Brady Rotondaro Back Road Analysis

“Back Roads” by Vinnie Rotondaro and “A Winter’s Drive” by ReadWorks both have something in common, but the moods are completely different. Mood is how a reader feels while reading a text. Both of the short stories talk about going on road trips. “Back Roads” is about two guys going to visit their friend. They take back roads because they don’t like being rushed. On the roads, they see alluring scenery and it makes the ride much more diverting. “A Winter’s Drive” is a story about a man driving to Canada to see his aged house. He not only wants to see the home he grew up in, but he wants to recover a few hockey cards that were left behind from when he was a toddler. The mood of “Back Roads” is relaxed as shown through the scenery while the mood for “A Winter’s Drive” is anxious conveyed through the diction. “Back Roads” has sort of a relaxed feeling throughout the story. It doesn’t have a lot of frantic events going on in it, and that’s one reason why I think it’s relaxed. The most salient reason although is because of the setting. As the two men are driving through the roads, they come across a prepossessing river. It involves a handmade statute in the middle of it, which they assume is awesome. Rotondaro writes, “Looking down at the

are all ways a writer can make a reader feel a certain mood. Setting and diction were used in these stories. It’s interesting how an author can change the way someone thinks about something by using one of these elements in their writing. If the character's in “Back Roads” never came across the fascinating river or statute, the reader would most likely be very bored with the story. And if the character in “A Winter’s Drive” never found the box he was looking for, there wouldn’t be an anxious feeling at all because what would the reader have to look forward to in the story? These elements make up the text, and without them, there would be no point in reading because there would probably be no