The Mysterious Death Of Mary Rogers Essay

Words: 1366
Pages: 6

People in America today live ordinary lives. The vast majority of us wake up in the morning, go to work or school, and then come home to relax. During this relaxing period is when we try to get our entertainment for the day. Entertainment in America is a very strange thing. We as a country sit down every evening on our couches, and turn on the television to watch other people live their lives. Our country finds our entertainment through watching other people’s lives. I can picture my father right now mocking my sister and me, as we sat and watched reality television. He would always begin by saying, “I remember growing up, and we didn’t have a television to watch so instead we did productive things.” This statement always made me wonder, is it just our generation that is so captivated by watching reality television, or was this something that started earlier? In the book, “The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers” by Amy Srebnick, it talks about society …show more content…
Both of these stories contain sexual encounters, as well as someone turning up dead. We can all remember the publicity that the OJ Simpson case received, so it is easy for us to compare this to how it must have been back then reading about Mary Rogers. Usually to society back then, speaking about a possible rape and murder, or a possible abortion gone bad, would have you ostracized from society. But as soon as it happened to make its way to the penny newspapers, it became more than acceptable to speak about. I can almost imagine workers gathering around the 1800’s equivalent to a water jug in an office, talking about the brand new report just in on the Mary Rogers story. The reason why these newspapers were so significant to the story of Mary Rogers, was because it was easy to add new bits to the story as more evidence was recovered. It is easy to compare the penny