Household Death Climbs to One

Reading through the stories on TheOnion.com, I discovered one particular story that seemed extremely sarcastic and satirical, and I actually had to laugh out loud. The title of the story was “Household Death Toll Climbs to One.” This title is humorous to me because usually when news stories refer to death tolls, they are typically large-scale events; such as the death toll from a large hurricane, a terrorist attack, or a forest fire. The fact that this writer chose to use the phrase “Death toll” seemed to really draw out and almost mock the fact that there are so many events that occur every day where hundreds of people pass away.

In the actual news story, the truth of the incident was revealed in that a 68 year old man from Connecticut slipped while getting into the bathtub and hit his head, causing him to eventually die. Even though this occurrence is rather common, it is very rare that a person would actually die from falling into the bathtub. After the writer explained this tragedy, they wrote that the wife of the deceased man “Still resides in the deathtrap,” which I found very comical considering the fact that this was such a rare event to actually cause a person to pass away.

The language and rhetoric that were used to describe this story definitely add character and humor to something that would in most cases be an uninteresting news story. The fact that a man died in his bathtub would never make the front page of a national newspaper, but in this context, it would be something that many people would read and most likely enjoy. Even the word choice in the title contains a phrase that is seen in newspapers every day, but in a completely different form, which makes the story a must read.