‘ Blinking hell’ is a charity appeal that targets potential donors to raise funds to aid young children and others recover from a serious illness called Trachoma which affects the eye. The appeal is made by an international charity organization named ‘ Sight Savers’. The charity appeal has a photo of a young child’s eyes being tortured and hurt by barbed wire surrounding his eye lashes preventing him from closing his eye.
The picture arouses an emotive response because it allows us to feel the pain with the child and his suffering. The huge picture forces us to look carefully and with awareness at the appeal because the picture radiates sorrow and suffer. This eventually leads us to explore further and to better grasp the message. The title of the appeal ‘ Blinking Hell’ is printed in a large font compared with the rest of the appeal mainly to highlight the importance of this fact and to catch the attention of the target audience. It starts off by mentioning the phrase ‘ at first’, this suggest first hand experience with ‘ Trachoma’, and gives an idea of a silent horror that will commence. The appeal strongly exploits the natural affection towards sick children.
It uses the phrase ‘ Just watch a child for five minutes.’ The first paragraph ends with a growing sense of anticipation to know more of this painful disease. The phrase ‘ Imagine, every time you blink, you scratch your eyes’ is written in a separate box. As an insert it makes it stand out from the rest of the text to stress the agony of these desperate children.
Second person command verb ‘ you’ is used to allow us to imagine their situation and condition in reality. The appeal gives us the impression that we should feel guilty and ashamed when it refers to: ‘ Never even heard’ as if millions are dying from it and we never heard of it. Alliteration is present when the appeal says: ‘ And millions more carrying the infection’, it is used to draw attention and highlight that ‘ Trachoma’ is gradually spreading.’It makes life impossible for young mothers trying to raise children. Fathers and husbands can’t work to support themselves’; this phrase mentions the children then the mother and lastly the father or husband. It uses this specific order because children are the people who attract affection from adults.
A coupon/form is used in the appeal, to make the method of donating money easy and for potential donors not to find the procedures complicated. The coupon that is attached in the appeal makes us feel that the money that will be donated will reach the children because it mentions the coupon number and the credit card number which are considered to be safety procedures. In the next few lines it raises the number of people you can recover to an extra ten, when it says: ‘ A donation of 50 will help save the suffering of ten more people’. This creates an emotive response because it proves to us again how cheap and easy it is to cure 20 people with an amount of money that is almost worthless to us as potential donors. The entire section mentioning the donation needed to treat people is a polite request for potential donators to donate their money to the charity.
The appeal states: ‘ Wouldn’t you pay a hundred or a thousand times that if it were your eyes at stake’. This is a rhetorical question and the use of the word ‘ you’ in the sentence addresses the reader in a manner to make him feel what it would be like to be in that situation. This is very effective due to the way it allows us to feel their tragedy which could easily be cured. In the last section of the appeal 1st, 2nd and 3rd person are all used now to stress that together the 3 ‘ parties’ are needed to fight the disease.
‘ Before they’re roasted in garlic and rosemary they’re soaked in urine and excrement’: The second appeal is asking donators to phone RSPCA to learn more of how sheep are treated while they are being transported, in order to limit the number of hours sheep are transported to a maximum of eight hours. The title successfully takes the reader through the two phrases, the first being appealing to him which is ‘ Roasted in garlic and rosemary’, and the second being ‘ Soaked in urine and excrement’. This controversy makes the reader realize the importance of transportation and hygiene environment for the sheep. There is eye contact of one of the sheep in order to create an emotive feeling of sympathy from donors towards sheep by allowing the audience to look at their condition and how they are ‘ squashed’ together. The appeal mentions the number of sheep transported together in an effective method such as when it notifies us that the: ‘ trucks that carry livestock across Europe hold up to 800 sheep at a time’ to make readers wonder and question tragic conditions and how could 800 sheep be transported in the same truck. The scientific phrase ‘ one sheep produces around a liter of urine and 700 grams of faeces a day’ creates a feeling of authenticity and gives us a feeling of disgust by saying directly after ‘ And so do the other 799’.
So now potential donors are questioning themselves of how tragic it is for 800 sheep to be transported together with all their excrete and urine spread all over the area with them standing on it. A pattern of 3 is used in the phrase ‘ For the rest of the trip they’re wet, cold and some even suffer skin burns’ to hammer home the message that they are transported in an appalling environment which affects their health conditions. The sentence ‘ Some die’ stands out as the natural result of the transport conditions described in the previous paragraph. This effective description leads the reader to understand the severity of this problem and become aware as well as convinced that death is becoming one of the consequences.
The appeal makes it clear to us that the whole reason behind the agony of the sheep is ‘ So European meat traders can squeeze a little more profit from their livestock.’ This tends to make the audience very mad of why this is done to raise a bit more money. The appeal mentions a simple answer to this problem which is that ‘ The sheep could be slaughtered close to their farms, refrigerated and then transported’. This leads the target audience into stopping and thinking of the contrast between the two methods.
The appeals target is clearly declared in the sentence: ‘ The RSPCA want to see an eight hour limit on the transportation of live animals for slaughter enforced immediately across the European community’. The use of the word ‘ immediately’ in the sentence creates a sense of urgency which lets potential donors feel that this argument needs to be resolved as soon as possible and with our donated funds we could relieve the pain of the sheep. We are later told whom to contact and give our views to which is ‘ Britain’s representative at the negotiations is Gillian Shephard and there’s still time to let her know of your views on the crucial issue of maximum journey time’. The phrase ‘ crucial issue’ uses emotive language which causes the matter to be vital.
The phrase: ‘ Which is why we need your help’ uses 1st person in the word ‘ your’ and 2nd person in the word ‘ we’ to confirm that the two parties are needed to solve the problem. The appeal encourages audience to call to state their views by informing that: ‘ Please phone the number below for a free RSPCA information pack and to find out what further action you can take.’ The word ‘ free’ is likely to attract potential donors to call; as they will not lose or pay anything but instead they will help in this case. Finally to prove to the audience that the sheep belong to us and that we all should care about them, it informs us that ‘ Perhaps we can then persuade Mrs. Shephard to look after our sheep.’ The word ‘ our’ is an emotive language which seems as if it’s our personal belonging.
