Summary Of The Horizontal World By Debra Marquart

In author Debra Marquart’s 2006 memoir, she writes of her life growing up in North Dakota. The memoir, titled The Horizontal World, would be of interest to a very general audience. Throughout the passage of it that was read, Marquart uses a multitude of tones, ranging from sarcastic, to monotonous, to nostalgic the segment nears the end. As she opens up the passage, Marquart uses imagery to give the audience a tedious sense of the highway that she has often been on, calling it “lonely, treeless, and devoid”, using a more monotonous tone. The imagery is used in a manner to almost tell a narrative, which she continues briefly throughout the second paragraph. However, she clarifies the sentence after in the second paragraph that the phrase

Losing her sarcastic wording, she instead sounds much more proud as she describes the “most innocent characters in movies and Prime-time TV dramas” that come from the state. Appropriately, Marquart’s voice changes very temporarily to a more downtrodden one as she explains that many of the actors and newscasters who come from North Dakota often end up destroying themselves and partaking in reckless” Hollywood life” behaviors, for the most part because of their innocent, sheltered appearance and demeanor that was the exact reason they were hired for. After it is mentioned, though, she quickly goes back to mentioning the more positive aspects of North Dakota- many politicians go to the square states, North Dakota included, to ask the population questions regarding politics “when times require”. Moving on from the people in North Dakota’s important to a national audience, Marquart shifts to North Dakota’s perception in the national

As she does so, she suggests that the area has been holding that reputation for hundreds of years, even before all the parts were legally recognized as states. She does it cleverly, however, simultaneously adding ethos to her name, for she started that suggestion by using direct quotes from Edwin James, who, in the 1920s, was the official chronicler of Stephen Long’s survey of the square state area. Using logos, she states that it was James who dubbed the area the Great American Desert. Although the men first discovering the area, and many people who do not live in the area were obviously unimpressed, Marquart uses a sarcastic and slightly brash tone to alert the reader to the fact that she does not fully agree with their opinion and thinks upon her time spent living there