In Annie Dillard’s Total Eclipse, sources, ideas, and information are connected in surprising ways. By using phrases and metaphors like “The grasses were wrong; they were platinum,” and “The grass at our feet was wild barley,” or even “A piece beside the crescent sun was detaching,” she describes the effects of the eclipse through distorted imaging, because certainly those things were not happening. Throughout the whole essay, Dillard jumps around from her feelings and the effects of the eclipse to her past experience with partial eclipses and compares them; she also adds in pieces of what she sees in her husband, Gary, and his reactions/different appearances throughout the eclipse.
Her intriguing ways of keeping the readers interested could
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Throughout elementary, middle, and a good portion of high school I was taught and expected to write in that formula. Based off my learnings of that formula and what I’ve learned about how Dillard’s piece is put together, I’d say she breaks a quite a few of the rules I was taught.
Although she does begin with an opening sentence to grab the attention of the reader, she then proceeds to reiterate the same phrase in a different way with a little more detail. In some ways that would be considered repetitive, and she seemingly does that a lot with descriptions in the essay. For example, she describes the grass as “platinum” in one paragraph and then a short while later describes it as “wild barley.” In the conventional five-paragraph-essay, you’re taught that the opening paragraph should begin with a clever attention-grabbing sentence and have your thesis statement and 3 supporting ideas to that statement that you would proceed to go into detail about in the next three paragraphs. The fifth and final paragraph would be your conclusion and in that you would restate your thesis and close it off. Dillard begins with that attention-grabbing sentence, and then more-so leads off into telling a story. She keeps the essay alive by using phrases and metaphors that are vivid and expressive, yet they’re absurd, impractical, and
Dillard includes a shift from inside the plane to back outside in the twenty-ninth paragraph and uses mundane diction choices. While flying in the plane was exhilarating, once they landed, Dillard and Rahm simply “climbed,” “walked,” and “wandered.” These mundate diction choices are used in order to emphasize how being inside the plane juxtaposed to being outside of it. Inside, life was amazing and breathtaking, but outside, everything was mundane and average. The audience can understand how Dillard’s view on life outside the plane had changed--she no longer was interested in it, and desired her new-found life in the sky.
With the English language, there are thousands of different ways to describe an event or even a single object. In the two passages, two different authors use various methods to describe a large flock of birds in flight. The first author, John James Audubon, describes the flock in his book, Ornithological Biographies. The second author, Annie Dillard, describes the flock in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The passages written by John James Audubon and Annie Dillard have many similarities; however, there are also many differences that set the two stories apart.
In stories, authors tend to use techniques that they enjoy within their writing. Some authors make a lot of analogies while others might focus on dialogue between the characters. Both of the author’s; Scott Westerfeld and Shirley Jackson, show many instances of descriptive sentences that do different things for the reader. In both Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, the author’s use description to illustrate the setting, give hints about the plot, and set the mood.
In the passage from the novel, We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates uses selection of detail and repetition to characterize the speaker, Judd Mulvaney as childish and afraid. Repetition is often used by characters to emphasize a point they are trying to make. However, when used in excess it makes the character look immature. Judd Mulvaney uses repetition in nearly every other sentence so this is a clear attempt by Oates to characterize Judd as immature or childish. In most cases, the repetition adds nothing to the sentence, for example, when he said, “The book was flowing below left to right (east to west)”.
Noah Augustine, former chief of Metepenagiag Mi'kmaq Nation, delivered a great essay on how culturally and morally ridiculous, it is to use Native symbols for sports team logos. He effectively talked about how offensive it really is to make ridicule of cultural symbols by using facts and real-life events. He is also helped by the use of analogy, diction and rhetorical questions to achieve this. Augustine, impressively used an analogy to persuade a wide range of readers as he makes a connection between other cultures and how they would feel if they were put in the same shoes as the Natives were in. He goes on to say, “Nonetheless, for me, as an Aboriginal person, the use of these religious symbols and caricatures of Indian chiefs or spiritual
In Libby Copeland’s,” Who was she? A DNA test only opened new mysteries,” Copeland tells the story of Alice Plebuch’s ancestry search, all while giving the reader information on DNA testing kits. Copeland constructed her paper to tell a story, inform the reader, and flow all in one. She used different types of descriptive vocabulary and commas to keep the reader hooked, then told the story of Plebuch through this writing. Copeland used commas throughout the whole paper in many different ways.
Dillard’s purpose is to inform the reader of how to develop a larger range of our vision in order to get new perspectives on how to live life. She introduces logos to get to ethos. Dillard uses many interesting facts like in “Fixed”, “The female will mate with and devour up to seven males”(Dillard 60) and “If a bee is heavy with honey, the wasp drinks by licking the tongue of her unfortunate victim”(Dillard 60). The facts prove that there are intricate details about everything. The authors desired outcome is to make people want to open their minds and look more abstractly in their lives.
I'm a sucker for stories and especially emotional ones at that. The narrative writing of Janet Cooke in Jimmy’s World will bait and hook with a well-defined character and a strong, internally consistent struggle and these get me every time. Thus it's not a surprise that I really enjoyed reading the article. She opens with a strong contrasting lead and continues the theme throughout the article with beautiful imagery.
Michael Chabon’s Manhood For Amateurs is a collection of short stories that Michael Chabon has derived from his own life. Each story is not only interesting, but each story is able to teach the reader something they didn 't know about them self. Reading the shirt story “Fever” I was inspired to write about one of my own experiences, this experience being the first time I ever had pizza in America. In my own personal story I tried to resemble the creative style that Chabon was able to write with, however, I was only able to do so much. The similarity between my essay and Chabon’s essay are that we both have a scene, I tried to resemble this aspect as it was the main focal point that inspired my essay.
In How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, Paul McHenry Roberts explains how not to write. He first shows an example of a poor writing process from a student’s point-of-view. The student makes multiple mistakes throughout. Their first mistake: “It comes to you that you do your best thinking in the morning, so you put away the typewriter and go to the movies.”
What works well in the story ‘Biggest Elvis’, how the author uses many voices. These different voices are the tidbits and shadows of the author’s subconscious driving the story, for instance the First notable point of view 2nd person, example ‘You should have seen us when we had our act together.’ He interchange from 2nd person to 1st person direct POV, ‘I know it sounds crazy but I’ve got to say it,’ and plural first person, ‘We showed up in a lot of places, ‘We played inside the gate.’ The writer develops round character from Biographical method. ‘At six-foot-one inch and two hundred forty pounds, I had height and bulk.
Throughout the book, An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard, Dillard uses the metaphor of waking up to describe herself growing up. Overall, I think Dillard does a good job of representing the different stages of her childhood through this metaphor. Dillard first mentions the metaphor of waking up stating that “ I was just waking up then, just barely. Other things were changing. ”(10) and that “I woke up in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years.
The Multi-Level Storm Like an artist pieces together a multi-level painting with a variety of different focal points, author Kate Chopin eloquently provides a vivid parallel within her story titled The Storm. Chopin paints the picture of a storm brewing while simultaneously conveying an underlying storm surfacing. Detailing the events of the day, she describes how certain characters are only aware of the aspects of the seething storm, as they pertain to them specifically. Her essay in its entirety is a collection of contrasting parallels depicting the differences between the storm that Bobinot and Bibi are in, to the storm that Calixta and Alce are in. Setting the tone of contrast for her essay she depicts, in paragraph one, the relationship
The title of this work is The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D. Salinger who is an American author. The year of publication for this piece is 1951. The setting of this novel takes place in the late 1940’s of New York City.