The first half of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, by Jon Ronson, was extremely fascinating, but also definitely not what I excepted. First of all, Jon Ronson has a distinctly British style of writing that just seems more winding and roundabout than an American counter part might have been. He has many anecdotes in this book, in which he weaves into one massive story concerning every single part of madness and the many layers of the psychopathy world. He starts of with an admittedly confusing but intriguing mystery about identical boxes filled with interesting objects sent to scientists all around the world for them to supposedly figure out. Many a moons are spent pouring over this box and its mysteries by the scientists but Jon Ronson travels around the globe just to find out that it was a random act by a psychopath. The very psychopath that would send him deep into the world of psychopathy. A rhetorical device Roson uses consistently is compare and contrast. He meets and studies many different people that are psychopaths and he compare and contrasts all of them to see what they have in common, what is different, all to define psychopathy. Another rhetorical device Ronson uses well is definition. Throughout the entire book he is building a definition of a psychopath and whenever he seems to have a definite definition, he learns something new and has to revise it. These rhetorical device make Ronson writing very effective because it seems like a story but it is also informative. The Psychopath Test is a study into psychopathy, but it is strung together using Ronson's stories and experiences. The audience is given an intimate look into a person who fears he is succumbing to a whole other type of madness, so he studies psychopaths to reassure himself he can't be worse than them. This was very effective and a good read.
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