Shooting An Elephant Cohesion

Different features of writing styles, when used effectively, can dramatically alter a piece of writing. They can turn a boring, monotonous article into something exhilarating to read. There are many different features of writing styles, but one of the most interesting is the use of cohesion and coherence. This use of cohesion and cohesion (or lack of) can give insight to the narrator’s emotions, intentions, and struggles. A piece can have cohesion but not coherence, or coherence but not cohesion. It can even have coherence for half of the piece and then lose it. A writer can manipulate the use of coherence and cohesion to get a desired emotional response from the reader. For example, in Orwell’s “On Shooting an Elephant”, as the narrator faces

Eventually, he does shoot the elephant, and he dies very slowly. He essentially tries to put him out of his misery by shooting several times. He explains, “I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs” (290). He could have said the same thing with less cohesion, but it would have sounded impersonal and cruel: “I fired a third time. The third shot did it for the elephant. The elephant was in so much agony. The elephant’s whole body jolted. The elephant’s legs lost all their strength.” The cohesion shows us that it was emotional for Orwell. The use of pronouns helps it sound more realistic and the use of meta-discourse (when he says “you could see the agony of it”) helps us feel like we were there, going through it with Orwell.

On the other end of the spectrum, cohesion and coherence can be manipulated within a piece of writing to convey irony and satire. A perfect example of this is found in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”. “A Modest Proposal” is a satirical piece in which Swift proposes that children of poor families ought to be sold and used to feed others. His thought is that this will solve the country’s overpopulation, unemployment, and economic problems. It is commenting on the way poor people are