The Bad Lion

                                                                       

          In the 2010 edition of The American Best Essays, one of the included writers, Toni Bentley, wrote The Bad Lion. Toni Bentley’s essay was originally published in the New York Review of Books and is a notable writer for nonfiction, which means that her selected essay for the 2010 edition is one of her best works that stress her specified genre. In addition, Bentley’s upmost purpose for writing her essay, The Bad Lion, was to share to the public how there’s a difference between how humans and animals execute their daily lives in a completely opposite structured way. Therefore, whom Toni Bentley tried to write her essay for was those people who have not yet known how an animal’s actions compared to humans are not treated equally, as well as for the type of people who are more adventurous or interested in the beauty of other things besides human life. For example, The Bad Lion was about a few persons, probably young individuals and a ranger who encountered and experienced several situations in which a Lion took on after its duty. After having followed “the bad lion” for several days, the ranger and young individuals were able to perceive the manner in which the same lion wouldn’t bother with them or even try to attack them. This was because the lion wasn’t interested in them, it was interested in seeking after what had not obeyed or been loyal to his demands, such as the other lions. As a result, Bentley wrote the context of her essay by writing it in a format of a regular day. This means that she wrote The Bad Lion in an uncommon location with the exposure to wildlife, a large area of open field, followed by individuals found in a daily day, a vehicle with a ranger and a couple of young adults. More overly, not only did Bentley set up the context of her essay within a camp around Londolozi, but she was also able to achieve the purpose of her essay. Bentley accomplished this by using the strategy of imagery, so that the audience could relate to how similar their actions are to those of a lion, in terms of how someone reacts.  In addition, she also incorporated repetition into her essay, which was very important because she continually repeated the word lion, which was the basis to her entire essay and set a suspenseful mood. Therefore, I believe that Toni Bentley successfully accomplished her purpose in writing The Bad Lion, because she didn’t just tell a story of individuals who encountered a lion, she was able to demonstrate the true meaning between how both an animal and humans react and distance themselves in a similar way.

(Half Human Lion, Pinterest)