The Analysis of Persuasive Narrative Techniques on the Example of “The Story of Tom Brennan” Book and the Cowards Punch Ad Campaign

Key events have the potential to adjust the lives of entire families. The people around tragic events have new understandings and knowledge of the world around them, like the ripple on a pond surface after a stone is thrown they feel in a variety of different ways in impact an event had on the perpetrators and victims.

In The story of Tom Brennan, a technique you can use is the non-linear narrative meaning it’s not chronological and jumps backwards and forwards switching between past and present. Using this shows the audience the aftermath of the Brennan family before they knew about the violent road accident that leads to the outgrowth of the family.

The prologue is an important structural feature of this text which you should use as a technique. It’s sombre, remorseful tone set and establishes the current circumstances the Brennan family are in. Quote “In a couple of hours, they would wake and find us gone, far away, so as not to remind them of their pain and what our family now meant to this town.” This prologue provokes readers and their significant transitions into a new town and change of lifestyle for the family, by making Tom’s character the narrator and protagonist, we get a first-hand glimpse into the impacts of transition from his personal perspective. We as readers feel emotionally connected to him as he matures and develops throughout the text. This along with the Cowards Punch ad gives people surrounding tragedy new ideas and comprehension of the way the events change others.

The Cowards Punch ad campaign is designed to change the audience’s knowledge about who is affected when a punch is thrown in anger whilst intoxicated. The tone and close-ups are techniques to use while discussing this text. The ad used these to communicate to the audience the idea that the actions of one will affect everyone else, like Daniels action’s effects Tom and the Brennan family. A close up shot shows Danny Green stopping an angry punch in a nightclub, he states “drugs and alcohol are no excuse stop it for everyone’s sake” this quote can be related to the Tom Brennan book as well the car crash had no excuse for drink drinking and the effects of that were horrible. The audience is alerted by the demand and serious tone in Green’s voice. This can change some audiences own thoughts regarding who they see as the victim, it may be different to who they actually believed.

Our attitudes and beliefs can be changed within a person’s mind when read or hear about things in social media, like the dreadful foolish acts that some people do they would straight away think about the effect that the victims have. JC Burke’s book and the Cowards Punch ad force us to consider the families of the perpetrators, using techniques like special effects in the video ad and figurative and emotive language is effectively used in the novel, the audience is able to hear that the victims of these types of tragedies are sometimes not accounted for or considered. When the coward is shown to swing at the victim a montage of close-ups with dramatic music playing in the background shows the coward’s family receiving vicious punches from an illusion of an apparition offender out the front of the family’s suburban on the lawn.

In Burkes case, each character is shown to have to deal with the fallout from Daniel’s drink-driving accident differently. The common dialogue often involves swearing adolescent idioms and teenage slang. The rawness of Tom’s guilt is relived over and over again “the things I once lived, for now, meant nothing to me. Just the thought of it left a big hole in my guts”. The audience is now aware everyone surrounding the event will be brought to question who they are and how they fit into the world around them. In the ad, the use a wide range of techniques such as camera work and optical effects created a visual metaphor to show the heinous transition that one moment of a mindless violent man can have on his and other families, while in the novel Tom’s character is developed through his actions and Burke’s use of internal and external dialogue.

The director Martin Wilson showed the viewer how the senseless avoidable violent event can and will destroy the everyday lives of everyone in both the victim and enforcers families so does JC Burke with the Brennan family being the enforce family. Using a drink-driving car accident JC Burke carefully targets a teen demographic. In this example form both texts we change our beliefs about who is the victims are in these mindless acts enforced by an individual. After accepting new knowledge and changing attitudes about one’s self you find a deeper and newer different version of one’s previous self. JC Burke makes Tom character refer to himself in a discounted way, ironically he ables himself in a deeper reflective way about himself, others and his place in this world.