Applying Kenneth Burke’s Pentad to Clarence Darrow’s (1924) Defense of Leopold
In a passage you are examining, what term/concept is Darrow trying to explain? And which is he treating as the moving force? If you find yourself studying Darrow’s decision to focus on the young ages of the killers, don’t talk about pity; talk about the way their youth invokes a particular frame with a particular ratio of the Pentad. The concept of frame and pentad are related here. The Columbine, Parkland, and Sandy Hook killings were all framed as “school shootings.” That’s a particular way to arrange the Pentad: SCENE is given dominance for framing or defining the act—right there at the lexical level. But, after some analysis of Columbine, others identified/framed the killers as something they called the “trench-coat mafia”—basically, disaffected Goths who may have been victims of bullying. This frame seems not to have been grounded in reality, but it was seized upon as having explanatory force (the group AGENT had been shaped by bullying [Act-Agent], and the bullied Agent then fashioned a desire to retaliate [PURPOSE and ACT]. Yet another compelling approach to Columbine identified Eric Harris as a psychopath. Defining the ‘Agent’ as a psychopath locates the motive in his psychology. We could say that is a psychiatric frame. All of the different explanations imply a particular way of arranging the 5 terms of the Pentad. Then, similar to Parkland, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and others there were various other ways to frame the matter: Was it a story of America failing to protect children from gun culture? Was it a story about a police-system that fails to use the already existing background checks at its disposal? Was it a story about gun culture? Rampant, untreated mental illness?
Make sure to stay on this issue of how Darrow defines, or frames, or explains his clients’ behavior.
- According to Darrow, when his clients kidnapped and killed Bobby Franks, what was happening?
- What sort of Agents (Patients???) were they?
- What did they think they were doing?
Darrow offers several answers to this question. It is not just a random set of excuses; there are some patterns to the way he works—even if he also seems to jump around.
