From The Things They CarriedIn the passage, a man recounts his internal struggle of choosing to stay in America and fight or cross the border into Canada. To show the gravity of his dilemma, the writer uses vivid images of the unspoiled wilderness in Canada, rhetorical questions which directly address the reader, and descriptions of memories and visualized feelings which ultimately make him decide to stay in America
The images of nature elicit the feelings of freedom and escapism the man felt as he neared the shore. He gets so close to leaving; he can see the detailed patterns in the leaves, the soil's texture. He is twenty yards away, and he simply cannot do it. The crushing feeling as nature's wonderment collapses on him contrasts excellently with the prior open beauty of the landscape and shows also the great disparity between the things he's considering. The writer also includes rhetorical questions in the second-person in order to include the reader. It helps create empathy for the man's struggle; the reader's thoughts of what they would do and what they would be leaving behind if they were ever in such a situation contributes to increasing the effect of the emotions in the passage. Lastly, the writer describes fond memories from the man's past, showing everything he has to give up in order to escape service in Vietnam. He visualizes the patriotic feelings he has: images of Abraham Lincoln, senators, Huck Finn, a classic American novel character, and many others. He sees dead soldiers brought back from death. The experience is utterly overwhelming, and it's these highly relatable memories and images which not only cause him to return to America, but also fully solidify the depiction of the man's struggle and the contrast between his desire to escape the war and his nostalgia that makes him stay. |
ReflectionI choose this because it was one of my earliest writings, if not the very first writing I did this year, and I think it's really telling how effective this class is at improving one's writing. Certainly, the overall analysis itself is more than satisfactory and I think I hit pretty well on some of the major points in the passage, especially considering the time at which I was writing this, although I could possibly do a better job if I were given this passage right now after a whole school year of experience in this. More stark, I would say, is the difference in the quality of prose between this and some of my later writings this year; it's passable, and some of the issues of the writing could very well be ascribed to being rather unfamiliar with doing this kind of writing in the timed writing setting as opposed to a pure lack of skill, but I really have improved quite a bit from this early writing. With all the writing I've done, I'm much more capable of formulating my ideas quickly and expressing them well, which is an excellent--if not essential--skill for many areas of life. I feel as though I've also expanded my vocabulary this year a great deal and have generally improved the flow of my writing, and while this reflection doesn't focus very much on the qualities of this piece itself, I really felt it was important to include because it shows the starting point of the progress that occurred over this year.
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