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Kiersten DeBold
Mr.Newman
English 101: Rhetoric
8 October 2014
The Truth of Bullying
Bullying has progressively become one of the worst problems in schools throughout
America. There are many stories about students who were bullied for various reasons; from
being sexually confused, not having designer clothes, or simply not being friends with the
popular kids in school. Many of these stories end up in them moving to another school or in
more severe cases they commit suicide. In the October 2010 issue of Time Magazine, an article
by John Cloud was featured about bullying and the ways he believes it could be stopped. While
Cloud does a respectable job at informing the reader in his article, When Bullying Turns
Deadly: Can It Be Stopped?, about the problems of bullying and explaining stories of victims of
bullying, he does not clearly state how bullying can be stopped nor does he use visuals to pull the
reader in.
For Cloud to get the reader to feel what the victims families felt he uses the stories of
adolescents that have committed suicide because they were bullied. One of the first cases he
discusses is Seth Walsh who was a thirteen year old from Tehachapi that enjoyed Pokmon and
was openly gay. On September 19, Seth hanged himself in his backyard. Cloud states that, The
technology of bullying has advanced much faster than efforts to stop it ever could. Bullying is
progressing extremely fast and any bullying prevention technique is not able to keep up with the
advancements. Cloud also says that, Researchers have a hard time measuring how common
bullying is because there's no single definition. Because it is hard to define if bullying is only

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physical or verbal, there cannot be one single way to try and stop it. Another story that he
discusses is of Tyler Clementi; a young man whose roommate was uncomfortable with him
being openly gay. Tyler had told his resident adviser that they were not getting along, but no
action was ever taken. A video of Clementi was put up on social media of him kissing another
boy. He had then committed suicide by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge.
Cyberbullying is one of the toughest types of bullying because, insults can be delivered in
nanoseconds via handhelds. (see figure one)
In a study 15% of the seventh and eighth graders said that they were not only victims of bullying,
but that they themselves were bullies. This is the
chicken-and-egg quality to bullying. When these
teens are getting hurt they are going out and exacting
revenge. While the author gives a lot of information
about bullying he also uses pathos by
explaining the stories of the victims of
bullying to get the reader to feel guilt or
grievance to the family for what has
happened.
While Cloud does a remarkable job at
explaining bullying and giving emotional
examples of bullying he does not tell the reader how he believes bullying can be stopped. Cloud
explains multiple times throughout the article that One reason is a problem of research. It is
hard to get good data on bullying because of how frequently it is happening and how many
different types of bullying there are. It is hard for researchers because, There has never been a

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single diagnostic definition. No one knows exactly what qualifies as bullying and what doesnt.
Even though it is hard to get statistics on bullying, is it possible. Cloud uses percentages in his
article, but if he would have used more graphs or tables it would have been easier for the reader
to understand while also giving the reader emotion because they would be able to actually see a
number. Although Cloud uses logos in his article he could have used graphs to support his ideas
and better explained how he believes it could be stopped.
In his article Cloud effectively uses pathos to express sympathy towards the families and
the victims and uses logos to show statistics of bullying. While the author does a good job of
explaining what bullying is along with their stories, he does not say how he believes bullying can
be stopped. Because he does not include the solution of bullying nor does he use charts or graphs
for logos, I believe that the article failed at what Cloud was trying to accomplish.

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Work Cited
Cloud, John. "When Bullying Turns Deadly: Can It Be Stopped?" TIME Magazine 24 Oct. 2010:
1-3. Time. Web. 2 Oct. 2014.