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Analysis Of Lucy Grealy's Autobiography Of A Face

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Ewing's Sarcoma is a rare form of bone cancer with only a 5 percent survival rate according to mayoclinic.org. This is the form of cancer that Lucy Grealy, author of the memoir Autobiography of a Face was diagnosed with at only 9 years old. The memoir follows her story along with the ups and downs she faces while undergoing chemo each week, and having a third of her jaw removed. Throughout the piece, she gives the reader insight into her mind, as she overcomes a plethora of obstacles and barriers on a daily basis, varying from self-esteem problems, to not meeting society's beauty standards. Autobiography of a Face, a memoir written by Lucy Grealy achieves the purpose of informing the reader that modern society has led women to affiliate beauty with perfection, through her effective use of the rhetorical strategies anaphora and scesis onomaton. The first strategy used by the author to express her purpose to the audience was anaphora. Due to the fact that Grealy underwent …show more content…

Scesis onomaton repeatedly uses words with similar meanings to explain the importance it plays in the memoir. In one instance after she had been going through chemo for a number of weeks, her hair began to fall out, making her whole situation worse. Her hair could no longer mask the scar that she had trying to hide on her face. Because of this, she was judged even more and felt terrible about her appearance. She declared “I assumed that once the problem was solved, once my hair grew back in, I would be complete again, whole, and all of this would be over, like a bad dream.” (Grealy 99). By repeatedly using words equivalent to complete or whole, the reader becomes sympathetic towards the author and puts them in her shoes. This is done as she explains how she wishes for her hair back, and believes bald is ugly, when in reality that it only a pressure set by

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