The article ‘Fuck you, you fat-headed Roald Dahl censorship fuckers’ is written by Peter

Wisniewski. This was published in New York Times on February 23, 2003. This article was
written after there was a censorship on Roald Dahl’s book which made the writer thought that it
violated freedom of speech. Many adjectives from the original book were deleted and were
replaced by some less discriminated words. The article is very effective in using logos and
pathos to persuade readers that freedom of speech should be uphold for arts.

Wisniewski effectively uses logos to show the censoring on Roald Dahl’s books is a wrong
decision. He said that ‘Art must be free’, ‘Art must be unsafe’ and “art must be controversial’.
He repeatedly uses three parallel short sentences to emphasis his argument that there is freedom
of speech. It is logical to understand that people can’t change any wordings from the original
books. If you were the writer of an article and someone changed your wordings and sentence
pattern by saying you were not good enough on picking the correct words for your presentation.
How do you feel with that? You would be ranged and felt this was offensive. In addition, he used
a historical approach to explain the situation that old words shouldn’t be changed too because
“all art is born of its time. It reflects its time.” He thinks that kids should learn from the past and
this is how a kid should learn too. It is true that children learn from mistakes. It is more
memorable for them to learn from mistakes and have self-correction for that. It is a good way of
learning instead of being told what to do only.

Wisniewski also uses pathos to show his anger about censorship on Roald Dahl’s books. He used
more than twenty times of ‘fuck’ in the article to show he is totally angry with the censorship on
Roald Dahl’s books. There were over 20 different forms of the word “fuck” appeared throughout
the article which are ‘fucking’, ‘fuck’ and ‘fuckers’. These strong words are used when the writer
is very angry about something. In this article, he uses ‘fuck’ to explain things, to shout at censors
and even describe things. The use of ‘different forms of ‘fuck’ can arouse the anger from the
readers throughout the article. The repetition of these words is to let readers to feel his sense of
anger and hostility towards censorship and appeal his readers to feel how he feels. Apart from
using ‘fuck’, he also uses words, like ‘crazy’, ‘fascist’ and ‘filthy’ to describe the work of
censorship. This arose the anger of the readers. If he uses very polite words, readers can’t
understand the message from his. His tone also helps him to persuade people to stand on his side
too. His tone is shouting and direct, ‘You gave no fucking right.’ And ‘so fuck you’. They are
short sentences, but they have a strong power to show the strong feelings that Wisniewski wants
to tell people. Although he uses many swear words, this article could still be published, which
supports his idea that there should be freedom of speech.