English A HL
Mr. Wu
29th May, 2015
An interpretation on Normal Mailer’s vied of Benny Paret’s last fight
The article written by Normal Mailer, for The Presidential Paper, describes a great fight between boxers Emil Griffith and Benny Paret. Both contenders are fairly aggressive, but it is clear that Griffith is more prone to violence. “His girl friend saw it and said to Griffith, ‘Emile I didn’t know about you being that way.’ So Griffith hit her. So he said” (lines 4-5). The last part “so he said” shows that he likes the fact that he is seen as violent, probably because it makes him more intimidating as a boxer. However, it also shows that he does not take criticism well.
Paret is then noted to be making attempts at enraging Griffith further by taunting and insulting him on the morning of their big fight. “I hate that kind of guy, a fighters got to look and talk and act like a man” Paret tells Pete Hamil (lines 2-3). He then proceeds by “making remarks about his manhood” (line 7). By doing this, Paret is making Griffith feel emasculated, which is quite important to someone as manly and pride filled as Griffith.
By making these comments at Griffith, Paret provokes Griffith and so his rage increases. Mailer, present at the fight, tells us that the fight was brutal and was difficult to stop the two men fighting after each round. This paragraph is written with two short sentences and one long one. “It was scheduled for fifteen rounds, but they fought without stopping from the bell which began the round to the bell which ended it, and then fought…them apart” (lines 10-12). The pace of this sentence quickens as the length extends in order for the reader to understand the pace of the fight, which was fought long and quickly too.
We then find out that Parer is a proud, Cuban man who had an unusual fighting ability and style that allowed him to remain “bouncing”, in contrast to his opponent. However, in the last two years it is said that he had begun to take some beatings and so his reputation deteriorated.
Paret’s reputation was highly regarded and so his recent losses could be what made him want to provoke Griffith. In the grand fight between the two, Griffith easily dominates Paret, despite Paret winning one round. Paret is then seen to take longer than a champion to turn around back to Griffith and so he shows his first sign of weakness. However, this sparks off a “particular shame” (line 23) in him. This shame is the same shame that he must have felt whenever he lost in those previous matches. “…he fought the rest of the fight as if he were seeking to demonstrate that he could take more punishment than any man alive” (lines 23-25). Here we see that he is determined to fight as he used to in order to prove himself worthy.
Despite fighting to be the last man standing in the ring, in the twelfth of fifteen rounds, Griffith trapped Paret in the corner. Griffith here beats Paret with eighteen punches in the time span of three to four seconds, before being pulled off by four other men. Here Mailer has used imagery to describe the scene in front of him. Firstly he writes; “Griffith was like a cat ready to rip the life out of a huge blocked rat” (line 26-27). Griffith is describes as being quick like a cat while Paret is seen as a dirty rat. Secondly, he describes Griffith’s punches as “ a piston rod which had broken through the crank case, or like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin” (lines 29-10). The author’s use of imagery here allows the reader to imagine how strong the punches impact were, as well as the sounds omitted from Griffiths fist as it made contact with Paret.
Paret, who received the strong punches, then began to die. As he died, he had a “half smile of regret, as if he were saying, ‘I didn’t know I was going to die just yet…” (Line 41). His smile of regret could be towards regretting provoking Griffith into killing him and not fighting hard enough. Mailer here uses about 6-7 lines to describe Paret’s death scene, giving it a slow pace. This is used to represent how slowly Paret sank to the floor of the ring and how slowly life left his body. Imagery is again used ehre as Mailer secribes his slow fall :like a large ship which turns on one end and slides second by second into its grave” (lines 44-45). Additionally, the sound of Griffith’s punches is still lingering in the air and sounded “like a heavy ax in the distance chopping into a wet log” (line 46). Again, this gives the reader a sense of what the punches were like and how it sounded against a sweaty Paret described as a wet log.
Norman Mailer’s article tells us about two famous boxers that had a deep hatred for one another. It tells us of a fight that leads to the death of one of the contenders. His constant use of imagery allows readers to understand the scene, as if they were present at the fight, in the audience. Mailer’s use of short and long sentence reflect upon the circumstance of the scene it is describing in order to provide a pace that corresponds appropriately. This allows for a deeper understanding and interpretation of the fight.