In this passage, Mairs presents herself as a self-aware, tough, and capable person. She chooses to describe herself as a “cripple;” she feels that it is a “clean word, straightforward and precise.” Mairs uses rhetorical features such as simple, loose, and inverted sentences, repetition, zeugma, juxtaposition, and semantics, to advance her narrative. Arguably the most striking of the aforementioned rhetorical structures is Maris’ repetition and use of simple, loose, and inverted sentences. For instance, several times throughout the passage Mairs starts uses succinct sentences that with “I.” This recurrence establishes Mairs as a succinct and frank character. “I am cripple. I choose this word to name me…I recognize that that they are…not entirely
flattering. I want them to wince. I want them to see me.” However, as the passage progresses, Mairs changes her sentence structure. She shifts from the simple/loose sentence structure to an inverted structure. “As a cripple, I swagger.” More repetition can be found within the passage such as use of words like “cripple,” “handicapped,” and “disabled.” As previously stated, Mairs considers herself to be a “cripple.” However, she does not mean it in a sense of having “deliberately been put at a disadvantage.” Instead, Mairs sees the word “cripple” as “tough.” In the second paragraph, Mairs adds that she likes “…the accuracy with which it describes [her] condition.” The frequent and deliberate usage of repetition is of great significance to Mairs’ rhetorical structure. Mairs’ rhetorical structure also includes zeugma. For instance, in paragraph one, “Perhaps I want them to wince. I want them to see me as a tough customer, one whom the fate/gods/viruses have not been kind, but who can face the brutal truth of her existence squarely.” In the quote, Mairs compares fantasy to tangible, real-world objects. The juxtaposition of gods and viruses/illness is extremely effective toward Mairs’ narrative of being a “cripple.” Throughout the passage, Mairs is critical towards society and its use of semantics. She references the use of euphemisms and how she feels they “widen the gap between word and reality.” Mairs also feels that “Some realities do not obey the dictates of language,” and that most euphemisms only “hint at the truth.” This helped advance the overall view of Mairs, which is that she “…refuses to participate in the degeneration of language.” This view was apparent in the first paragraph, in which Mairs states that she knows the term “cripple” is “…not entirely flattering,” but that she “…likes the accuracy with which it describes her condition.” The point was clarified throughout the passage. In conclusion, Mairs word choice is highly significant in advancing her narrative of being a "cripple." Use of rhetorical features such as simple, loose, and inverted sentences, repetition, zeugma, juxtaposition, and semantics, also assist in the amelioration of this idea.
Particularly, you can analyze that this quote contains a strong voice that can be portrayed as descriptive. She uses a handful of adjectives that foreshadow the character’s personalities.
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
Mairs describes her condition and how it relates to the actions and responses of other people in any situation. Mairs uses the term cripple loosely, making sure it is not offensive to anyone. By starting her passage with, “I am a cripple,” Mairs doesn’t hide anything. She begins by coming straight out into the open with who she is and how she wants the world to view her. In the first paragraph, Mairs uses the word choose three times to establish her personal decision to be titled a cripple.
Kingsolver uses short sentences to add emphasis in her writings. In doing so, she limits the amount of distractions, because her sentences are short enriching the details in them. At the first page of Orleanna’s episode, her second paragraph already enthuses the level of surprises suspense toward her readers: “First, picture the forest...sucking life out of death” (5). For example, Orleanna begins personifying forest as “forest [eating] itself” (5), and using simile to add human characteristics to animals: “brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown” (5). Kingsolver, however, also contribute many powerful use of literary devices to create the setting, such as the use of metaphors. The constant reference to green mamba snake alludes to Adam and Eve, where Kingsolver disintegrate the purity of Ruth May. Through the ranges of the novel, Kingsolver specifically creates Leah with more to say, which means there are more paragraphs in her perspective. From the start of the novel, Kingsolver structures Adah’s sentences differently and unique from the other protagonist, because Kingsolver uses Adah’s condition to evolve in a much stronger diction. For example, one of her first paragraph begins with “SUNRISE TANTALIZE, evil eyes hypnotize: that is the morning, Congo pink...the shinny black-line clipped into pieces” (30). Although Adah’s powerful diction emphasizes Congo, Rachel’s malapropism constructs the limited knowledge she actually has for the real world, which also causes to mature slower: “They are Episopotamians” (167). In doing so, the use of short sentences create imagery, which Kingsolver inputs the tension and the diction while in each episode. With that being said, Kingsolver uses structure to carry out her literary techniques to unfoil the significance of Congo’s Independence, while demonstrating the effect of multiple narrations in the
The easier the words are to understand the broader the audience will be. Throughout the novel words and phrases that are known to be simple are used such as: “At first, Arrow isn’t sure whether to trust what she sees” (Galloway, 73). The use of words like “first” and “sees” helps the novel appeal to people of all ages and reading skill levels. The words could be altered to sound more sophisticated yet, Galloway chooses not the do that. This helps portray the emotions and thoughts of the character in a way that everyone can understand and appreciate. Galloway comprehends that people are more likely to understand when the words used are simpler; he creates minimalism to entice readers. The words and phrases are not complicated it is helpful for everyone reading the novel, its beneficial to the reader when they can absorb and understand what it really happening. Galloway strongly displays word choice in a favourable way throughout the novel, as well as strong
...ive most of their life as a perfectly able-bodied person until a tragic accident one day could rob you of the function of your legs, and you have to learn how to cope with being disabled. Mairs illustrates that being disabled is more common than the media portrays, and it’s hard to deal with feeling alienated for your disabilities. These three authors have evoked a sense of sympathy from the reader, but they also imply that they don’t want non-handicapped people to pity them. The goal these authors have is to reach out to the able-bodied person, and help them understand how to treat a disabled person. The disabled people don’t want to be pitied, but they still need our help sometimes, just like if you saw someone with an arm full of grocery bags having difficulty opening their car door. They want us to accept them not as a different species, but as functional people.
...ors to describe her life and situation. This comes primarily from the fact that in her therapy sessions that is how she is taught to deal with everything. For example, one metaphor she talks about is “… she comes up with the idea of lighting candles to symbolize my past, present, and future…I’ve noticed my past melting… my present candle has stayed pretty much the same,” (D 266). She explains them as her past is become less controlling, her present is her and concrete ideas and her future is bright and untouched. These metaphors show how much she has grown and allow the things she is learning to have more meaning. All of these combine to make the piece very effective and insightful. They help to get her point across and call people to action to help against these crimes.
Mairs’s inferiority complex which made her question other people’s attitude towards her. In “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs. She kept believe the way how
Some examples of metaphor within the piece are when it says “your laughter’s so melodic it’s a song” and “your creativity’s a compass that leads you to what you love”. An example of evocative language in the piece is “you don’t need any miracle cream to keep your passions smooth, hair free or diet pills to slim your kindness down.” These metaphors and instances of evocative language help emphasise the message that it doesn’t matter what you look like, the most important thing you can love about yourself is ____. Metaphors, evocative language, and repetition are also used to describe the expectations laid upon women by society. One particular phrase that uses both metaphor and evocative language “because the only place we'll ever truly feel safe is curled up inside skin we've been taught to hate by a society that shuns our awful confidence and feeds us our flaws”. Other examples of evocative language include “a reminder that the mirror is meant to be a curse so I confine her in my mind, but when he or she shouts ‘let me out!’ we're allowed to listen.” and “Don't you shatter the illusion you could ever be anything beyond paper fine flesh and flashy teeth and fingernails.” One instance of repetition includes “echoic accusations of not good enough, never good enough”. Another phrase that uses both evocative language and repetition
Roethke uses a few different literary modes to help create his imagery. Metaphor and similes are figures of speech in which a word or phrase tha...
...m figurative language to imagery, she can portray for the readers what it was like to
The rational facility of man cannot successfully be revealed, in its entirety, through literal and direct language. Recognizing this reality generated by the nature of such a faculty, Wright utilizes a variety of rhetorical devices, indirect in their capabilities, to establish a realistic and all-encompassing paradigm throughout his story. Consequently, Wright uses irony to shape his characters. Such a methodology is primarily revealed when the writer, assuming the ignorance of his wife, discuss the circumstances intended for her untimely end. Developing exceptional situational qualities, irony is used once more during Lucy’s execution of her dead husband’s plot. Furthermore, that same situational irony is present at the murder of her husband.
perceive the novel in the rational of an eleven-year-old girl. One short, simple sentence is followed by another , relating each in an easy flow of thoughts. Gibbons allows this stream of thoughts to again emphasize the childish perception of life’s greatest tragedies. For example, Gibbons uses the simple diction and stream of consciousness as Ellen searches herself for the true person she is. Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining.
Miss Hancock takes on an important role in the short story The Metaphor, written by Budge Wilson. She is a beloved literacy teacher with an exuberant personality. First, the author fabricates an image of Miss Hancock by giving a physical description of her. Wilson writes “If one tired of inspecting miss Hancock's clothes which were nearly always as flamboyant as her nature, one could still contemplate her face with considerable satisfaction.” (65). This quotes makes it clear that her personality shines through in the way of which she presents herself. Her appearance is a reflection of her exuberant personality. Another technique that Wilson uses to express Miss Hancock's personality is through
For example "fire burning in my bones" helps show her struggle or the pain that she has to endure but that she will preserver through her struggles. Also when she uses this phrase "wrecking balls inside my brain" helps over exaggerate how keeping silent has made her eager to speak up. with these examples of Imagery its clear to reader how her pain and struggles maker eager to make a difference which help support the theme of that any one can make a