Rhetorical Analysis Of Why Do I Keep A Notebook

82). The third quote is one of her notes that put the reader inside of her mind and gives proof to the fact that Didion lets her imagination take over her sense of reality. The fourth quote was another example of her starting off realistically and then she added some detail and she was off in her own world, again putting the reader in her mind. Depending on the type of detail she used made her notes realistic or imaginary.

There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.

To Begin with, throughout “Part One” of Where I Was From Didion uses ineffective organization and word choice. While the reading the novel one might be very confused by Didion’s poor word choice, meaning she did not make complete sense at all times. Also, Didion’s organization is horrendous in the book making it very ineffective, she seems to skip around a lot as if she was unsure of what happened and when it happened. In a story of her ancestors, Didion quotes, “Elizabeth Harden was remembered to have hidden in a cave with her children there were

Didion personifies the wind as almost an unknown epidemic. Similar to when an unknown disease goes viral, all walks of life are affected. Didion clearly states how teachers, students, doctors, to physicists, to generally everyone becomes unhappy and uncomfortable during the winds. She does not write of how the wind caused fire to ravage the shrublands, but she writes of the symptoms it inflicts on the people. Didion mentions all the after effects of the wind and the harm it can do like inflict paranoia. She mentions how the fear-stricken victims of southern California are paranoid like her neighbor that refuses to leave the house and her husband who roams with a machete. Didion’s personification of the wind focuses on a fearful and distant light.

“Writing it down is important to us…recording what we’ve done, in words, on paper, it’s got to be our way of telling ourselves that we mean something, that we matter. That the things we’ve done have made a difference.”

I think the author adopts the tone that he uses because he wanted to tell the story from a factual basis so we can understand the city, community and why it's important to him. If he told what he thought about the city and off of that how it’s important to him, we could have made our own judgments. Our own judgments could have been wrong or what he doesn’t want us to think about the city. However, since he told all facts about the city, we know the facts about the city and got to know the exact factual reasons why the city is important to him as the best way to show or prove your point is through

In the 1970’s the average family had a wife that would take care of all of the cooking, the cleaning, everything concerning their kids, and even caring for her husband too. They did all of this without complaining, while their husband was at work. In those times nothing less was expected from them. In the article “Why I Want a Wife” Brady uses ethos, logos, and pathos to illustrate her opinion of what a wife do in a marriage, in which she infers that wives do too much for their families.

The point of keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. Author, Joan Didion, in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” explains how to keep a notebook and why. Didion’s purpose is to inform us on how she keeps a notebook and why notebooks are useful in helping us to remember events that happened in the past. She adopts a sentimental tone in order to emphasize how many memories are kept alive by keeping a notebook. Didion uses ethos, pathos, and different rhetorical devices in her essay to explain her point.

My topic in this writing will be whether or not Joan Didion’s piece gets the rhetorical devices through to her audience. The two main rhetorical elements I will be looking at are didactic and imagery, I will also look at how they either do or don 't work well. First off Joan Didion took the title from George Orwell because she liked the words or at least the sound of them. In her essay “Why I Write” she explains how she writes and how she became a writer using her own mental images. In a way, she is a visual learner. So with her using didactic and imagery in a way to explain how the word “I” is her voice, not an author 's voice. Overall she gives a good case for basically why you should use “I” sparingly. Her use of her own mental imagery was a great touch, it added a new dimension to it by not just assuming where she got it but actually telling us. Although I can see some issues on how it didn 't work as a strong convincing argument within the essay of hers, one of those being how in her third page she is giving examples. These examples of her writing without “I” is good, yet they don 't give a strong case for why you shouldn 't use “I”. Granted her before and after paragraphs give great quotes and a strong, clean reasoning why you shouldn 't. A saying so powerful as “It tells you. You don’t tell it” (Didion, 1976, p. 2), and as a follow-up we get the watered down examples, it just doesn 't live up to the first part. I guess it true even in writing, the first one is

Moreover, writing about memory which is the groundwork of the traditional autobiographical genre is a problematic endeavor, since it is a project of conflating memory, imagination, and sometimes a conscious misrepresentation of the past. Likewise, it is a way to inscribe the discursive selves that they envision as “true” representations of their selfhoods.

Until I started this rhetorical analysis paper I wasn’t aware that the things I display in my room say things about me. I never thought about how they make me look as a person or what my audience would assume about me based on these items. When I started analyzing, all these questions started popping up. I was finally able to step back and see myself how others might see me. When asked by my teacher to pick 3 items that describe myself from my bedroom I didn’t have any trouble picking them out. When it came down to it, I 'd always choose the same 3 items: A wall of family pictures, a Pride flag and a mirror with notes and pictures all over it.

In Indigena as scribe: The (W)rite to remember. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness Writings, Cherrie Moraga emphasizes the importance of writing, as people of color. Moraga makes us aware of how much we deny our culture, practices, and myths because we are so afraid to be like our ancestors. Although we fear this close proximity to our ancestors, to Moraga, that same proximity is what makes our narratives valuable. The fear carried within us silences us and makes us forget about the powerful voices we hold. Moraga also writes about the importance of recognizing that institutionally, we have become colonized beings and to understand this concept, can help us break away from the shackles that keep us from being who we truly are. For Moraga, it is important that we acknowledge the power that writing has. She wants us to realize that our narratives are important and we have the right to remember who we are.

Didion’s impatience is due to the uncomfortable heat and to the pressing deadline of her writings on morality set forth by the The American Scholar.

At the moment of its waking Sacramento lost…its character…” (Didion 173). In other words, Didion is pointing out how Sacramento is becoming more immoral as urbanization and industrialization occur. However, what is most interesting is how Didion expresses Sacramento’s loss of character through her own experiences. For instance, Didion describes her wonderful memories basking in the Californian sun, rivers, fields and valleys as a child, showcasing the real natural Sacramento. However, later on as a n adult when she returns to Sacramento, Didion finds that the Sacramento she has been seeking is no longer there, as a result of industrial development:

Writing may be an enthralling experience for one and a clever way to decompress for another. In general, however, writing has different purposes for a variety of people. “Why I Write,” written in the late 20th century by Terry Tempest Williams, describes various reasons for writing narrated from a female’s perspective. The short essay begins in the middle of the night with a woman engulfed in her own thoughts. She abruptly goes forth by reciting the multiple reasons why she continues to write in her life. Through a variety of rhetorical devices such as repetition, imagery, analogies, and symbolism, Terry Tempest Williams produces an elegant piece of writing that offers the audience insight into the narrator’s life and forces the audience to have empathy for the narrator with the situation she is incurring.