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Imagery and details are two of David Sedaris' most important tools in his writing. He uses detailed descriptions to create clear pictures in the reader's mind. These help to tell his story in the clever, funny way that is obvious is all his writing. In this article, he creates images relating to food and his inability to taste or appreciate differences between foods. One of his first great uses of detail and imagery is in his comparison of himself to a convict, in the way he eats. He says he eats "how a prisoner might eat", shoveling food into his mouth, not caring what it is as long as he gets it into his mouth. He provide details about how he eats ("one arm maneuvering the fork and the other encircling the plate like a fence") that further his use of imagery. He goes on to say that might be due to his coming from a large family. Then, he brings up the convict simile again when he says he would whisper to his sister, "convict-like, out of one side of [his] mouth" to ask for her food. This comparison and the details he uses to create it, form a very clear picture in my mind of what David must look like when he's eating, which, when you picture it, is laugh-out-loud funny. He uses this same technique of comparison by imagery and detail to make the article witty several more times throughout the work. For example, he compares eating the giant food at a hamburger chain called the Claim Jumper to being "miniaturized, shrunk to the height of a leprechaun or a doll and dropped in the dining room of regular-sized people."
David also uses diction and language to his advantage in order to make "Tasteless" a clever, funny piece of writing. For instance, when he is creating his convict comparison at the beginning of the piece, he uses language to enhance that when he says his arm was "encircling the plate like a fence". When he equates his arm to a fence, I automatically think of a prison yard, furthering the comedy and effectiveness of the comparison. In the way of diction, David often makes interesting word choices. For example, he writes that some French friends who were visiting the states "are floored by the size of the portions". The use of the word, "floored", creates such a clear image in my mind of these shocked, appalled French people. That one word did so much more than the use of "surprised" or "taken aback" could have done. He uses other strong words that have the similar effect of creating strong, clear images such as "giddy" and "mediocre".
Your format was much more informal than the one I initially chose when writing this. Instead of focusing on one technique and simply listing how that affects the piece's meaning instead you weave many in together. I feel this is much more effective because through this you focus more on the meaning and how the techniques support it than the individual techniques and how the add to the meaning. Furthermore, many techniques compliment each other.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talk about the different techniques working together. With an assignment like this we might feel the need to isolate different techniques, but I felt the way you saw how different things played off of each other - diction and imagery in particular - was really great. You surprised me by introducing language in the second paragraph, but it seems you had a sort of revelation perhaps? It's a bit confusing to the reader, but in a setting like this I really don't think it matters. I just bring it up to say that it's great how you seem to be writing than all of a sudden a piece of great language jumps out and you write it down as a DIDLS example.
ReplyDeleteClose Reading:
ReplyDeleteThe close reading analysis is very effective in showing her purpose. She focuses on the authors use of diction, imagery and details to explain why Sedaris's piece is very funny. Her focus on imagery that makes people laugh even just reading her analysis of the writing shows every well that his piece is indeed very funny. She did a good job finding the most effective parts of Sedaris's piece and putting them in her analysis to prove her point to the reader. She also focuses on a simile and how it is used throughout the piece to create meaning, rather than taking a small piece of the writing and trying to stretch it to characterize the entire piece.