Book Arrangement: Preceding the title page, there is praise for The Boys in the Boat. The Boys in the Boat is split into six sections total: the prologue, Part One: What Seasons They Have Been Through, Part Two: Resiliency, Part Three: The Parts That Really Matter, Part Four: Touching the Divine, and the epilogue. There are also an author’s note and a separate notes section following the prologue. The four main parts are split into nineteen chapters altogether. Each chapter begins with a quote from George Pocock, an essential character in the story.
Confused by what the protagonist should build, he soon interprets it as he should construct a baseball field and that his idle, Shoeless Joe, will come and play. The protagonist then imagines a wide spread field, with his favourite 1919 Chicago White sox team playing. He soon begins to start plowing on his farm, seeding it with grass, laying out the outfield and infield, and putting up bleachers for the spectator. One day when the baseball field had been constructed, the protagonist’s wife sees a young man in an old fashioned uniform and ball cap. It was the protagonists idle, Shoeless Joe. Soon his team runs onto the field and begins to play. As a reader I felt that the imagery enhanced my experience, describing why the protagonist does these tasks. If the author had not used imagery like the baseball announcer approaching the protagonist or the description of the old fashioned uniform what Shoeless Joe was wearing, it would have been difficult to imagine the scenes. Since these scenes are the beginning of the story and are very important to the novel, the author used good words to make it visually
Narrative point of view can express a different perspective to the reader by presenting experience, voice, and setting. Perspective is a particular way or attitude of considering events, by whatever character’s point of view the narrator takes. A character’s background and experiences in their life is a key to help the reader relate to the character. Culture may provide more insight about the circumstances, and can change a reader’s perspective, as well as the voice of the narrator - sophisticated or naive.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, he uses repetition and rhetorical questions to show the reader how horrible of a time the Holocaust was. Repetition was used throughout the book consistently, but the read really sees it when Wiesel explains the first night at Auschwitz. All the horrible things he encountered and hatred he saw that first night was shown to the reader in a meaningful. “Never shall I forget” was used seven times, but one of them really stuck out to the reader. Wiesel explains the how “Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky” (Wiesel 34). With the repeating of never shall I forget so many times, it makes the reader realize how horrible the Jewish were treated at the camp. This really kicks into the reader
A tangerine is not only a citrus fruit, but also a county in Florida that is home to Paul Fisher and his older brother Erik. In the novel titled Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Paul Fisher, the protagonist, is not only bullied at school, but also at home by his brother, while having to live in the house where his dad lives in the illusion of the “Erik Fisher Football Dream.” In this new county that Paul moves to, he constantly has to put up with natural disasters like muck fires and sinkholes. The move from Houston, Texas to Tangerine County, Florida is the start of a new chapter for the Fisher family, especially Paul.
Considering that he has experienced the camp before the modern world diluted it’s old-world feel, White has a difficult time accepting the differences at the lake. In another passage, White uses symbolism to reminisce upon the days when he was young, “Outside, the road was tarred...Inside, all was just as it had always been, except there was more Coca-cola and not so much Moxie and root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilla.” White uses the the store as a symbol to describe the changes that have taken place at the lake. He describes that they no longer have certain products because of larger businesses taking over and changing the aura of the store. He also uses the tarr to symbolize the modernization of the old roads surrounding the
The general argument by David Foster Wallace in his work "This is Water" is that sometimes the most obvious realities are the hardest to comprehend. More specifically, he argues that thinking negatively is not a choice but a natural setting and we need to start thinking cognitively and outside the box. Wallace performs this speech for a group of graduating college students to prepare them for the future life they are about to embark on. He includes the grocery store example so that the reader's can connect to the story because they have gone through that situation themselves; he is trying to connect to the audience. In my opinion, this source is different from all
The Chicago World’s Fair, one of America’s most compelling historical events, spurred an era of innovative discoveries and life-changing inventions. The fair brought forward a bright and hopeful future for America; however, there is just as much darkness as there is light and wonder. In the non-fiction novel, The Devil in the White City, architect Daniel Burnham and serial killer H. H. Holmes are the perfect representation of the light and dark displayed in Chicago. Erik Larson uses positive and negative tone, juxtaposition, and imagery to express that despite the brightness and newfound wonder brought on by the fair, darkness lurks around the city in the form of murder, which at first, went unnoticed.
Well known author and journalist, George Orwell, in his essay, Shooting an Elephant, describes his experiences as a Policeman in Moulmein, Burma during European Imperialism. Orwell’s purpose is to convey the ideal that what is right and what is accepted don’t always align. He adopts a remorseful tone in order to convey to the reader the weight of his actions. By looking at George Orwell’s use of imagery and figurative language, one can see his strongly conflicting opinions on Imperialism.
White uses emotionally-charged diction as a form of pathos to convey his feelings about his past and explain trouble he is having with accepting his old age. “There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one--the one that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt
In his passage from “Last Child in the Woods,” Richard Louv uses various rhetorical strategies in order to make his audience more supportive of his argument. The passage discusses the connection, or really the separation, between people and nature. On this subject, Louv argues the necessity for people to redevelop their connection with nature. His use of tone, anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and factual examples all help develop the pathos and logos of his piece.
Imagine: It’s winter 1778 at Valley Forge. (Valley Forge was the military camp 18 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where the American Continental Army spent the winter of 1777–78 during the American Revolutionary War) you walk into the camp and the men huddle around different campfires trying to get warm. Tonight on the menu is more meat, while the men are handed their portions they’re crying in agony to eat something else. You’ve been talking to the men and they tell you stories about the meals their wives made and how their children would have grown by now. But somewhere in both the happy and sad stories there is a certain cheerfulness peering out behind the clouds. When the fires died out men went to their huts that housed 12 men. The fire in the hut caused the men to be emerged in smoke because of extremely poor ventilation. There skin is absorbing the smoke causing men to get sick and cough. In the morning the fires have died out and now you can smell what some people call the stench of death. One
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" is a poignant short story written by Bret Harte, nineteenth-century master of the genre. In this realism tale set during the Californian gold rush era, the author successfully depicts how humanity can be concealed within a squalid and crude world. In it, a new-born child has a civilizing influence on men in more than one way: the tragedy of his birth brings the men together; he has the power to assemble them as a society, a culture. Secondly, the men become more polite, cordial towards one another. Thirdly, they have rites like all societies, giving a meaning to all lives in the camp.
In his article “Lost in America,” Douglas McGray highlights the isolationism of the American educational system
W.B. White goes back and forth about how time is or is not an illusion in his essay “Once More to the Lake.” White describes many similarities between the lake he remembers as a child, and the lake he is experiencing as an adult. Time has moved forward because White states that the year is 1941 not 1904, White is now an adult with a son, and the transportation methods have changed since his first time arriving at the lake.