Rolling Stone: The Cover Story Of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Submitted By gswgirl15
Words: 763
Pages: 4

Gloria Beard
Professor Derek Ettensoh
English 1101
September 16, 2014

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
On July 17th of 2013 Rolling Stone released their newest issue. The cover story was extremely controversial, causing an outrage through America. CVS and Walgreen’s banned Rolling Stone from their stands, others have boycotted Rolling Stone since this release. This notorious cover contained an image of a young man who helped make the Boston Marathon Bombings happen. Under its cover picture Rolling Stone writes: “How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into Radical Islam, and became a monster.” Some argue that having him and his story on the cover of such a prestigious magazine was a justification to terrorism and violence, endorsing and encouraging such behavior. But that’s not how you have to think about the reason for the spotlight on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, although that is what most people want to think. The Boston Bomber was chosen to be on the front of Rolling Stone to merely study how someone similar to the readers themselves could go from a successful, respected individual to a “monster.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan in 1993. Later on, he and his family moved to Russia, and by the time he was eight years old they had moved to the United States under Political Asylum. Political Asylum “may be granted to people who are already in the United States and are unable or unwilling to return their home country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, (USCIS). His family moved to Cambridge and became U.S. permanent residents in March of 2007. “He was a charming kid with a bright future. But no one saw the pain he was hiding or the monster he would become” (Rolling Stone). Dzhokhar grew up in Cambridge and was a very successful young man. He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school, and became captain of his high school wrestling team, and a Greater Boston League winter all-star. He also worked as a Lifeguard at Harvard University. He later became a student at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he was known among his friends as “Jahar.” He had a relaxed personality that “made him that dude that you could always just vibe with.” One of his friends told a reporter, (Rolling Stone). He was majoring in Marine Biology, and became a U.S. citizen on September 11th of 2012, seven months before the bombings. So you see how exceedingly well he did in school, had goals in perusing marine biology, and was a very healthy, active, and social individual. What made him become a “monster?”
This is exactly what Rolling Stone discusses in their article about Jahar. How he went from an all around good guy, to a terrorist. It was a surprise