Nicholas Kristof uses evidence from the past, personal experiences, and future goals to persuade his audience that we are winning the war on extreme poverty.
He starts off stating the problem, “the world is a mess, with billions of people locked in inescapable cycles of war, famine…” However, to support his claim that people do not know the improvement on global poverty, he uses statistical facts on polls. 9 out of 10 Americans believe that global poverty has worsened.” He also tells us how the United Nations have evidence that global poverty has been decreased by 50%. To show us this progress, he uses 3 points, where the percentage of people in poverty and people are illiterate dropped. The author does this so the audience can easily understand and picture the improvements in the world, affecting them with ethos. They can then see how the biggest problem in history is finally getting solved.
To move on, Nicholas then involves some of his personal experiences. How he has covered massacres and concentration camps across Asia. He does this to tell us how people only see these problems, but they do not see the progress that is being made to resolve this issue. The author has also encountered many people in need, like blind beggars who seem hopeless. To support his claims of the global progress being made, he shows us how now, humanitarian aid is able to help and cure this, where donations and even the President has been making progress in fighting this war. His next sentence is deep and hugely affects the audience ethically and logically. “The scenes of blind beggars on every street corner will soon be gone forever.” This affects the audience immensely because this is what everyone wants to see. When we see those who are suffering, we feel sympathy, and to see that they are now able to solve these problems and to help them calms the minds.
Lastly, the author takes a step into the future. He doesn’t want the audience to only be satisfied with the progress that has been done so far but wants us to carry this on. He shows that birth rates were tumbling in the poverty areas and that efforts are accelerating to help the world today. To make this even more impactful, the author tells us to give this a moment of silence that the problem is almost solved, and we should continue to help these urgent needs worldwide.
Link to the writing process
Reflections
I felt comfortable writing this piece although we were given a limited of time to do so. I was able to gather my ideas and express them in this essay within the time limit, which I feel is good practice for when we actually do the SAT. However, because time was limited, some minor mistakes were found when I was editing this at home. I would like to improve on my writing speed so I can finish and edit my essay more within the time limit in the future.
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