Personalising an incomprehensible event: NPR’s “Why Infanticide Is A Problem In Senegal”
In the article, “Why Infanticide Is A Problem In Senegal,” reporter Allyn Gaestel must address a rather basic cultural narrative: killing a newborn baby is bad. She must do it in a way that doesn’t suggest the alternative, that killing babies is fine, but rather, her task as a journalist is to help her readers see the humanity and pain behind the gruesome act. She aims to illuminate another dimension within the societal reality of Senegal.
If the reader is paying attention, the first glimpse into the intensity and sensitivity of the forthcoming article comes in the caption of the top image, above the text of the online article. The woman’s face is hidden by a book, and she is named simply as “E.” An editor’s note about the graphic nature of the content follows, before the article begins. Through these editorial steps, which would be taken for a variety of legal and editorial reasons, the framework of the narrative is already being laid into place. This was not a slap-dash piece written on a daily deadline, but a story that was pieced together thoughtfully and systematically.
Gaestel begins her NPR article with the word “we.” Placing reporters in the scene of a story with the use of “we” is far more common in radio, which is NPR’s primary format, but in this online article, the use of Gaestel’s “we” serves to immediately begin building a bridge between the readers and the subject of the story. Infanticide is not something a typical reader, or at least a typical Western reader, is going to comprehend or possibly empathise with. Using a first person focalisation helps Gaestel inject a sense of unity into the story and attempt to overcome the distance her audience is likely to feel from women accused of killing a newborn baby.
The first paragraph walks the reader slowly through the Senegalese prison complex. The pace is methodical, soaking in the surroundings. The mimetic style of this paragraph sets the scene and shows how real this situation is, that women are spending their days on mattresses in prison, accused of killing babies. It paints a personal picture, before the author has to take a step away over the next two paragraphs and explain the quantitative context.
“We were here to speak to women accused of infanticide — killing their newborn baby.” Again, the focalisation the author chooses makes the narrative personal. It makes this paragraph about the women, rather than the numbers and the politician’s voice that follow. Gaestel is taking a traditional approach to the informational movement of this story: Set the physical scene, give context to the broad issue, then introduce a primary character. At the end of the third paragraph, the first woman accused of infanticide is quoted. A paragraph then clarifies for the reader that these women will not be fully identified, due to the stigma surrounding the issue.
As the article begins to explore its characters and what brought each woman to an accusation of infanticide, the reader is pulled into the complexity of emotion at the heart of the narrative. A teenager raped while working as a maid is an instant source of empathy. A married woman who had an affair while living with her husband’s family is a more complicated character.
The first section of the story switches between present and past tense verbs when referencing interviews with the women, and quoting experts. The pace ebbs and flows, pulling the reader along the complicated trail. One poetically written paragraph is filled with descriptive phrases about the women’s fragmented memories of the trauma. The next paragraph is simply, “Some of them cried as they were being interviewed.” These changes in sentence pacing and verb tenses may be Gaestel’s way of contrasting the sociotemporality of Senegalese history and perspective on the issue of infanticide as a crime, and the human mental temporality of the women who have been through these experiences, who may not see themselves as criminals, but rather as human beings who have suffered.
With the societal context laid out, Gaestel guides the rest of the story by dividing it into three final sections, each highlighting the experience of one woman, each very different. In these vignettes, Gaestel relies more heavily on mimesis, using both direct quotes as well as guiding the paragraphs with paraphrases from the women describing what they experienced. Each of the three women’s stories ends on a different type of dramatic note.
In the end, no matter what the reader feels about women who have committed or are accused of infanticide, they come away from the story with a multidimensional, very personal perspective of how infanticide can become reality in Senegal. In this way, Gaestel is successful in dismantling a Western reader’s distant narrative of women who kill babies, and has replaced it with a new narrative that reflects the complexity of reality.
