Doctors are infamous for their unreadable writing; Richard Selzer is not one of those doctors. A talented surgeon, Selzer has garnered critical acclaim for his captivating operating room tales, and rightfully so. A perfect exhibition of this is The Knife, a detailed illustration of a surgery. What may seem like an uninteresting event is made mesmerizing by Selzer’s magnificent account of the human body and the meticulousness that goes into repairing it. The rhetorical appeals, tone, and figurative language that Selzer uses throughout The Knife provide the reader with a vivid description of the sacred process of surgery.
In “Poem to My Litter,” Ritvo wrote about how doctors split his tumors and scattered them in the bones of twelve mice (3-4). Here he managed to convey very surreal and strange images through plain language. It’s the work of a very accomplished writer with an unusually vivid imagination and a surprising sense of humor. This is someone who have accepted his fate and diagnosis, and his writing addresses his terminal illness head on, without pity or melodrama.
In the first section, he gives numerous examples of how normal his life was before the diagnosis. He recounts his childhood and his beginnings of how he loved to read because of his mother. He tells of when he would stay out late reading in the starlight to come home to his mother worried that he was doing drugs, but “the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week” (27). He continues with all of his life before cancer, but when he gets the results he says “One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing” (120). The rest of the book, the closing of his book as he calls it, focuses on examples of how cancer changed his
Olivia Seeney ENGL 305 The Art of the Essay 3/22/17 Insert Flap A and Throw Away Analysis The main point of this essay was to point out to the reader the ridiculous state of human nature when presented with a situation that is outside of our expertise. As we observe the narrator’s struggle to put together this cardboard toy, his use of both overstatement and understatement show the progression of his frustration with this task. One example of this ironic language can be found in the first sentence when the narrator states “I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest, method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. (Perelman)”
Orenstein is notably biased in her choice of words and use of loaded language. The author uses the pathos appeal which is effective because it triggers the audiences emotions, but overused it which made it ineffective. The audience may understand that Orenstein is passionate in regards to this topic because she underwent that traumatic experience, which definitely effects her perception on details surrounding breast cancer. On a analysis level, it is suggested for her to use only fewer but relevant statistics, tune down her bias, and include claims from a doctor’s point of view. This article’s inclusion of too much logos and overuse of pathos has limited the extent of this argument, therefore rendering the topic
Approximately one man in seven will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their life time. Elliot Gilbert nearly sixty year of age, lamentably becomes that one man out of seven. In the novel “Wrongful Death”, Sandra Gilbert spells out her and her family’s arduous journey with losing her significant other. This excursion includes the fight to find want happened to Elliot in that recovery room which turns out to be his last moment of life. As stated by the NYU School of Medicine “Wrongful Death”, “is a disturbing, but useful story of how personal loss and grief are complicated by uncertainty, anger, and an outraged sense of justice”.
A major theme in this book is how to overcome hardship and how to make the best of a bad situation, for the author has to deal with these situations when he finds out he has cancer. Although he has a terminal illness, he tries to make the best out of his situation by “help[ing] others find a path to fulfilling their own dreams” and by giving a lecture on how to live life to the fullest (Pausch 10). The author is very successful in explaining this theme by giving advice on how to deal with hardship and difficult information to handle. The author structures his work by using many anecdotes about his life and the struggles he has had to go through. Pausch states in the book that “[he] didn’t believe in the no-win scenario”
Conflict: Rising action: Climax: Justification: I chose this image of a train whistle since in the story, Lester Simmons heard a train whistle which the initiation to his frantic attempts to stop his time from running out. His time is going to run out due to him hearing the sound of the 11:59’s whistle, and anyone who hears the 11:59 dies in 24 hours. This whistle is supposed to represent the sound of the 11:59 and his fear of hearing it. Justification: I have selected this locked door to display the rising action of this story since when Lester Simmons was locking his doors, not consuming anything, and turning off electronics, I believed that those actions were bringing the story to a dramatic climax.
The poet successfully illustrates the magnitude with which this disease can change its victim’s perspective about things and situations once familiar to
The literary movement of realism developed shortly after the end of the civil war, a time period that is central to the plot of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. As a man from Northern Alabama is about to be hung, his executioners are described as, “Two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank armed. He was a captain” (Bierce, 318). This description makes clear that the story takes place during the civil war, and that some of the most important characters are soldiers, sergeants, and a captain.
Instead of the traditional and mainstream verbal memoir, David Small chose to confine into an autobiological memoir, Stitches: A Memoir, with a comic medium that details the darkest periods of his childhood as a prelude to healing. Small demonstrates the rough parts of his past that shaped his life and the relationships between himself and his dysfunctional family by encoding these moments into vividly drawn emotions and sensations. Small experienced traumatic things both physical and psychological, yet despite this, he was able to work through it. This way of using graphic text was David’s take on using illustrations as an outlet to deal with traumatic experiences.
Thomas C. Foster uses the twenty-fourth chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor as a place to investigate how authors employ illnesses to give meaning to their stories. But not all illnesses are physical, and Courtney Cole’s novel, Nocte, displays how the human body reacts to extreme trauma in ways of self-preservation. After surviving a car crash in which her mother and brother died in, Calla Price’s body shut itself down into a coma and rejected all notions that pointed to reality. Instead, her brain blocked out anything that could make reality seem real, and she woke up from her coma believing that her brother and mother were still alive. Her illness may not have been as literal as heart disease or cancer but her inability to
Self-discovery is driven by the willingness of individuals to make connections with places and people. This is evident in Tara June Winch 's novel "Swallow the Air" as the protagonist discoveries are seen through her connection with the people and her identity. Similarly, the same can be said for James Cameron 's film "Avatar" as Jake the protagonist discoveries is 'visualised through his connection with the land and how this affects his identity. In both of these texts, we can identify how both Tara June Winch and James Cameron interprets the concept of self-discovery in their text.
Krosoczka was able to bring out the audience’s emotions by expressing sympathy for lunch ladies across the country. He gave his own lunch lady a piece of artwork to show his appreciation for her. In the speech Krosoczka expresses, “she passed away, and I attended her wake, and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw there, because next to her casket was this painting, and her husband told me it meant so much to her that I had acknowledged her hard work, I had validated what she did” (1). This quote describes how joyful she was that someone recognized her strong work ethic and love for her job. The writer’s use of pathos was effective because his audience was able to relate to his topic, since they have all eaten a meal that has been prepared
The authors want their audiences to use these tales and examples as life lessons and hope for them to utilize these sources in their future lives. These two ideas are presented through the use of figurative language, mainly metaphors. In addition, the similar tone of these pieces allows the author to connect more deeply with the readers. Toni Morrison’s Nobel lecture, folktales, and several poems illustrate how metaphors and tone are used to describe experience and caution the readers.
