On Egger's Life Journey Summary

3. PURPOSE
a. The purpose of Eggers’ work is to describe his long and hard personal life journey and what it was like to have lost both parents to cancer at a very young age. Eggers identify this purpose by using sarcasm and humor throughout his memoir. He somewhat hides all his struggles and sufferings that life has thrown at him and instead of wanting empathy and compassion from his readers he entertains them by setting the tone of sarcasm and comicality throughout his memoir.

b. The original intended audience as implied would be the general audience. The author does not specify about who the intended audience ought to be instead he generalizes to anyone that purchases his book; for instance, the author mentions that “…the first 200 readers of this book who write proof that they have read and absorbed the many lessons herein will each receive a check, from the author, for $5…” (68).

The pronouns that the author uses are “I” (57) as he refers to himself, as well as “we” (56) as he references himself in third person. He also uses “you” (56) referring to the audience and readers. In addition, he uses pronouns like “he and his” (57) referring to male characters in his narrative as well as himself as he sometimes refers to himself in third person.

ii. Phrases that were used to identify the audience were, “… That he is like you…” (60). “…the first 200 readers of this book who write proof that they have read and absorbed the many lessons herein will each receive a check, from the author, for $5…” (68). “… DO NOT FORGET TO: center yourself, or whatever your subject, in the picture.” (68). Through these phrases we see that the author does not really specifies or targets a specific audience, rather his generalizes and opens his work to anyone