TOW #24 - The Most Important things in life, violence, by Harlan Ellison - written

Harlan Ellison was, at the time of the anecdote he references in this essay, a "Nice quiet Jewish kid from Ohio... a published author... well into terminal destitution. Poverty would have been, for me, a sharp jump into a higher-income bracket."  He is also one of the best known writers of the 20th century, namely for his amazing humor and ability to put you in a situation. In this essay he writes about the prominence of violence in life. He illustrates this through the entire section of the essay being an anecdote, in which he uses humor and great description to put you in the scene and make it believable. He outlines a story about him and his friend seeing a movie at four in the morning with a bunch of food when a fight breaks out amongst the few people in the theater aside from them. He uses great humor in sentences like '"Oh shit," I murmured, slumping down even deeper in the seat, till my knees were up around my ears like a grasshopper. Beside me, my Texican buddy was praying in High Church Latin, Yiddish and Sufi, all at the same time.' This humor opens up readers to accept the reality of the story more and to let the reality of the anecdote convince them more truly of his point. He describes everything down to the smallest details, which, along with the humor, serves to immerse the readers even deeper in the world that Ellison creates. Overall, Ellison crafts another great essay in "Violence".