Reading these three stories about the same event was indeed a great exercise. While the facts were the same - Vietnam vet releases his vast collection of exotic animals and then kills himself - each story reflected a unique voice and story line.
For my taste, Chris Jones' "Animals" (Esquire), was the most compelling and most dramatic. Back story digression and reflection was minimal giving Jones clean time and space to build his dramatic tension and linear retelling of the story's gruesome night. Scene by scene, Jones' developed his story's action line and stratgically introuduced his cast of characters. Jones took advantage of his scenes to advance the action, assemble his cast of characters, and describe the role they played in the unfolding drama. While the night's outcome was known from the start, this did not detract from the tension Jones skillfully built. His choice of clear language and short sentences added to the feeling of momentum in the story line. In essence, this was a story about men on a hunt.
18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and One Man Dead in Ohio, by Chris Heath (GQ) is a 180 from Jones' story. While Jones threaded his story through the events that took place the night of October 18 in Zanesville, OH, Heath glosses over the night, just giving the facts as a set piece for the center of his story: How could the night of October 18 have occurred? Where Jones seemed to have no interest in what made Thompsom tick, Heath is consumed with Thompsom's psychology and the choices made that night. His story seeks to answer two key questions: What drove Thompsom to collect his dangerous menagerie and then kill himself? Did the animals have to be killed? Heath's retelling is less dramatic, but the reporting and backstory richer. I too wanted to know why the animals had to be killed. I feel Heath went a long way to answering that question for me. Instead of using his characters to advance action, Heath used his characters to reflect on Thompsom's life and the legal mechanisms that both enabled and destroyed Thompsom.
Man or Beast? written by Jonah Ogles for Cincinnati magazine, I thought the least compelling and most biased. I understand his use of the present tense when writing about Thompsom's actions the night of October 18, but I found his tense transitions jarring, especially when he switched to past tense when talking about Thompsom's back story. I also thought he worked too hard to convince me of PTSD as the cause of Thompsom's behavior. Perhaps he was the most sympathetic to Thompsom's plight? I thought this tact too simplistic. Heath's story was more sophisticated and dynamic for understanding the back story on how and why this tragedy unfolded.
