Structural Element of The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society

While I am not sure whether or not commenting on the placement of examples and the presence of examples counts as commenting on a structural element, that is what I am going to do. In The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society Kozol uses an assortment of examples that truly demostrate the challenge of being illiterate. The variety of examples assisted in 3 the essay much more powerful. Because there are so many different examples,  the esssay is relateable to a wider array of people. The examples use everyday settings to show the frequency of the problems that come as a result of illiteracy. There is a great parallelism between  the frequency of examples in the passage and a frequncy of the challenges illiterates must face everyday.
The examples are all relatively short and to the point. This, rather than diminish them, makes them that much stronger. They stick out and are more powerful than they ever could have been because of this slight structural difference. When reading something, it seems that, on occasions such as this, the longer a sentence goes on, the less power it retains. For example: "Illiterates cannot read traffic signs and therefore cannot travel" or "When illiterates are driving they cannot read traffic signs so they can't leave town because they won't know where they are going" ...which is more powerful? While this may be up for some debate, when I am reading an essay I find that the shorter length of the examples makes more of an impact. It keeps the reader engaged and demands the reader's attention.