ipl-logo

Summary Of John Jeremiah Sullivan's Essay 'Feet In Smoke'

323 Words2 Pages

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s essay, “Feet in Smoke” is a poignant glimpse at life, the human experience, and its frailty. “Feet in Smoke” focuses on an experience that John Jeremiah Sullivan’s brother, Worth, endured. Touching death. The essay utilizes imagery through vivid descriptions and “Feet in Smoke” has a particularly powerful paragraph that uses robotic imagery foremost. This paragraph, and the paragraphs that follow shortly afterwards are the crux of “Feet in Smoke”. The human condition, and the fleeting nature of vitality is highlighted through these paragraphs. Rhetorical devices such as phonetic intensive are used frequently, some loaded diction is also utilized, and allusion is sprinkled throughout the essay and employed more heavily in the last few paragraphs. Most of all, imagery channelled through these devices is what makes “Feet in Smoke” the impactful essay that it …show more content…

This paragraph employs robotic imagery most heavily and also uses loaded diction more than others. This section even goes so far as to call Worth’s body in intensive care as, “a nightmare of tubes and wires, dark machines silently measuring every internal event, a pump filling and emptying his useless lungs.” This section channels the intensity of an event like this and the fear one and one’s loved ones feel when the shade of fatality affects a person. Imagery also plays a large part in this section and places the reader in the situation John Jeremiah Sullivan was in through imagery like “The stench of dried spit”. This passage’s imagery challenges the reader to undergo the stale smell described and to witness the machine that Worth is connected to. Through this, “Feet in Smoke” allows the reader to “walk in someone else’s shoes” and conveys the cathartic and shared human experience of death and its looming

Show More
Related

Florence Kelley Child Labor Speech Summary

901 Words | 4 Pages

Kelley’s diction adds a tone to the piece and allows her to get her message across with helping the reader understand more deeply . Kelley’s use of imagery, appeal to logic,

Read More

Most Dangerous Game Imagery Essay

920 Words | 4 Pages

The imagery that Connell creates in The Most Dangerous Game captivates the audience into a tale that makes one’s heart stop even for a split second. The feelings of suspense are nearly tangible to the reader when the silence of the writing surrounds them. Additionally, the two contradicting moods are easily flowed through together and yet discreetly set apart due to Connell’s use of imagery in various scenes. Despite all the other literary devices used within The Most Dangerous Game, imagery has to be the element that really allows the emotions of the literary piece to connect to its

Read More

Jason Reynolds Use Figurative Language Of Tobacco Turning To Tar

300 Words | 2 Pages

Jason Reynolds uses figurative language to create tension and discomfort in the atmosphere. ‘’... the dank of tobacco turning into tar. Like it was suddenly just the two of us, me and my dad, both of us apparently losing our minds’’ (pg 226). The metaphorical description of the smoke turning to tar creates a sense of drowning in the expectations of the rules that led to his father’s death; the tar and smoke overpower their better judgment.

Read More

Comparing The Poem Between The World And Me By Richard Wright

451 Words | 2 Pages

Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony. In his description of the chilling scene, Wright employs personification in order to create an audience out of inanimate objects. When the narrator encounters the scene, he sees “white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes,” and a sapling “pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.”

Read More

Henry James The Funeral Diction

617 Words | 3 Pages

In “The Funeral,” author Henry James evinces the narrator’s inflated sense of self through a lampoon of the lower class—primarily via tones of irreverent degradation and supercilious condescension. Amidst the impoverished masses, the speaker finds himself intrigued by their dejected existence and paltry attempt to mourn the death of Mr. George Odger, a humble shoemaker. [add another sentence] Riddled with insouciance, haughtiness, and patronization, the author’s diction divulges the pompous outlook of the narrator. For instance, the onlooker continually mocks the “spectacle” of the funeral that he describes as one he “[would] have been sorry to miss.”

Read More

I M Jumping Off The Bridge Analysis

404 Words | 2 Pages

In the essay “I’m Jumping Off the Bridge,” Kevin Sampsell argues that life has more meaning to it than what is recognizable in order to convince the audience that no matter what feelings one has inside, assuming that there is no one and nothing to live for is not the truth. Sampsell deals with his struggles of depression and harmful thoughts after he meets a man at his job that expresses his feelings and desires to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge. In this essay, Sampsell uses morose word choices to effectively show insight, heartbreak, and the responsibilities that involve one’s life after death. He is eloquent in his description of pain and desolation and has a rhetorical appeal, oriented around pathos, in his relatability. The reader

Read More

Imagery In Mark Twain's Life On The Mississippi

659 Words | 3 Pages

For instance, “That slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody’s steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling ‘boils’ show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there…that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?” (44-51). Here, the reader is able to comprehend that by contemplating about the negative aspects of the river and how it would result in certain obstacles for a pilot of a steamboat, Twains initial view of the Mississippi River was ultimately diminished. Therefore, the author contemplates whether possessing knowledge about the beauty of an aspect and its true connotation truly belittles it compared to only seeing its beauty without thinking. Likewise, Twain contemplates the position of doctors relating their possible viewpoints towards a patient with his circumstances.

Read More

Hard Rock Returns To Prison Analysis

808 Words | 4 Pages

The surgical operation he had gone in his forehead makes him lose his status as a hero in the emotional reaction of despair as other prisoners watch. In analyzing this poem, the main point of focus is that the poet achieves a contemplative mood by listing surface events that are emotional in nature. Looking at the structure of the poem first, the poem has 42 lines or sentences. Most of the sentences are complicated with the poem employing the use of verb-nouns in a normal way. The poet also includes some enjambment, some end-stopped lines and a title that precisely explains what is going on in the poem.

Read More

The Devil In The White City Language Analysis

841 Words | 4 Pages

Readers feel happy, good, and positive when reading chapters about Burnham, but when reading Homes’s chapters, readers feel frightened, afraid and fearful. Larson’s diction creates contrasting tones to reiterate the balance of good and evil that Burnham and Holmes embody in this

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis Of We Were The Mulvaneys

721 Words | 3 Pages

In the following passage from the novel We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates laments that even though most everything in one’s surrounding is dying, not everyone has managed to find the adequate amount of maturity to accept the fact that they are not immortal, even though the idea of death is difficult to come to terms with. Oates conveys this universal idea and characterizes the narrator through the usage of a depressing tone and dismal imagery. The tone set in the passage is fairly dark and depressing. An “eleven or maybe twelve,” year old child should not be fixated on the idea that “every heart beat is past and gone.”

Read More

Anne Fadiman Under Water Summary

1273 Words | 6 Pages

Anne Fadiman’s “Under Water” strikingly relates a particularly morbid, yet surreal experience: the death of a teen, Gary, in a freak canoeing accident. From writing about this particular incident, Fadiman reflects her own development and maturation as a person, from an “impatient” person to one who is “no longer in a hurry.” However, in a more general sense, the essay also deals with how people react to death. In the seventh paragraph of “Under Water,” Fadiman’s use of personification and the use of a metaphor describing the body of Gary highlights how individuals insistently attempt to detach themselves from death, refusing to accept the truth of the situation, ultimately damaging themselves in the process.

Read More

Looking For Alaska Analysis Essay

422 Words | 2 Pages

Death ends all suffering is the predominate theme in Looking for Alaska by John Green. Alaska Young embodies the idea of death. Fatality and the moments it seizes can be shown through Alaska’s endless smoke breaks to Pudge’s obsession with last words to reckless drinking by Colonel. Alaska sees no reason to live as said as “’Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die’”

Read More

Theme Of Language In The Awakening By Kate Chopin

1210 Words | 5 Pages

It would be difficult to read ‘The Awakening’ without an awareness of Chopin’s clever use of certain phrases or words to present the concepts of different identities within the text. This essay will explore in depth the relationship between Chopin’s use of language and the concept of identity. The reader is introduced to the concept of identity in ‘The Awakening’ almost immediately. Within the first few pages of the novel, the use of the narrator creates a patriarchal sense of social identities (Ramos 147).

Read More

Figurative Language In The Masque Of The Red Death

731 Words | 3 Pages

Death can never be escaped no matter what. In “The Masque of the Red Death” Edgar Allan Poe shows the theme of death, a suspenseful mood, and an ominous tone. Through Poe’s use of literary devices, the reader can discover tone, theme, and mood. Throughout Poe’s life he experienced death with two of his mother’s and his young wife. Death is shown how inevitable it is with Poe’s writing and experiences combined together.

Read More

Literary Devices In Tangerine, By Edward Bloor

1143 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the entire novel, the author’s use of literary devices is very clear. These literary devices, specifically similes and personification, help the reader get a better idea of the exact sounds and feelings which will allow them to know what it feels like to be there in that moment. “ I stood there, trying to think of a comeback, when suddenly, I heard a whooshing sound, like the sound you get when you open a vacuum-sealed can of peanuts. Then the brown water that had puddled up all over the field began to move. It began to run toward the back portables, like someone pulled the plug out of a giant bathtub.

Read More

More about Summary Of John Jeremiah Sullivan's Essay 'Feet In Smoke'

Related Topics

Open Document