In the story, “on Birds, Bird Watching and Jazz” by Ellison, the interesting theory as to how Charles Porter Jr. got his nickname as “Bird “ is told using humor in his stories along with a careful choice of syntax and his diction.
In the first paragraph, the author uses alliteration,”...and despite the crabbed and constricted character…” to give us an insight on the figure he is speaking about. The author also chooses these words to build up an impression and then breaks it by saying Parker was a most intensive melodist. In the second paragraph of this story, Ellison establishes what a nickname does and how it would originate. Continuing on, Ellison introduces a new fact to the audience, that jazzmen were labeled as cats because they were legends. By first introducing this to the audience, Ellison suggests that he is going to make a connection between these animal nicknames of
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The author uses a lot of alliteration as to describe something such as randy roosters and crabbed and constricted character to emphasize the point of the sentence made by his words. In the second paragraph, the word legend is used along with a definition from back in the day to support why Charles Porter Jr. was nicknamed after a bird. When speaking of birds, Ellison states that the goldfinch was a symbolic figure that appeared several times in European paintings. “...the small, lawny-brown bird with a bright red patch about the base of its bill and a broad yellow band across its wings became a representative of the soul…”, allows the audience to vision the bird that was used to describe Porter. When talking about the second bird, the mockingbird, the author states that this is more promising giving the audience an insight on the author’s perspective. The author then uses onomatopoeia to compare the sounds that are made by a mockingbird and the sounds of Porter’s