Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Stylistic Essay Blog Prompt

Consider this a pre-write for your stylistic essay I have posted below. Choose which essay you will be writing on, and then try to identify the stylistic elements that contribute to the essay's overall meaning. Why does the writer write the essay in the particular style that he or she does? What themes are generally discussed, and how does style contribute to these themes?

59 comments:

  1. In The Knife, Selzer uses many stylistic devices to describe a surgeon’s scalpel as well as surgery. He uses metaphors, similes, and personification to bring the scalpel to life. He compares the knife to the bow of a cello, the stem of a tulip and to a slender fish, etc. Selzer uses extremely descriptive writing to allow us to visualize what he does, “an arc of the liver shines high an on the right, like a dark sun. It laps over the pink sweep of the stomach, from whose veil one sees, sinuous, slow as just-fed snakes, the indolent coil of the intestine” (709).

    The essay never stands still. Selzer moves from one comparison and idea to another. Selzer even goes so far as to transform his Shakespearean references so that they are not the same as how Shakespeare wrote them. Throughout the entire essay, the knife is constantly being transformed – Selzer transforms the knife and the knife transforms the body. He uses mixed metaphors all over the place, comparing the operation room to a pageant. The beginning of the last paragraph makes the reader think that the knife has come to a standstill and that the knife is just a knife but Selzer transforms it once again by saying that the “…the knife lies spent, on its side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks. The knife rests. And waits” (714). The knife never remains still just like the essay never stands still.

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  2. In the opening sentence of the essay "He and I" by Anna Ginzburg, she states "He always feels hot, and i always feel cold." This sets the tone for a stylistic essay in which she uses the art of comparison as a tool throughout. She uses this particular style because it gives the reader a very clear, and simple understanding of the relationship between her an her husband. It helps the reader grasp the differences between the two characters, and formulate a view point on who they are as a couple.

    Ginzburg, especially at the beginning of the essay, seems to paint her husband as the more cultured and smarter of the two. "He loves museums, and I will go if I am forced to but with an unpleasant sense of effort and duty. He loves libraries and I hate them." By using this comparison method of storytelling she effectively relates the nuances of their relationship, and works backward in retelling the history of their relationship, up until the very end when they are just "two friends talking, two young intellectuals out for a walk; so young, so educated, so uninvolved, so ready to judge one another with kind impartiality; so ready to say goodbye to one another forever, as the sun set, at the corner of the street."

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  3. in meatless day, suleri talked a lot about her own memories about her family. she also talked a lot about differnt kind of food. suleri was trying to find out who she is because she saw herself as american pakistain. she misunderstanding of some of her own culture traditions. she sees herself as existing in between two clutures and two ideologies. she also presents history within a human frame when she talked about her father's work in pakistan.

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  4. In The Knife by Richard Selzer, there are many different stylistic devices used throughout. Majority of his essay is filled with metaphors. He uses these metaphors to bring the knife to life. And to give this knife more character he uses similes, personification, and imagery. For one these catch the readers attention as soon as they start reading. But these stylistic devices shape the essay throughout and show how the knife is not a mere knife. But can do much more. And to farther more show the life of the knife at the very end he states the knife is not done yet but rather just waiting and resting. He compares the horrific site of a surgery to beautiful things such as pageants. One can see Selzer is a great expert at not only writing but in surgeries, or at least he makes the reader believe so.

    Waleed Khatri

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  5. In the essay "He and I," Ginzberg's main thesis to her essay is that without her partner she had no identity. Ginzberg uses a style of compare and constrast throughout the essay to show the reader exactly that. Ginzberg starts in the present and ends in the past. By doing this she shows the reader without explaining directly how her present identity could have never happened. We learn that before they became love partners they were mere friends that just held polite conversation. They bumped into each other later and fell in love. This way of writing and stylistic approach makes the reader reflect and understand the magnitude of just how special relationships are and how easily they could not come into exisitence.

    Ginzberg's style makes for a reflective read that is easy to understand. Though it may seem simple and direct the greater meaning is how she wrote the essay, the structure, rather than complicated rhetoric she could have used.

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  6. The Knife by Richard Selzer is stylized in a way to make the operation experience universal. He uses metaphors to describe the graphic nature of surgery in universal way. It is much more approachable this way to the pubic that is not familiar with surgery.

    He transforms the body by the scalpel. The body is not the same when it leaves as when it went in. He took out the tumor so it is transformed metaphorically and literally.

    -Elizabeth

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  7. Richard Selzer writes the stylistic essay "The Knife" by using many metaphors and similes through out the article. He describes the thesis of "using knife to process the surgery and transform his patient to be a healthy one" by cutting open, removing tumor, and stitching back. The patient is not the same when the scalpel went in as when it leaves. He describes the scalpel as the bow of a cello or a tulip-by the stem, and "like a slender fish, it waits, at the ready, then go." The transformation appears again at the end that on the table, the knife lies spent, "on its side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flank. The knife rests. And waits."

    Wen Chao

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  8. Richard Selzer's, "The Knife" uses stylistic devices such as extended metaphors, similes, and personification. By doing so the knife becomes a complex thing that constantly morphs as the speaker describes its qualities. Within the essay the knife transforms from an instrument used for surgery, to a weapon, to a horse that needs to be reigned in, and many other metaphors. It is never certain exactly what characteristics the knife really has.
    Throughout the essay the knife's identity constantly jumps from one sentence to the next. The speaker uses many mixed metaphors to create great visual imagery. The speaker tries to take something graphic like surgery and bring it a universal art and poetic understanding. The stylistic language becomes the tenor and the knife is the vehicle for the extended metaphor.

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  9. Analysis of the Stylistic Elements in "Meatless Days"

    Meatless Days, Sara Suleri's essay on culture on family and food and how it defines us, finds its crucial elements in the use of metaphors and synechdoche. It is through the use of these stylistic devices that the author is able to communicate and support her theme. The theme she uses here is that the merging of food and family connects both our past and our present lives. The predominant metaphor she uses is that of the food "kapura," a food she grew up with which projects very poignantly its ethnic nature. As a synechdoche, its translation is a dish made from testicles, is the embodiment of a man. It is the part representative of the whole, which is of course what a synechdoche is. As far as what "kapura" represents, in both its ethnic nature and that it is a male organ; it stands for the paternal half. Perhaps the shock of revelation in finding out its true meaning brought onto her memories of betrayal of her maternal half.
    Posted by MargaretLatchman at 11:45 PM
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  10. “He and I” Natalia Ginzburg
    Right from the beginning, she starts off with comparisons of her and her husband, and not long after that she makes it clear that she thinks he is better than her. Throughout the essay, she describes how they are as individuals, and adds that he often gets angry with her, and that she gets angry with herself. To her, he is perfect and she wants to be more like the way he is which is ‘perfect’. I think pretty much everyone in a relationship can relate to this, even if they do not feel the way she does. Almost everyone who has cared very deeply for someone else has felt at least a little bit like she does, or maybe even very strongly that sometimes they are not good enough or that they don't deserve the person they're with.

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