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Brent Staples Figurative Language

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In “Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space”, Brent Staples explains the impact he has on other people just for being an African American man. Writing for an audience of black men who have experienced discrimination. With a wise, inoffensive voice, but somewhat of a neutral tone, the author uses figurative language, writing techniques and diction to explain his purpose of writing this essay to explain to his readers of his past experience of being a black man in public places and the effect it has caused in his life.
Figurative language is seen throughout Staples’s essay. In the following quote ‘Her flight made me feel like an accomplice in tyranny” the author uses a simile (Staples 1). By using like or as, Brent Staples is comparing himself as an accomplice because the woman ran away from him: when the woman is running away from him, she is symbolizing that she is scared of him …show more content…

For example, in the following quotation “Not so. She cast back a worried glance” Brent uses Syntax by writing short length sentences (Staples 1). Syntax is being used in the following to address an incomplete sentence idea. Also, the author uses dashes in his sentences to help the reader visualize the image or to explain his idea more briefly “My first victim was a woman— white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties”, Staples uses dashes in the quotation above to address to his readers that the victims race is white and is rich by the way the woman is dressed. Brent Staples also uses sequences of time order to list the events that happen throughout his life. “That was more than a decade ago… In that first year… I moved to New York nearly two years ago…” Staples uses sequences of time order to help the reader understand the time that each event occurred at: by using this, Staples essay is in chronological order which makes it easier for the reader to

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Author and editorial writer, Brent Staples acknowledges this issue as well as experience many situations in which people distinguish him from others. Brent Staples message in his essay titled “Just Walk On By” is conveyed to the audience through many rhetorical devices in which he suggests that stereotypes of race and gender can impact someone 's life in the easiest ways. Brent Staples use of pathos creates an emotional connection and pulls the reader into his essay, through his anecdotes and diction. His intro paragraph tells an interesting story, in a way that readers often forget what type of passage they are reading. Staples uses of phrases such as “my first victim”, “seemed menacingly close” “picked up her pace” and notably “running in earnest” (1-2).

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