The Girl Who Silenced the World
Argument Analysis
Complete the following using complete sentences and text evidence to support your thinking. Note the paragraph in parentheses
where appropriate.
Question
What is Severn Suzuki’s claim?
What are her reasons?
What specific evidence does she
use to support her reasons?
Which paragraph do you consider
most effective for supporting her
claim? Write the first sentence of
the paragraph.
Text evidence to support your ideas
Severn Suzuki’s claim is on the fact that adults try to change the world, more
specifically by changing/helping to stop animals from going extinct, wars to
stop, stopping world hunger and poverty, and maintaining the world's well-
being (the ozone layer, fish with cancer, chemicals in the air, etc.).
The reasons why she is making this claim are the fact that she is giving her
voice so for those who cry to be heard, for all the dying animals because they
have nowhere to live, the fact that she is scared to go outside because of the
holes in the ozone, for the fact that she is afraid to breathe the hair because
of the chemicals in it, and for the fact that she dreamed to see the great herds
of wild animals but she is afraid that isn’t possible.
The evidence that she uses to support her reasons is the fact that grown-ups
act like they “have all the time and have all the solutions” (3) even though
she knows that we don’t have time, and she is only a child. She even
reinforces that by saying that grown-ups don’t know “how to fix the holes in
the ozone layer, (…) you don’t know how to bring the salmon back (…) you
don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct (…) you can’t bring back
the forest that once grew where there is now a desert.” (3)
The paragraph that I consider the most effective to support her claim is the
fifth paragraph. The reason why I think this is the best paragraph to support
her claims is that she starts to criticize everything that is wrong in the world
and how the adults aren’t doing anything about it, and one of her most
 The Girl Who Silenced the World
What ideas did she offer in the
first paragraph that she included in conclusion are the fact that she talks directly to the adults and tells them to
her conclusion?
What rhetorical appeals did she
use? Provide specific examples.
Did she write a strong argument?
Why or why not? Include your
Argument Analysis
powerful lines is “I am only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war
was spent on finding environmental answers ending poverty and in finding
treaties, what a wonderful place this earth would be.”
The ideas that she offered in the first paragraph that is included in her
change their ways, even mentioning the fact that she is challenging them to
change by reflecting on their words.
The rhetorical appeals that she used in her speech are pathos because she
uses the fact that she cries all night, appealing for the listener to understand
her, and using her emotions of them to make her point stranger. In “Here
you may be delegates of your governments, businesspeople, organizers,
reporters or politicians.” (4) She mentions all the carrels the people watching
her have mentioning ethos, with this she wants to show their importance. In
the world, as well as criticizing them, by saying how they are so important,
yet they aren’t doing anything to help the world. And in “At school, even in
kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not
to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others and to clean up our
mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then, why do you
go out and do the things you tell us not to do?” (6) Because she mentions
what they teach kids in school, she is applying logic on how we should
behave, at the same time criticizing the adults’ logic because they teach us to
behave well, yet they don’t behave well themselves, because they don’t care
about the world’s problems.
In my opinion, she wrote a great awareness speech, but it didn’t feel like a
good argument. Throughout the whole assignment, as much as I tried to like
her speech, the more I felt like it was missing something. She passes the

ideas about how her word choice
affected her argument.
The Girl Who Silenced the World
Argument Analysis
whole speech mentioning that the grown-ups are wrong, how her father has
always supported her and was realistic, how she felt about the world, but
the speech didn’t touch me, it didn’t feel like a good argument, it felt like a
mess. She was spitting things that, in my view, didn’t make sense in the
order she was putting (for example, she mentioned her father). Her full
argument was weak (which is normal for a 12/13-year-old), but still, I feel
like it was missing more facts in the argument, when she mentions the
money spent in the war, she could tell, approximately, how much money
was spent and how could that money help on social causes. The idea is
there, her claim is a reasonable one, but the argument is weak, it is missing
more facts and coordination.