"The Death of the Moth"
In her essay "The Death of the Moth", Virginia Woolf creates this gorgeous metaphor for life. The whole piece adds a little more to the layers of the metaphor. The author starts out by introducing a type of moth that is not a moth nor a butterfly. It belongs to no family of a moth nor a butterfly. This beginning is used in order to share how the writer feels. She feels as though she is not part of a particular group. She is human but at the same time, she is not. Near the end, the main part of the reading begins, the death of the moth. The moth struggles after taking an extreme blow that handicaps the once fluttering creature. The whole section is filled with this suspense of whether the moth will try to get up or give up and die. This is the main metaphor of the writing. Woolf hopes to display the troubles in life with the moth. Life can knock us down to the point of being powerless, but there is always the choice to keep going. Unfortunately, the moth does give up and dies at the end of the piece.
The writing is so powerful. The simple words allow for easy understanding and builds more emotion with every word. However, the longer sentence structure creates a difficulty, for it is hard to recall what the sentence started with and decide what the sentence is about as a whole. Still, the piece is emotional and beautifully written.
"How You Became You"
Bill Bryson's essay "How You Became You" uses many examples of factual information in order to persuade his point. He uses many specific numbers that show how much research he has done on the subject. The vocabulary and factual information combine together to form a very informative passage.
Despite the roar of facts, the passage seems very uninteresting at times. With all of the numbers and facts, the author has a troubling time getting the reader to continue reading the passage. Also, the writer also uses a kind of tone that creates a sense of pride from the author. The voice of the author seems as though he is above the reader even thought he knows nothing about them.
"Television: The Plug-In Drug"
While many see it as a magnificent piece of technology, people like Marie Winn, author of the essay "Television: The Plug-In Drug", see television as nothing more than an obsessive device. One of Winn's first points is television's change in family rituals. Families of all sizes would gather in their living room in order to watch their twelve o'clock television program. This lead to not only the joining of families together but also the start of the obsession with television. Later, Winn claims that television has begun to tear the family apart. Children and adults now use television as a form of entertainment where little to no movement is involved. This is a huge draw to many American families and provides great proof to support Winn's claim.
The passage as a whole is very specific. Not many questions are left to answer when finished reading the passage. Marie Winn uses many facts and historical examples in order to display the start, continuous, and future obsession with television in American society and culture.
"The Inheritance of Tools"
Pathos is certainly a strong way to get people to actually focus on a specific subject or item. When walking through the house and hearing "In the arms of the angels..." one can later hear his/her mother calling and donating money to the helping abused animals foundation. Scott Russell Sanders uses his pathos in his essay "The Inheritance of Tools" in order to tell his story of his father's inspiration on him. Sanders starts at the beginning of him and his father's relationship. He uses his father's hammer as a symbol of the bond between the father and son. Even after the decease of his father, Sanders still uses his father's old hammer so that he will always remember him for the man he was. A man that made Sanders want to stay independent. The hammer, being a symbol of a strong worker, would be used by Sanders in order to gain the reader's emotions to keep him/her reading the essay.
The essay is a very melancholy is goes from a father passing a hammer to his son that has been in his family for generations to the death of the father and the son continuing to use the tool even as a grown man. While the slight uses of pathos can be great for any writing, the excessive amount of pathos in Scott Russell Sanders' essay could be seen as if Sanders is trying to hard to gain the audiences emotions. That is indeed a thin line. However, Sanders balances the pathos and the life lessons very well to create a very uplifting and encouraging piece of literature.
In her essay "The Death of the Moth", Virginia Woolf creates this gorgeous metaphor for life. The whole piece adds a little more to the layers of the metaphor. The author starts out by introducing a type of moth that is not a moth nor a butterfly. It belongs to no family of a moth nor a butterfly. This beginning is used in order to share how the writer feels. She feels as though she is not part of a particular group. She is human but at the same time, she is not. Near the end, the main part of the reading begins, the death of the moth. The moth struggles after taking an extreme blow that handicaps the once fluttering creature. The whole section is filled with this suspense of whether the moth will try to get up or give up and die. This is the main metaphor of the writing. Woolf hopes to display the troubles in life with the moth. Life can knock us down to the point of being powerless, but there is always the choice to keep going. Unfortunately, the moth does give up and dies at the end of the piece.
The writing is so powerful. The simple words allow for easy understanding and builds more emotion with every word. However, the longer sentence structure creates a difficulty, for it is hard to recall what the sentence started with and decide what the sentence is about as a whole. Still, the piece is emotional and beautifully written.
"How You Became You"
Bill Bryson's essay "How You Became You" uses many examples of factual information in order to persuade his point. He uses many specific numbers that show how much research he has done on the subject. The vocabulary and factual information combine together to form a very informative passage.
Despite the roar of facts, the passage seems very uninteresting at times. With all of the numbers and facts, the author has a troubling time getting the reader to continue reading the passage. Also, the writer also uses a kind of tone that creates a sense of pride from the author. The voice of the author seems as though he is above the reader even thought he knows nothing about them.
"Television: The Plug-In Drug"
While many see it as a magnificent piece of technology, people like Marie Winn, author of the essay "Television: The Plug-In Drug", see television as nothing more than an obsessive device. One of Winn's first points is television's change in family rituals. Families of all sizes would gather in their living room in order to watch their twelve o'clock television program. This lead to not only the joining of families together but also the start of the obsession with television. Later, Winn claims that television has begun to tear the family apart. Children and adults now use television as a form of entertainment where little to no movement is involved. This is a huge draw to many American families and provides great proof to support Winn's claim.
The passage as a whole is very specific. Not many questions are left to answer when finished reading the passage. Marie Winn uses many facts and historical examples in order to display the start, continuous, and future obsession with television in American society and culture.
"The Inheritance of Tools"
Pathos is certainly a strong way to get people to actually focus on a specific subject or item. When walking through the house and hearing "In the arms of the angels..." one can later hear his/her mother calling and donating money to the helping abused animals foundation. Scott Russell Sanders uses his pathos in his essay "The Inheritance of Tools" in order to tell his story of his father's inspiration on him. Sanders starts at the beginning of him and his father's relationship. He uses his father's hammer as a symbol of the bond between the father and son. Even after the decease of his father, Sanders still uses his father's old hammer so that he will always remember him for the man he was. A man that made Sanders want to stay independent. The hammer, being a symbol of a strong worker, would be used by Sanders in order to gain the reader's emotions to keep him/her reading the essay.
The essay is a very melancholy is goes from a father passing a hammer to his son that has been in his family for generations to the death of the father and the son continuing to use the tool even as a grown man. While the slight uses of pathos can be great for any writing, the excessive amount of pathos in Scott Russell Sanders' essay could be seen as if Sanders is trying to hard to gain the audiences emotions. That is indeed a thin line. However, Sanders balances the pathos and the life lessons very well to create a very uplifting and encouraging piece of literature.