Comparing The House On Mango Street 'And The Use Of Force'

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An authors style defines itself as the way in which the author expresses themselves throughout the piece of literature. They express themselves through their word choice, word order, rhythm, imagery, sentence structure, figurative language, and literary devices. Sandra Cisneros’, “The House on Mango Street”, is a short story encompassing the events and thoughts of an un-named child narrator as they describe their family’s living arrangement. Sandra uses a distinct type of style throughout her writing which fits the short story well. On the other hand, William Carlos Williams’, “The Use of Force”, is a short story about a doctor’s visit to an unusual patients home. The stories have their own distinctive style which is unique to each but, there …show more content…

Both “The House on Mango Street” and “The Use of Force” have similar characteristics in their styles. One similarity is how the sentences are constructed. Short and concise sentences are used in order to provide extra emphasis on specific areas in the stories. For example, in “The House on Mango Street”, quick short sentences are used when the narrator explains the move between the houses and when they describe the new house to illustrate the importance and the impact the events have on their family. In, “The Use of Force”, short sentences add extra drama to the already dramatic events like, the doctor having to pry open the patients mouth and the patient clawing at his eyes. Another similarity is the use of long, run-on sentences. Both stories use the long, complex sentences to describe background details like the old house and neighbor and the aftermath of the diagnosis. In addition, both stories have a good rhythm to them as they stay on topic and stick to the main idea; always keeping the reader interested. Furthermore, neither of the stories have out of the ordinary word order and both use great descriptions when necessary. All these elements combined are important to the idea of the story because they help explain it better. The sentence lengths add extra emphasis on key points, the descriptions add depth and the rhythm keeps a nice flow; all of these help the reader stay interested and keep the story

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