, and self-directed violence. Interpersonal violence includes domestic abuse and child maltreatment, while collective violence involves social, political, or economic conflicts such as wars or terrorism. Self-directed violence, on the other hand, includes self-harm and suicidal behaviors.

The Psychological Underpinnings of Violence

Psychologically, violence can be viewed as an outcome of a complex interplay of individual, relational, and societal factors. At the individual level, factors such as personality disorders, low self-esteem, or a history of violence can predispose a person towards violent behavior. Relational factors include family dynamics, peer influence, and intimate relationships. Societal factors encompass broader issues like economic disparities, social inequality, and cultural norms that perpetuate violence.

The Impact of Violence

The impact of violence extends beyond the immediate harm to the victim. It has far-reaching consequences on the mental, physical, and social well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Victims of violence often experience psychological trauma, physical injuries, and in severe cases, death. The societal consequences include a cycle of violence passed down generations, increased healthcare costs, and reduced social cohesion.

Preventing violence requires a comprehensive, multi-level approach. At the individual level, interventions include mental health support and skill development programs. At the relational level, family and community-based interventions can help create a supportive environment. At the societal level, policy measures aimed at reducing social inequalities and promoting cultural change are crucial.

Concluding Thoughts

Violence is a complex issue that cannot be reduced to a single cause or solution. Its roots lie in the intricate web of individual, relational, and societal factors. Understanding these factors is crucial for effective interventions. As we move forward, it is essential to foster a culture of empathy, respect, and non-violence, promoting a more peaceful and inclusive society for all.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Video Games
Essay on Veterans Day
Essay on Vaping

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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How To Craft a Top-Tier Violence Essay Easy-Peasy

Are you looking forward to a straight A-grade in your violence essay assignment?

Well, use our excellent writing prompts and expert tips below.

Definition of an Essay About Violence

As the name suggests, this is a writing piece that seeks to present an author’s argument on violent activities in society. Such an essay may contain one of the following aspects:

Intentional use of physical force
Emotional abuse
Self-violence

These actions may result in any of the effects mentioned below:

Psychological harm
Deprivation
Mal-development

Now that we are well-informed on the topic let us explore the structure of essays on violence.

Outline of an Essay on Violence

The sensitivity of such a paper requires maximum precision on the part of the student. The diction, format, style, and general outline will play a vital role in the delivery of your essay.

Let’s brush through the main parts of your future essays about violence:

Introduction: Present the issue at hand (force), its importance, and why your reader should pay attention. The thesis statement will appear here to give the focus of the paper. Body: In this section, develop your argument present in the intro with convincing facts and examples. Ensure that the topic sentences of your paragraphs answer the thesis statement. Conclusion: Reiterate the most important evidence supporting the arguments as a reminder to your reader. You can have a call-to-action in this section, which may be a warning against the perpetrators of violence or how to report a case of abuse.

Remember that violence can take different forms. Thus, it would help if you endeavored to address the way you chose in detail to feed the reader’s curiosity as much as possible.

Now, let’s take a look at some violence essay samples.

Violence Against Women Essay To many, it remains remarkable that violence against women persists in modern, Western cultures. Women have achieved a great deal of equality, if mainly legal, which in turn supports shifting social thinking that condemns the violence. In plain terms, it makes little sense that society should still in some way enable the abuses. However, sociological theories help to clarify the issue just as Western logic does little to defy or address the violence. It may in fact be, for example, that the abuse was lesser in a past when women enjoyed fewer freedoms, and because men did not perceive them as threats to masculine authority. Not unexpectedly, any patriarchy enables the violence, just males tend to be increasingly dominant when women seek independence (McDermott, Cowden, 2014, p. 1768). This then reinforces that male resentment is likely an influence in abuse of women. As men feel increasingly challenged, they will then use their generally superior physicality to punish such women, and the patriarchal society adds an exponential effect; more exactly, the more women suffer violence, the more the violence is supported as a norm. Then, given the complex nature of the highly developed patriarchy, other elements impact on the subject. An important factor of the subject is that, in Western and other cultures, violence against women is usually intergenerational. This in turn reinforces the impacts of observational learning; in families or in social arenas, societies often support the violence (Michalski, 2004, p. 658). If it is often challenged or condemned, the greater reality is that male dominance is so deeply embedded in a culture like the American, it essentially exists as an intensely powerful force. Despite advances in women’s movements and activism, it must be remembered that this goes back only a few decades. This equates to men holding great power for long centuries, and a trait in any population holding power is a disinclination to surrender any. These traditions then link to the male’s as having the “right” to abuse women as they choose, just as sexual violence against women is still extremely common. Times have changed but it takes a great deal to reverse ethics and gender values so implanted in the culture. Moreover, such changes, again, rely on a male willingness to alter male perceptions. This is unlikely. In plain terms, American men have traditionally enjoyed the socially supported validation of abusing women, which reality has long existed with marriage and external to it. This may be supported by how, today, campus sexual violence and date rape remain at high levels. Little more may be expected in a society that has so long perceived women property. It may then be wondered why changing laws offer minimal protection for female victims of violence. This, however, suggests a reverse logic. Laws of themselves rarely impact on society unless that society is insisting on the law. The U.S., for example, may enact severe penalties on men who abuse women. As noted, many such laws exist. Nonetheless, the current administration strongly reflects gender value which may easily be described as blatantly sexist, which in turn promotes the male empowerment to abuse. Legislation is then no answer unless the society radically revises its views of gender roles. It is true that women today have opportunities to empower themselves to unprecedented degrees. Even this, however, is relatively meaningless in a patriarchy determined to retain its authority. As long as the society’s control largely rests in male hands, then, it is the tragic reality that violence against women will be ongoing. This also reflect how, generally speaking, males who are violent or abusive so often support one another. As noted, then, the answer is not legal; rather, it lies within the culture’s ability to redefine itself.

Domestic Violence Essay Sample Domestic violence is prevalent throughout the world, including Northern America. While the victims may include men, women are by far the most common targets. There are several types of domestic violence, which in turn often lead to a deadly cycle of violence with other, external factors that often play a large role and greatly influence domestic violence, such as patriarchy and power. Fear is perhaps the most basic element in regards to domestic violence, as it is at the core of how most perpetrators attempt to control their victim(s). Fear can be created either explicitly or implicitly, and can be given off through merely a subtle look or gesture. Additionally, one may possess weapons to create fear, destroy another’s property, or show any type of behavior that would intimidate their victim (Johnson, 2008). Intimidation can include a number of different tactics, such as destroying things, handling weapons, raising one’s voice, or hostile treatment overall towards the victim. A perpetrator may even drive recklessly with the victim in the car, or harass him or her at their workplace. Additionally, they may intimidate through communication, such as texting or emailing. Intimidating communication also extends to verbal abuse, which can cause great damage in the victim (Johnson, 2008). Screaming, putting down the other, swearing, or deriding someone are all part of verbal abuse, and is often a precursor to physical abuse (Johnson, 2008). Physical abuse is often a form of domestic violence, and includes measures such as slapping, hitting, pushing, shoving, strangling, hair pulling, and others. Additionally, physical abuse can also encompass the use of weapons. Physical abuse may also, in a less obvious sense, include threats to destroy the other’s possessions, and thus ranges from lack of consideration, to permanent injury or even death (Wilson, 2009). Emotional abuse is perhaps the most common type of domestic violence. This includes any behavior that purposely undermines another’s confidence, thus leading the victim to believe that they are stupid, useless, a ‘bad person,’ or even that the victim is insane (Wilson, 2009). This type of domestic violence can have long lasting consequences, as it demeans and degrades the victim. The perpetrator can also threaten the victim with harm, along with threatening their family. They may even threaten to commit suicide, or use the silent treatment as a form of emotional abuse (Johnson, 2008). Other forms of domestic violence include sexual abuse and domestic homicide. Sexual abuse includes any unwanted advances or sexual behaviors, such as rape, forcing the other to perform sexual acts that are either painful or humiliating, or even causing injury to the other’s sexual organs (Johnson, 2008). In addition, domestic homicide is not extended to only the partner, but also the children. This is, sadly, often a result of ongoing domestic violence that leads to a culmination of killing the other (Wilson, 2009). Domestic violence often follows a common pattern, or cycle. While every relationship varies, they typically undergo similar events based on three parts: the tension building phase, an acute battering episode, and the honeymoon phase. These can all occur in one day, or they may be spread out over a period of months. In the tension-building phase, tension will rise over common, smaller issues, such as money or jobs. Then the verbal abuse may begin, in which the victim tries to please the abuser, and may even give into a form of abuse (Johnson, 2008). The verbal abuse usually escalates to physical abuse at this point. The second phase is the acute battering episode, in which tension peaks and physical violence ensues. This is most often triggered not by the victim’s behavior, but by the abuser’s own emotional state. The last phase is the honeymoon phase, in which the tension has been released. The abuser will become ashamed of their behavior at this point, and try to make amends or either blame the partner for the abuse. The abuser may also try to be kind and loving at this point, and exhibit uncharacteristic helpfulness (Johnson, 2008). Often, the abuser will try to convince the victim that it will not happen again, and thus the victim will not want to leave the relationship. This cycle of abuse can occur over and over again, as the relief gained and promises made during the honeymoon phase provide the abused victim with the false belief that they and their partner are ‘ok.’ There are other, less obvious factors that also greatly influence domestic violence and aid in analyzing violence against women, such as patriarchy, power, and systemic gender oppression, which are deeply entrenched into societies and cultures worldwide. Systemic gender oppression refers to violence against women, which may be carried out not only by romantic partners, but also within communities, civic, and legal institutions. Perpetrators may unconsciously endorse physical abuse as a result of systemic gender oppression (“Patriarchy,” 2015). This is closely tied to the influence of patriarchy towards domestic violence, which refers to the social relations between women and men. Patriarchy is a means of sustaining gender, racial, or class privileges over another, which may be outright, such as violence, or subtle, like the formation of laws, which perpetuate gender inequality. Patriarchy, in this way, is a structural force that sways the relations between men and women (“Patriarchy,” 2015). Additionally, power often sets the course for patriarchy. Often, abusers will combine their masculinity with entrenched feelings of patriarchy, thus making the cycle of abuse more severe (“Patriarchy,” 2015). As a result, power forms relationships based on only one of the individuals maintaining the authority, while the other is at their mercy. Culture and racial oppression are two other factors that come into play when analyzing domestic violence against women. Culture is often utilized to rationalize gender inequality and, consequently, violence, by integrating cultural beliefs as to how women must or should be treated (“Patriarchy,” 2015). When the defense of a place, particular society or culture, religion, or country are integrated into justifying one’s belief on the maltreatment of women, this is also a defense of the culture of patriarchy within said entity. This is closely related to the factor of racial oppression in domestic violence against women. Studies have shown that men of color typically overemphasize how racial oppression influences violence towards women. Additionally, race and gender often overlap within this realm; however, race is “all too often privileged over gender” (“Patriarchy,” 2015). In summary, domestic violence comes in many shapes and forms, which often form a pattern, or cycle of violence. Domestic violence, in turn, can be greatly influenced by other external factors, such as power, patriarchy, culture, and racial oppression, as discussed. Sadly, domestic violence is not merely a result of an individual’s own behavioral issues, but also an offshoot of the implicit and explicit ways that societies and cultures influence the relationships between men and women.

So, what are some of the writing prompts that you can use for such kind of paper? Read on.

Essay on Violence in Society

The society has become a scary world with recent happenings. Here are some prompts for your inspiration:

Causes of violence in society
The impact of crime on teenagers
Forms of violence between nations
Organizational abuse and how to deal with it
People don’t just become evildoers in society
Violence and genetic inheritance: What is the connection?
Development of aggression in a person
Age and violence: Which is the most aggressive age?
A power fueled society is a violent society. Discuss
How the crave for knowledge cause violence

Gun Violence Essay Topics for High School Students

Below are some great ideas that high school students can use for their essay on gun violence assignment:

How to reduce school gun violence
Traumatic experiences of gunfire and killings in schools
Gun violence amongst adolescents in high schools
Gang violence groups in schools
How teachers can contribute to a reduction in gun violence in school
Should gun control be introduced in the high school curriculum?
The role of peer provocation
Parenting practices to reduce gun violence
Schoolyard bullying and gun violence
How troubled teens end up with guns

Gun Violence in America Essay

Are you stuck on your essay on gun violence in America? Well, here are some professional ideas to get you jam-started:

Political debates and gun control in America
Gun violence in poor American urban cities
The rise of highly organized mass killings in America
Post 9/11 gun control measures
Who is to blame for gun violence in America?
Victims of gun attacks in the US
Gun control policies
Social issues in the US lead to gun violence
Security measures in the US
Justice for victims

General Essays About Gun Violence

Mental health
Human trafficking
Domestic violence
Gun control laws
Religious violence
Gang violence
Education on gun control
Role of psychiatric services
Prediction of gun violence
The purpose of the National Rifle Association

From the insights, violence is indeed both an individual and societal issue of concern. Therefore, writing on such a topic needs extensive research and elaborate facts.

Do you still have a question on domestic, mental, school, or gun violence essays? Our professional custom writing help is all you need! Just tell us your writing need, and we will do the rest for you!

How to Write Violence

Side by side pictures of 3 books covers, the books are The Art of Cruelty, The Small Backs of Children, and the Cruel Radiance

How to talk about violence in literature, when the term violence is so broad? “Violence” is defined as “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something,” but it’s also used to depict the “strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force.” How to talk—or write—about violence at all, both despite and because we seem so inundated by it?

This is essentially where Lidia Yuknavitch’s essay “ Suffer the Children ” opens—with a question, fielded from a friend in response to her new book, The Small Backs of Children : “Why bring violence and sexuality so close to the body of a child?” At the heart of the question lies another, shorter question: why bring violence? Longer: why, in a world so teeming with stories of shootings, stabbings, massacres, genocides, do we devote more pages to violence? Is it necessary, and does it incite empathy or produce the opposite effect, introducing empathy’s cousin, apathy? Or, “is there any space left for not watching, not focusing, not keeping abreast of all the events and atrocities unfolding in the world, as an ethically viable option?” ( Maggie Nelson )

Maybe the question is not why, but how? How, in a world so teeming with stories and narratives of violence, do we write violence? If writers are to participate as creators or re-creators of violence in literature, or to respond to it, how might we write it in a way that’s not exploitative, aggrandizing, or gratuitous? And how do we participate as readers, as spectators, of violence?

There may not be room to answer all of that here, with all of its complexities and nuances. Maggie Nelson devotes an entire book to cruelty —not violence, but a broader term: one that includes any behavior that causes pain or suffering, physical or mental harm, or, according to the dictionary, “callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering.”

“Whether bloodshed need always signify violence is also something of an open question, as if the definition of violence itself: think, for example, of the varying uses of the word at issue in phenomena such as ‘symbolic violence,’ ‘divine violence,’ ‘domestic violence,’ ‘the violence of capital,’ ‘abortion as violence,’ ‘violent language,’ and so on. Another open question: whether an act of so-called violence must always be characterized or accompanied by cruelty: the killing of animals for food, some instances of suicide, assisted suicide, or mercy killing, ritualized body mortifications, and so on, all offer ready sites for debate.” (Nelson)

It seems important to dwell on the kinds of violence, the definitions of it, as if to do so would mitigate the risk of unintentional cruelty, in the form of objective violence. So maybe the question is not why, or how, but what—what is violence in literature? What is its purpose? “Why bring violence and sexuality so close to the body of a child?”

While Nelson devotes a fair amount of The Art of Cruelty to the mediums of stage and screen, visual and performance art, she notes a handful of examples in literature. For one, Toni Morrison’s Beloved , which Nelson offers up as an example of the relationship between “subjective violence (ie. the readily apparent eruptions of violence in everyday life, with discernible agents and victims)” and “objective violence (ie. the systemic or symbolic violence, often as invisible as dark matter, that underlies and mobilizes the structure of capitalism itself.)”

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric is rife with objective violence, or micro-aggressions, which are systemic and often invisible to those who are afforded the privilege to ignore it. Nelson notes that the scholar who coined the terms, Zizek:

“argues that one must always read explosions of subjective violence against this structural or objective violence, rather than remaining transfixed by the former […]. Without such perspective, acts of subjective violence (such as murder, terrorism, and war) will nearly always seem in excess, monstrous, inexplicable, and—perhaps most dangerously, according to Zizek—more horrifying than the structural violence than is their truer and more heinous cause.”

We are paralyzed, bewitched, riveted by the subjective violence, the violent violence—the blood and the wounds and the unspeakable and the unthinkable. While it’s true that writers have agency, the choice to “bring violence” upon a body, it’s not the whole truth—which is to say violence is brought upon bodies each day, and when we read about it without the backdrop of the objective violence, the perspective, the context, it reads as “inexplicable,” “more horrifying.”

Susie Linfield asks in The Cruel Radiance how photography should respond to political violence, writing that “Photographs reveal how the human body is ‘the original site of reality,’ in Elaine Scarry’s words. ‘What is remembered in the body is well remembered.’ The body is our primary truth, our inescapable fate.”

“Why bring violence and sexuality so close to the body of a child?” It’s not a question one wants to answer, which may account for its repetition thus far, and the avoidance of a concise answer—as in the case of Yuknavitch’s essay. There is no reason or justification for violence, and no easy way to rationalize its usage in literature. Not even to reach a deeper truth, an understanding, or a higher plane of empathy justifies the bringing of violence to or on or in a body. Nelson writes, “this model of shaming-us-into-action-by-unmasking-the-truth-of-our-actions cannot hold a candle to our capacity to assimilate horrific images, and to justify or shrug off horrific behavior.”

And yet. Literature is a conversation, one that invites and allows for context and perspective—where photography often fails.

Traveling in Sri Lanka, Leslie Jamison witnesses remnants of the nation’s civil war, bombed-out buildings, to which her driver explains once housed rebels. He adds, “One hundred percent OK.” Frustrated with her own ignorance and lack of context regarding the war, she adds, “ We seek narratives to make it so. Violence becomes a necessity, or gets turned into a resort, a soothing holiday.”

How can “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something also” be “a necessity,” “a resort, a soothing holiday”? With literature, we can explore that complexity and nuance in a way we can’t with images flashing on a screen. Not in an attempt to “justify” or “shrug off horrific behavior,” to incite empathy or apathy, but to pose the questions and sit with their residual ringing, their resonance.

My own thoughts upon finishing The Small Backs of Children mirrored Nelson’s response to an art project she witnessed: “this says something. What on earth it says, I have no idea. I like it, though, because it bothers me, and I’m not sure why. […] Whatever it is, I agree that it places us in the ‘lived moment of contraries where we all have to deal.’ I’m not sure where this is, but I’m glad to be here.”

About Author

e.v. de cleyre is a semi-nomadic writer. A contributing blogger for Ploughshares online, her essays and reviews have appeared in Brevity, The Review Review, and ayris.

The Ethics of Writing About Violence: A Roundtable Discussion

It’s funny how whole generations—millions of people—are connected by historical events: wars, assassinations, murders, television sitcoms, films and, of course, acts of terrorism.

It’s funny how whole generations—millions of people—are connected by historical events: wars, assassinations, murders, television sitcoms, films and, of course, acts of terrorism. Americans born in the early to mid-1970s, for example, are connected by images of a crumbling Berlin Wall, two Gulf wars, 9/11 and the grotesque digital photos of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The writers involved in this conversation are all part of that generation, and, as you will see, they are all searching for ways to tell stories about how their own lives intersect with these events in the hope that they will be able to gain some insight into the unwieldy themes of violence and suffering.

This discussion, which took place by email, was inspired by our collective interest in not turning away from the violence close at hand in our own neighborhoods or far away across oceans, but engaging it head-on. As young writers, our ethics and the aesthetics governing how we write about violence are influenced as much by genre-defining books like “Hiroshima” and “In Cold Blood” as by films like the “Rocky” series and Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs”

and “Pulp Fiction.”Through this conversation, we wanted to try to drive the subject of writing about violence—and the anxieties we feel while writing about it—into a corner and see if we could find some common ground, some code of ethics to write by. —David Griffith

Bradley: In August of 2001, I was attacked by a mentally ill young man in the parking lot of my apartment building. I didn’t know he was mentally ill at the time—I thought he was just drunk and aggressive. He asked for a cigarette, I didn’t have one, and he proceeded to beat me.

After he ran off and I began to come to, I realized my neighbors across the street had watched without intervening or trying to get help. It was all so jarring, and when I first tried to write about the experience, it was an attempt to understand why someone could be so brutal and why others could be so callous.The work might have had some therapeutic value, but it had no literary value at that point—it was too self- pitying and pedantic.

In 2003, during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, I was bothered by much of the rhetoric in support of the war that was thrown around by the likes of Sean Hannity,Toby Keith and many politicians. Here were a bunch of guys who had an 8-year-old boy’s excitement over violence—this idea that America was going to be “tough” and that there was virtue to be found in killing when the killing was justified. The thing that got to me, really, was so many people seemed so happy to be going to war. Even as I was disgusted, I felt as if I understood this thinking. I used to be an 8-year-old boy, after all, and I remember Rocky Balboa defeating Ivan Drago and turning the Russians to his side—by the end, the Soviet boxing enthusiasts were on their feet, chanting “Rocky! Rocky!” “Rocky IV” was my favorite movie as a kid precisely because I believed in the idea that properly applied violence could make the world a better place. “I fight so that you don’t have to fight,” Rocky told Rocky, Jr.That was surely what Ronald Reagan meant when he talked about “peace through strength.” I believed in that.

So I started writing what I thought was going to be my “‘Rocky IV’ essay” but discovered, after I got into it, that I remembered other stuff, too: In particular, how, a few days after watching the movie, I beat the hell out of my younger brother while the other kids from my neighborhood cheered me on. I had no reason to beat him up; I just felt as if it would be cool to do so. I’m not saying watching “Rocky IV” turns kids violent, but I know that, in my imagination, I was the hero in that battle—even though I was the aggressor.

Writing that scene caused me to go back and revisit the mugging. I realized these were two pieces of the same essay—an essay in which I could indict myself a little bit, too, as someone who had once believed violence could be pretty awesome.

Recently, I went back to the essay, “Force,” and found that, while I still like the “Rocky IV” and mugging segments, I don’t feel like the essay quite holds together the way it should. I thought I was indicting myself alongside the supporters of the war, but upon reflection, I think I make the argument that an interest in violence and domination is a childish thing that some of us (liberal professor- essayist types) outgrow whereas the less enlightened wallow in their brutal immaturity. It’s not quite that explicit, but the suggestion is there. And I think that’s wrong and dishonest.

Cowser: William, the distinction you draw between writing about violence done to us directly and violence to which we bear witness was the subject of my book “Green Fields,” in which I explore how far the ripples from a death-blow (in the case I wrote about, the stabbing and strangulation of a little girl I knew, but also the blows her likely murderer suffered at his father’s hand) might extend, whether I might plausibly claim the events had “happened” to me.

I was affected by an old speech in which Robert F. Kennedy refers to “the violence of institutions”—ignorance, inaction, intolerance, poverty. I wanted to write about those violences in my book, too, in an attempt to understand the murder as the tragic expression of unmet needs, as the “equal and opposite” reaction to a kind of violence perhaps harder for us to see. Like the man who attacked you, my friend’s killer suffered from mental illness. I realized it was impossible to write about violence without writing about suffering. Of course, my friend suffered, but so did her family (their suffering continues, even beyond the execution of her killer and perhaps even extended by my book). So did the murderer and his family. So did our tiny community, for that matter. I felt a responsibility to wedge all that suffering in there, to get as much in as the book could hold.

Church: I was thinking about “Green Fields,” Bob, and other books on the same shelf for me, books like Didion’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” or Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” and about how violence is intimately connected to place, a part of the character of the landscape.This seems to be a running obsession for me, maybe for all of us, whether it’s the large-scale, apocalyptic sort of violence of nuclear war and tornadoes that I talk about in “The Day After the Day After: My Atomic Angst,” or the public and political violence that you address, Dave, in “Good War,” or the more intimate and local sort of violence that each of you address in your works. It was, honestly, probably easier for me to talk about violence mediated through a movie, to be able to use the movie’s imagery as my own violent imagery and simply retell it.

I’m also interested in places and stories about places where the violence seems to contradict the character of the place. I think this is why “In Cold Blood” completely destroyed me.The book sucked me in, captivated me, unsettled and terrified me as few other books have (also Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” and Dave Cullen’s “Columbine”). For me, the scene of the Clutter murders is some of the most haunting and gut-wrenching narrative nonfiction ever written. What’s interesting to me, though, is how Capote casts the Clutters in a kind of mythic, idyllic light.

They’re almost caricatures, perfectly posed pictures of innocence and hubris, love and sadness, the American Dream cast in sepia-toned nostalgia against the backdrop of Kansas.This casting not only insulates the reader from the real horror of the senseless murders but also allows Capote to cast the killers in a similarly mythic light, as if they are evil incarnate, the real godless violence and injustice of the world unleashed on the unsuspecting, innocent lambs, which, in turn, allows the book to be as much about violence writ large as it is about the specific violence of the actual murders or the actual place. When I taught this book, many of my students said it felt campy, like true crime novels or a “48 Hours” TV special, and in some sense, they were right. I had to argue with them that, while that may seem true now, this kind of storytelling didn’t fully exist before Capote.True crime, as a genre of fiction or nonfiction, or some hybrid TV version of the two, owes its life to “In Cold Blood” and the kind of techniques that Capote employed on the page in that book.

Bradley: It occurs to me that at least three of us (Steve, Dave and I) talk about movie violence in some of our work—Steve’s got “Red Dawn,” Dave’s got “Pulp Fiction,” I’ve got “Rocky IV.”

I wonder if that’s significant at all: When it comes to writing about violence, three out of four nonfiction writers “go to the movies.” How do we use movies to explore our own thoughts about violence? We all wind up criticizing these films’ depictions of violence, but I feel like we also acknowledge that once upon a time, we thought these movies were awesome. Is it fair to say movies played a role in developing our attitudes toward violence and, perhaps, our writing on the issue is a kind of corrective, a more nuanced approach to a subject that was handled kind of irresponsibly by the pop culture we consumed during our childhoods and college years? As thoughtful, reflective writers, are we sometimes embarrassed by the fact we used to watch ninja movies and then practice our flying kicks in the backyard?

Cowser: An experiment I conduct in my intro to nonfiction writing class is to have students watch a scene from the adaptation of “This Boy’s Life” in which Dwight (De Niro) confronts Toby (DiCaprio) about having taken the car out for a joyride and then pounds him for having done so. When I play the scene, students in the front row jump back, aghast at Dwight’s brutality (the fact that I don’t must say something about my desensitization).

Then, I have them read Wolff’s description in the memoir, which begins with the wonderful simile of Dwight presuming “like a mime acting out relaxation.” It’s a “blow by blow” account, but it’s much less “cinematic” than the film version. (Duh, right?) If you’ve ever witnessed a real street fight, you know how absolutely uncinematic they are. Wolff’s version manages some interiority and even humor that’s probably impossible in the movie. For instance, he writes that when Dwight first lunges,Toby thinks the man is after the sandwich he’s eating.

Tarantino-esque movie violence is cool in a way that real violence never is. I can watch “Reservoir Dogs,” but if I turn on an ultimate fighting match, I have to watch it in the picture-in-picture screen. Without that literal compartmentalization, the real violence of a bloodsport like the UFC is too disturbing for me.

I understand what your students are saying, Steven, about Capote, and as our written depictions of violence evolve, I guess I’m pushing my students toward the realest evocations possible. I refer often to Kim Stafford’s advice for writing about difficult material: Look directly at it and proceed slowly with great care.

Griffith: William, I do think of my writing about “Pulp Fiction” as a “corrective,” but more as a self-corrective. The banal violence in films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” lost its savor for me post-Abu Ghraib. As I discuss in my book, Abu Ghraib caused me to re-evaluate the way I relate to violence as an audience member and the way I relate to it as subject matter for writing.

I came of age as a writer while watching Tarantino’s films—probably a lot of writers of our generation did—but I had never sat down and thought about how his aesthetic might have influenced me. It helped me to compare the violence in “Pulp Fiction” to that of “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” and Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” three films I come back to over and over. What I discovered was that, at least for me,Tarantino’s brand of violence did not hold up, and I think it has something to do with his worldview, his artistic vision. For him, steeped in a mix of samurai and B-grade slasher flicks, violence is a means to an end. Period. It’s a way of life, a way of returning things to their proper balance. And while that’s “real”—that’s how life is for some people; that’s largely America’s foreign policy—it’s also a way that cuts off other possibilities. (That’s how we get cycles of violence.)

So while I wouldn’t necessarily say anyone was being “irresponsible” by anointing Tarantino one of the great directors of his generation, I would say his films, if unthinkingly consumed, contribute to the sense, which William alludes to, that “might makes right.” What I decided post-Abu Ghraib—and really, it didn’t quite sink in all the way until after my book was published and I started giving readings and talking to readers about it—was that the way I approached violence as a subject matter was geared toward what peace studies scholars call “interrupting” cycles of violence.

Church: But back to Bob’s point about looking directly at the violence.This, I think, is why I’ve had trouble writing successfully about the use of rock music as torture. I found a list of songs that have been used by the U.S. military to torture detainees at facilities around the world, many of them in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I wanted to write an essay, a kind of annotated “hit list.” Many of the songs would be on my “all time favorites” list—songs that were important to me as an adolescent and even as an adult, songs that offered me a different version of my own life or of the life around me. To think about someone being tortured with these songs, to read quotes from torturers talking about the psychological effects of metal music on a prisoner, had the effect of completely changing my hearing of this music. Metallica’s “And Justice for All,” an album I dearly loved, that’s largely about environmental pollution, social justice and mental illness, no longer lived in the nostalgic glow of my youth, no longer conjured up memories of my beat-up RX-7, my Kenwood stereo and the Lawrence High School parking lot. Instead, there were images of detainees being tortured not just by Metallica but by the “Sesame Street” theme song, Barney, AC/DC and Don McLean’s “American Pie.” I didn’t know how to approach it. Instead of looking directly at the acts of torture, instead of doing more research into how it was done or into the kind of psychological violence done by prolonged exposure to loud rock music, or even into the reasons our country chooses to employ such tactics or how they choose specific songs, I found myself instead recreating the nostalgic glow, hoping that by juxtaposing it against random floating quotes from various sources, a hodgepodge of fragmented information, I could make some comment about the danger of nostalgia, about how it insulates us from the truth of the power of music, or of art, to do both good and evil. It didn’t work. The essay sucks.

Griffith: Bob, you said you’re pushing your students “toward the realest evocations possible.” What is the “realest” in this case, or in cases like this? Does that mean a particular emotional truth about what violence does to a person? Does this mean trying to capture the jarring, unhinging (or maybe even banal, as seems the case with the onlookers in William’s assault) experience of witnessing violence? I mean, why describe violence at all?

Bradley: One of the things I really wanted people to understand about my own assault was that it wasn’t anything like what you’d expect. I’d seen people get in fights before, but the mugging was different. If two guys in a bar are getting aggressive, the violence itself is prefaced by lots of talk and posturing. I don’t imagine anyone has ever been involved in a bar fight and wondered, “Whoa! What’s happening?” the way I did when my attacker started punching me. I don’t think my attacker was any bigger than I am; physically, I could probably have defended myself. But by the time I processed what was happening, I was already on the ground and bleeding profusely and too weak to do much of anything except call for help.

When my friends found out what happened, they were sad and angry. And, if memory serves, every guy I knew said something to the effect of, “Man, I wish I’d been there. We would have fucked that guy up.” What I couldn’t seem to make them understand was that … well, no, we probably wouldn’t have. Of course, if I’d been with a friend that night, the attack likely wouldn’t have happened. But if it had, I think most people would have reacted the same way I did—with stunned disbelief. Maybe, eventually, the friend in question would have realized what was going on and tried to get the attacker off me. But it wouldn’t have been a righteous ass-whupping.

So, for me, the “realest” way to approach violence is to acknowledge that it’s confusing and surprising and upsetting, not glorious or heroic or something sensible men can seriously bond over with each other, despite what our culture sometimes tells us.

One of the things I wrestled with when I first started writing about the attack was that I couldn’t reconcile what had happened to me with my belief that people are generally well-intentioned and that Manichean divisions suggesting that some people are “good” and some “evil” are ultimately wrong-headed.Yet, some people enjoy inflicting pain on others. So, when I write about violence now, that’s what I’m interested in exploring—why is this the case? how can people be so cruel?

My students frequently chafe at the central argument of Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating” because they don’t want to admit they find hating pleasurable. To their credit, they know hatred is destructive, but I feel as if our culture encourages them to delude themselves into thinking they’ve transcended their own occasional hatefulness. I’d kind of like to write an essay titled “On the Pleasure of Fantasizing About Pounding the Unholy Hell out of Some Jerk Who Really Has It Coming.” Because, really, deep down, don’t we all know that feeling? It’s a ridiculous fantasy, of course, like the one shared by my friends, who wished they’d been there when I was mugged so they could’ve “had my back.” But I think it’s one a lot of us tend to indulge—in our heads, not in our lives—from time to time.

Griffith: Speaking of “indulging,” where’s the line between “poetic license” and “exploitation”?

Bradley: I do feel like I have certain responsibilities to my subjects and to my readers. First and foremost, I feel obligated to tell the truth as I understand it. Manipulating facts or memories in service to an agenda— even an agenda as noble as the creation of art—starts me on a path I don’t want to go down. I’m the son of a newspaperman, so maybe it was just drummed into me at an early age, but I guess I feel that if I’m writing about real people, there are real consequences. Furthermore, I feel that if I start manipulating facts about people and their experiences—in a sense, reinventing their stories—I’m doing them a disservice and, well, exploiting them.

I’m not arrogant enough to say what I’ve just typed above is the absolute, capital-T Truth that all nonfiction writers should follow. I’m more concerned with how I approach my writing and less interested in telling Dave, Steve and Bob how to approach their own.

Griffith: My own experience with these issues revolves around a number of the essays in my new manuscript, “Pyramid Scheme.” The first chapter, “Underworld,” which was published in The Normal School, meditates on the brutal murder of four homeless men, whose bodies were found a mere three to four blocks from our house in South Bend, Ind. I won’t go into all the details, but though I felt deeply compelled to write about this, I knew their story was not mine and I had to find a way to write about my reaction to the killings that would be compelling to others, which is to say not sentimental and cloying. My decision was to write in as honest a way as possible about my concerns and about why the deaths affected me so deeply. I drove around the area where the men were found and took photographs. I watched the papers. I monitored the conversation on the Web; I blogged about my feelings.Then something strange happened: A friend of one of the murdered men contacted me. Having read my blog posts, he mailed me to say he had information and needed to talk with me. The police had the details wrong. He gave me the names (street names) of some possible suspects. I was stunned and even a little frightened. I called the police and told them what had happened. It felt like I was playing with fire—scary, yet exhilarating.

A few days later, a reporter from the local paper showed up on my doorstep. She had used my blog posts to triangulate where we lived. She wanted an interview.

So, long story short, I had become tangled in the story. I hadn’t intended on this happening, but looking back now, I see I was doing everything I could to insinuate myself into it. I still have misgivings about the essay. Did I co-opt the deaths of those men for my own gain?

church: While some nonfiction writers out there want to believe nonfiction writing can exist in a moral vacuum, my own experience doesn’t support this. We can’t escape it.The moral risk is part of what makes nonfiction so exciting and artistic, and to argue that morality or ethics don’t apply to it actually seems to harm the genre, to make it more precious and irrelevant, like a shiny bauble on a shelf in the academy.

Some years ago, we lived in a cabin in a canyon in the foothills of Colorado and mostly hated it. We hated the weather, hated the isolation, hated the darkness and the narrow gap of sky. And while we were living there, a 20-year-old woman was pulled over late one night, in the nearby town, by a young man posing as a police officer. He abducted her, sexually assaulted her, killed her and then disposed of her body about a mile from our house. I’ve tried writing about this and mostly failed.

I tell my students that as nonfiction writers, we are basically parasites who feed off the lives of those around us, but that we should always strive to be ethical and efficient parasites. It’s a joke. But it’s also sort of true.When I tried to write about this violent act, about the violent place where we lived—a family walk in hunting season meant taking your life into your hands; we all had blaze- orange stocking caps—I realized it was mostly about me, about my perception of the place, about my own obsessions and conflicted feelings. It was a self- indulgent, essayistic meditation, and I felt quite insecure about using this crime, this young woman’s death, for my own ends. I didn’t know her; I’d only watched her mother on television talking about her daughter. I didn’t know the accused, either. But the entire community was captivated by the crime, and the news coverage was intense. It changed the way people behaved, the way they thought about the place. Crimes like this didn’t happen there. Or they did, and nobody wanted to believe it. And the more I thought about it, and the more I worked on the essay, the more I felt like, no matter how much research I did to get the facts right, to tell the story as close to the truth as possible, I was perhaps as much or more consumed with questions of writing craft, with the artistry of the piece. Sure, I asked myself if it was ethical for me to retell the events of the girl’s death, to craft a narrative from the facts, but I also asked myself how I should do it for the essay. I wondered if I could do it efficiently and effectively, if I could do it well and make it artful enough that I would earn the right to write about it. I was (and still am) very much troubled by the idea of victimizing this young woman or her family again in any way.

Another way to look at it is through the lens of ethical theory. I tell my students you can either be a utilitarian consequentialist, who rejects absolutism and believes the greatest good is created by the greatest art, or you can be a Kantian deontologist, who believes you may never use another person as a means to your own artistic ends, but that most nonfiction writers I know fall somewhere in between the two fundamentalist poles. Most of us are both utilitarian and absolutist in our writing, I think, and it seems a bit disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

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Essay Samples on Violence

Cause and effect of domestic violence: unveiling the impact on individuals and society.

Domestic violence, a pervasive issue across the globe, has profound effects on victims and society as a whole. This cause and effect essay delves into the factors of domestic violence and examines its far-reaching consequences on physical and psychological well-being, as well as the broader...

Domestic Violence

Stanford Prison Experiment Violent Behavior

Discuss what may drive people toward violent behavior against others based on Milgram's experiment and Stanford prison experiment. A particularly alarming trend of increasing violence is observed in modern society. In recent years, the whole world literally swept a wave of violence. It penetrated into...

Stanford Prison Experiment

Social Isolation, Violence and Relationship Breakdown

Mental disorder or psychopathy are terms accustomed refer psychological pattern that happens in an exceedingly very private and is often associated with distress or disability that's not expected as part of normal development or culture. In line with DSM-IV, a upset is additionally a psychological...

Social Isolation

Considering Which Type Of Violence Can Be Justified

Understanding and defining violence can be complex, but an important matter throughout the world. Defining violence can be very difficult because some parts of society may view an act of violence as justified while others may believe that it was unjustified. For example, a topic...

Self-defense: Can Violence Ever Justified

There are not a lot of forms of physical violence relating to self-defense. However, a self-defense act is mostly a reaction to a violent act against themselves. Furthermore common law states two charges are pressed against the attacker when reasonable force is used (Dictionary of...

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Rogerian Argument On The Gun Control Issue

The issue of gun control has been a highly debated topic in recent years, especially in the United States. While some argue for strict gun control laws to reduce gun violence, others believe that owning guns is a constitutional right and that gun ownership should...

Gun Control
Rogerian Argument

Gun Control And The Rogerian Arguments Against It

Have you ever wondered why people get shot every weekend in Chicago? Everyone always wonders why someone could be careless enough to shoot someone. That happens every weekend in Chicago. On average, “there are about five people shot per weekend in Chicago” (Moser). This shows...

Analysis Of Different Perspectives On The Use Of Violence In Movies Reservoir Dogs By Quentin Tarantino And Total Recall By Paul Verhoeven

Violence in the media does not always make people violent. Violent films alone do not make people violent, but the cumulative effect of high exposure to various violent media along with other serious risk factors may cause a person to be aggressive or violent. Films...

Reservoir Dogs

Portrayal of Race and Violence in Django Unchained

In director Quentin Tarantino’s film Django: Unchained, a Revisionist approach to the genre allowed the film to appeal to American audiences in a few ways: a juxtaposition of violence onscreen purposefully transitions between realism and fantastical depictions, differentiating the seriousness of the slavery experience with...

Django Unchained

Best topics on Violence

1. Cause and Effect of Domestic Violence: Unveiling the Impact on Individuals and Society

2. Stanford Prison Experiment Violent Behavior

3. Social Isolation, Violence and Relationship Breakdown

4. Considering Which Type Of Violence Can Be Justified

5. Self-defense: Can Violence Ever Justified

6. Rogerian Argument On The Gun Control Issue

7. Gun Control And The Rogerian Arguments Against It

8. Analysis Of Different Perspectives On The Use Of Violence In Movies Reservoir Dogs By Quentin Tarantino And Total Recall By Paul Verhoeven

9. Portrayal of Race and Violence in Django Unchained

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Violence Essay Ideas

A violence essay addresses this highly damaging phenomenon, by analyzing its extent, its causes, the factors that aggravate it, as well as by looking for ways to increase awareness and find definitive solutions to this problem. Most of the time, such essays are focused on specific forms of violence, such as bullying, sexual violence, domestic violence, street violence, violence among incarcerated individuals, violence triggered by discrimination based on race, gender, religious confession, verbal and psychological abuse, especially with regard to children, and so on. Oftentimes, such essays contain first account evidence of abuse to portray the drama the victims are going through but also important statistics regarding the phenomenon or that assess the efficiency of counteracting measures.

Video Games and Violence: Debunking the Myth

For decades, the debate over whether video games cause violence has raged on, fueled by sensationalized media stories and political rhetoric. However, a substantial body of research and expert opinion has consistently refuted this notion. In this essay, we will examine the evidence and arguments...

Bullying in Public and Private Schools

Bullying is a pervasive issue that affects students of all ages, backgrounds, and educational settings. It has serious consequences for the well-being and development of young individuals. This essay aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of bullying in both public and private schools, shedding light...

How to Stop Cyber Bullying: Effective Strategies

Cyber bullying, a harmful phenomenon in the digital age, demands proactive measures to ensure the safety and well-being of individuals online. Addressing and stopping cyber bullying is not only a moral responsibility but also essential for creating a positive and inclusive online environment. In this...

Preventing Cyber Bullying: a Vital Endeavor

In today's digital age, the emergence of cyber bullying has raised significant concerns about the well-being and safety of individuals in the online sphere. As technology continues to shape the way we interact, preventing cyber bullying becomes not only an ethical responsibility but a crucial...

Cyber Bullying: Causes and Effects

Cyber bullying, a form of harassment that takes place in the digital realm, has emerged as a concerning issue with far-reaching implications. Enabled by technology, this harmful behavior can lead to severe emotional and psychological consequences for victims. In this essay, we will explore the...

Child Labor in Pakistan: a Complex Issue

Child labor is a pressing global concern that denies children their right to a proper childhood, education, and overall development. This essay delves into the issue of child labor in Pakistan, shedding light on its causes, consequences, and the steps that need to be taken...

Tips to Stop Cyberbullying: Creating a Safer Online Environment

Cyberbullying, the use of digital communication tools to harass, intimidate, or harm others, has become a concerning issue in today's interconnected world. As more individuals rely on online platforms for communication, it's crucial to address and prevent cyberbullying to ensure a safe and respectful online...

The Need to Ban Violent Video Games

As the prevalence of violent video games continues to rise, concerns regarding their potential impact on individual behavior and overall societal well-being have become more pronounced. This essay advocates for the banning of violent video games, discussing their potential contribution to aggressive behavior, desensitization to...

The Journey of Self-discovery in "Long Way Down"

The novel "Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds is a thought-provoking and impactful story that explores the cycle of violence and the consequences of revenge. The book follows Will, a fifteen-year-old boy who embarks on a life-altering elevator ride to seek justice for his brother's...

The Harmful Effects of Violent Video Games

Violent video games have become increasingly popular in today's digital age, but their influence on individuals, especially young minds, raises concerns about their impact on behavior and mental health. This essay discusses the potential harm caused by violent video games, examining how they can desensitize...

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