Many authors create suspense to hook readers into the plot and hold an audience’s interest. Writers use this device when producing novels, plays, short stories, and screenplays. One can even create suspense when retelling an account of a personal story, like in a formal personal essay. This technique is especially applicable in a personal essay which details events in childhood or adolescence. The essayist can reflect on such events with his or her adult perspective. Yet, he or she can also neglect details in favour of creating the same tension in readers which the essayist experienced in his or her own life. Inducing suspense, much like inducing any emotion in a reader, is a difficult task which Joan Didion achieves by combining many writing techniques. Didion’s essay Goodbye to All That describes her eight-year residency in New York City. She outlines her time in New York from her arrival in the city to her psychological decline which causes her to leave. Didion relies on various techniques to create suspense in her essay. Through her use of a chronological timeline and a scarce level of detail, Didion creates suspense and interest for readers in her …show more content…
essay Goodbye to All That. Didion’s use of a chronological timeline creates interest as the story unfolds without revealing key plot events. She recalls: Didion explains that she would one day become fatigued of New York and its people. Yet, she creates suspense when she does not explain what would happen to form this attitude. She also helps readers understand her past naivety by juxtaposing her attitude to that of her older friend, which parallels her future perspective. Later in the essay, she reflects on her intentions upon arrival in New York and realizes “it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there. In my imagination I was always there for just another few months, just until Christmas or Easter or the first warm day in May” (Didion 684). This observation allows readers to understand that Didion did not see her time in New York as permanent. Her perceived lack of permanence explains her innocence in judgment (such as her assumption that she would never tire of New York). It also explains her refusal to buy furniture and settle into a home. This quote also creates suspense for readers as she has already informed them that she would spend eight years in the city (Didion 682). Yet, she has not yet explained how her exit from New York would unfold, and how much of her life she would establish in New York before she moves. To contrast, Scott Russell Sanders’ essay Under the Influence reveals his essay's conclusion (the death of his father, an alcoholic) within the first paragraph.
He explains that "I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living. That is how the story ends for my father, age sixty-four, heart bursting, body cooling, slumped and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother’s trailer" (Sanders 733). Sanders’ choice creates a different effect than Didion’s because readers know how the story will end from its beginning. Thus, their focus throughout the essay is more on the essay’s contents and events than on the essay’s conclusion. Didion’s chronological approach to her essay gives readers a sense of suspense and allows them to follow along with her attitudes’ progression throughout the
essay. While Didion’s essay describes a series of events in chronological order, she also omits certain details in her oblique narrative. Her choice emphasizes the essay’s element of suspense, as Didion reveals some elements of her future life without revealing entire aspects of the plot. This writing technique also highlights Didion’s character development. As she reminiscences about her early days in New York, she tells readers “I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute” (Didion 683). Her use of the word “still” implies an imminent collapse of her faith in New York City and its possibilities. By refusing to reveal the event which would disillusion her, she creates suspense in readers, who wish to learn the cause of her loss of hope in New York. Later in the essay, she explains that “when New York comes back to me it comes in hallucinatory flashes, so clinically detailed that I sometimes wish that memory would effect the distortion with which it is commonly credited” (Didion 685). That she wishes to experience her memories of New York with less luridness implies a negative experience in the city (which she later reveals as her depression). Didion’s refusal to explain this event until the end of the essay brings its suspense to the forefront. Sanders takes a different approach when he recounts his own memories. Rather than omitting details, Sanders describes his childhood with rich thoroughness. Near the essay’s beginning, Sanders describes his memories of his father’s alcoholism: In the perennial present of memory, I slip into the garage or barn to see my father tipping back the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders of whiskey, the cans of beer disguised in paper bags. His Adam’s apple bobs, the liquid gurgles, he wipes the sandy-haired back of a hand over his lips, and then, his bloodshot gaze bumping into me, he stashes the bottle or can inside the jacket, under the workbench, between two bales of hay, and we both pretend the moment as not occurred (Sanders 733). This quote contrasts with Didion’s recollection of her memory, where she admits she can recall her earlier life in detail but refuses to share such details with readers until later in the essay. Didion’s omission of detail in her personal essay strengthens the sense of suspense she already established through her use of the chronological narrative.
Joan Didion’s description of various experiences with the Santa Ana winds conveys her message through various rhetorical strategies. Early in the essay the feeling of worry and anxiety is introduced by the use of words such as “uneasy” , “unnatural stillness” , and “tension”. Because the emotion is described early on the audience can grasp this feeling those who live and Santa Ana are experiencing. This feeling causes people to act abnormal, even when they have no awareness it is coming. Additionally the suspenseful emotion continues through the use of imagery, to convey the unusual effect the winds have on the atmosphere. Didion describes the sky, having a “yellow cast” and screaming peacocks in “the olive trees… by the eerie absence of surf”.
Everyday we observe people’s contrasting opinions. Whether it be in politics, school, or in one’s personal life, emotions are often a major factor when it comes to expressing one’s ideas. In writing, an audience must be aware this, and decide for themselves if an author is being bias or equally representing all sides to a situation. In both Into the Wild and In Cold Blood, the authors form distinct opinions about their main characters and believe family structure heavily influenced their future.
The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s account of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. The book shows how she attempts to cope with the grief of the death of her husband while tending to her daughter’s, Quintana, severe illness. In the book Didion does something, which might seem abnormal to some people. While Didion is cleaning out her husband’s closet at work she cannot find herself throwing away her husband’s shoes because “he would need shoes if he was to return” (Didion). Joan Didion reactions to death is typically American because of how people in America cannot cope with death and refuse to accept the notion that their loved one has passed away while other cultures are able to accept the idea of death because their loved ones are not gone but still here with them.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
"Ms. McMulkin, this is Alex. That essay--- how long can it be?" "Why, uh, not less than 600 words." He sounded a little surprised. I'd forgotten it was late at night. "Can it be longer?" "Certainly, Alex, as long as you want it." "Thanks," I said and hung up. I sat down and picked up my pen and thought for a minute. Remembering. Remembering a handsome, dark boy with a reckless grin and a hot temper. A tough, towheaded boy with a cigarette in his mouth and a bitter grin on his hard face. Remembering- -- and this time it didn't hurt--- a quiet, defeated-looking sixteen-year-old whose hair needed cutting badly and who had black eyes with a frightened expression to them. One week had taken all three of them. And I decided I could tell people, beginning with my English teacher. I wondered for a long time how to start that theme, how to start writing about something that was important to me. And I finally began like this: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride
Joan Didion in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”, stresses that keeping a notebook is not like keeping a journal. Didion supports her claim by describing entries that are in her notebook. The author’s purpose is to enlighten the reader as to what a notebook is. The author writes in a nostalgic tone for those who are reading the essay, so that they can relate to her. She uses rhetorical appeals; such as flashback, pathos, and imagery to name a few. By using these devices she helps capture the reader’s attention.
In the story, “The Killing Game”, Joy Williams, uses several diffenent types of writing skills to presuade the reader to see her views.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
The Santa Ana winds cause people to act more violently or unruly and makes others irritable and unhappy to a great extent. Joan Didion explains to the reader about how the Santa Ana affects human behavior in her essay “Los Angeles Notebook.” Through the use of imagery, diction, and selection of detail Didion expresses her view of the Santa Ana winds.
Joan Didion, the author of On Self Respect, claims that self-respect demonstrates a display once called character; she also argues that the ability to sleep well at night depends on self-respect. Namely, one who realizes that the choices and the actions he/she had made have brought his/her today, has self-respect. Considering Didion’s arguments and personal, real-life examples, self-respect must have at least some influences on physical behaviors.
I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things – a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in whi...
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
This technique intentionally delays providing the complete meaning of some lines to create temporary moments of suspense, which is quickly resolved in the following line. In addition to creating and resolving suspense, these unconventional line breaks also serve another purpose, they highlight certain words. For example, line two begins with “body”, which conventionally should have concluded line one, but Olds has reserved that thought until the beginning of line two, where it stands exposed before the comma. Line four begins with “mouth,” placed similarly vulnerable before the comma. In this way, Olds employs enjambment to emphasizes the seductive features for which Marilyn was most
From the very moment of his introduction to the narrative of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë surrounds Mr. Rochester in a cloud of mystery. It takes months for Jane to break through Rochester’s surface, and even when she thinks she understands the man behind the mystery, Rochester’s shocking secret plunges Jane even deeper into his hidden life. Mr. Rochester’s secret, his insane wife Bertha, keeps him in the shadows, as her existence threatens his status among his peers and the reputation of his whole family. Mr. Rochester’s secrets control his entire life and control every action he takes, from the way he interacts with Jane, to the show he puts on for the other elites; Rochester’s mystery is not a choice, but rather a means of survival in his world. Rochester is a man of many secrets, and although he keeps them for his own good, they often become very harmful to all involved with him.