Creative Nonfiction Analysis

Immediately after we are born, we start picking up sounds; the sound of our mother’s voice, the music playing in the elevator on the way to the car, and the happy cheers from a small child seeing their new sibling for the first time. We are always listening–picking up on conversations not meant for our ears, eavesdropping on the gossip of the adult world, and finding the meaning in the portentous silence. From all these auditory stimuli, we piece together the world around us to better understand what is happening to us, around us, and the secret happenings that were not for us to know. Great writers are the ones who listen and say nothing–who take it all in and save their classified information for a day when all the right words flow and form one epic story of the wondrous world we live in.

Around the time of the novels publication in the late 1960s, a new literary genre had begun to surface: New Journalism. New Journalism sought to combine the elements of news writing and journalism with the elements of fiction writing. Described as being a form of literature that “engages and excites”, it sought to challenge its readers not only “emotionally” but also “intellectually”. Typically, New Journalism consists of four major characteristics such as

Authors use various styles of writing to appeal to different types of audiences. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and “The Most Dangerous Job” by Eric Schlosser both utilize ethos, pathos, and logos writing styles to convince the audience of their ideals. An author uses ethos in writing to show his/her credentials and explain why he/she is credible. Pathos appeals to an audience’s emotions and makes the audience feel sympathy or pity. The author draws feelings out of the audience and compels the audience to feel what the author wishes them to feel. Logos uses facts, statistics, historical and literal analogies, and quotes from authorities on a subject to convince the audience with logic or reason. Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser have the goal of exposing the corruption in the meatpacking industry, but the authors develop their arguments through similar and contrasting approaches.

Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer and Nobel Prize Winner. In her article “What is Real”, Alice Munro discusses the difficulty many of her readers seem to have in telling fact from fiction as she writes about her own fictional works. Her readers, she recounts, often ask her if she writes about real people, or real events, apparently unable to comprehend “the difference between autobiography and fiction” (Munro). However, by the end of her article on the subject, “What Is Real?” Munro admits that the imagination is one she herself often blurs. “Yes,” she writes, “I use bits of what is real, in the sense of being really there and really happening, in the world, as most people see it, and I transform it into something […] in my story” (Munro). In other words, Munro sees her work as a kind of fiction because she uses both reality and fact. This makes her work honest but yet not real at the

While reading “The Writer’s Way”, I began to realize several aspects associated with the context of the material and my own experiences in the academic world (Rawlins and Metzger). The first connection I discovered came when I read section “two Learning Equals Changing” (Rawlins and Metzger 3). I am no stranger to “experiencing and reflecting” in any part of my life (Rawlins and Metzger 3). When I take part in conversations, I analyze the content for long periods of time. Contemplating what happened, the conversation, what I could have done differently and many other questions occur in the process. In an academic setting, sometimes I process the information the same, however, I am not consistent with such a pattern. Academically I have found

Literature is considered a mirror of the society. The pool of content in literary writing stems from the environment in which the writer is placed. A writer will use this environment to advance his/her views of the society and at the same time drive into the audience/readers important information that he/she wishes to pass. Hunter S. Thompson has used his creativity in the novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas written in the 1960s to reflect on American society with Las Vegas as the point of reference.

The article “Your Brain on Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul (2012) asserts that reading can motivate the human brain, and even influences on a person’s behaviour, as has been proved by neuroscience. Not only well known parts of the brain, which responsible for written words, engage in the process of reading, and react to it, but also other sections, for instance, one of them relates to the sense of smell. The article provides information about the study that describes the reaction of participant’s brain to different words and their combinations. The words that have a strong connection with the smell or texture metaphors activate the sensory cortex. Moreover, researchers determine the response of the motor cortex by the words that represent movement.

The literary canon is those works considered by scholars, critics, and teachers to be the most important to read and study, which collectively constitute the “masterpieces” of literature. (Meyer 2175) In the past there has been much debate on whether non-fiction should be considered for inclusion in the canon, but non-fiction writers being considered part of the canon is not unheard of, and is already a reality – George Orwell, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway- all had a significant body of non-fictional work and are well respected, well established members. Sonja Livingston’s work is part of a genre called creative non-fiction. As stated in his article for The Writer, Lee Gutkind states, “Creative nonfiction-also called "new

In Gordimers story “Once upon a time” uses the genre of a children’s story to articulate monsters in a suburban family by using the theme of a fairytale that clashes with the theme of a childrens story so he can use “monsters” in a suburban family. Gordimer uses phrases that kind of gives him the excuse to go in and articulate the monsters into the genre of a children’s story. Gordimer knew how to put everything in place to make it be called a “children’s story” Also, she the setting of the story in a good neighborhood, just people

Book are magnificent things. Fiction books are created with such details, they only hold small or no real life facts or events. In contrast, nonfiction books do the complete opposite. Nonfiction books contain facts or events from the past that occurred, they are also incorporated with details to make the story more interesting, to give it more imagery, feel, and a better tone. When an author does so, they manage to make the book have a “timeless quality,” which is incredibly important to a nonfiction book. An author is capable of getting this quality in their books by incorporating the facts or events, alongside rhetorical strategies to give life and meaning to their book. Not every author can manage to do this, although, the author by the name of Erik Larson did so, in his book, The Devil in the White City: Murder,

Literary works have become one of the most preferred ways for people to express themselves and voice their concerns and opinions on societal issues. Through such pieces of work, authors are able to educate and critique the society at large, often forcing people to reconsider their views on certain matters. This has an overall effect of pushing them to reconsider the effect of their actions and errors as regards the issues in question. For others, writing about real life situations is most effective in communicating with their readers. Victims of racial discrimination may opt to put their ordeals down in black and white, mush the same way those who find themselves at the receiving end of sexual harassment may choose to write about their experiences. Arguably, the effect achieved is greater, in opposition to that of works of fiction. Even where a book is fictitious, more insight and connection to real life is achieved if the story is built around real life events and situations. Nancy Mairs does excellent in expressing herself through her spiritual autobiography; Waist-High in the World.

A story is only as good as the way it is told. The way a writer uses his or her words to say something is just as important as what they don’t say. Charles Baxter, author of plethora of books and university teacher, writes a craft book that goes deeper than the surface of writing and deeper than the words written down. In Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext, he discusses how authors can use the words they do write just as much to express what they don’t write.

Literature is the window to realizing the negatives of society and how destructive certain norms can be. Readers are brought into a completely different story than their own, but by using similar issues in today’s world, the readers can actually learn from the story and its overall message. All writers write for a purpose, whether it’s for a new meaning to life, to live a different life than our own, or to impact others on an emotional level by teaching them to see the importance of the little things. As a reader, you search for pieces of literature that interest you whether you find the story like your own, or wish you lived the life in the story. By using issues in today’s within their works, authors are able to grab the reader's attention long enough for them to get across what they wanted to get across. Often in many works of literature, writers use societal issues as their basis for the work’s themes and symbols. By doing so, this allows the reader to question the morality behind social norms and how impactful certain ideals can be in people’s lives.

In the novel, Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, the author uses many literary

The musical film has always held a special place for me. From my time as a drama student in high school, my eyes have been opened to the amazing world of the musical and especially the musical film. The musical film is a film genre in which the characters sing songs that are integrated into the overall story. Since musicals first began in theaters, musical films usually contain similar elements. These elements often simulate that there is a live audience watching. In a sense, the film viewers become the audience members, at a theater production, as the actor performs directly to them. Due to the popularity of musicals in the theater, the style was quickly brought over into film. In 1927, the musical film genre began