Summary Of ' My Pen, Blue And White '

Graff then goes on to establish his ethos in the first few paragraphs while continuing to expand the thoughts and ideas on pathos throughout his essay. He begins to build his community and trust by recognizing his own credentials and sharing his personal background in writing. One of the first things noticed from the footnote about Gerald Graff’s professional career is that he has vast experience in the writing department. He is an English professor at a prestigious university, a past president of the Modern Language Association, and part of the professional association of scholars and teachers of English and other languages (198). But, since his background only assists his argument and does not define it, it is crucial to also look at his word choice, mood, language, and ideology in order to fully claim Graff a credible author.

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.

I 've always liked writing. Even before I knew how to write I would make up stories and pretend to write them down. Each year in high school I 've written a multitude of essays on varying topics. I have selected three of these writings from each of my years in high school to examine as part of this rhetorical analysis of my writing history. As I 've grown older, my writing style has changed and I 've learned more about the world and developed my own personal writing voice more and more.

you analyze how the novelist reveals the values of the character and the nature of the character’s

The world of writing is a vast and thoroughly confusing place, so vast in fact that it could not be navigated without an in-depth navigational chart. This chart is composed of and organized by terms that help us get a clearer picture of what we want to see. These terms are genre, audience, and most importantly rhetorical situation. These terms are all interrelated in which you can’t fully explore without having each one identified. One of the motives why writers delve into themselves, to put pen to paper so to speak is to express their views on a topic.

“No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader”, writing with surprise is a central theme in “Writing and Reading for Surprise”, by Donald Murray, a professor at the University of New Hampshire. Murray claims that an author must first write what they do not expect to write in order to find their own style and voice, the motivation to write and the joy that comes with it. This is a problem, he says that plagues college students, as many have not yet discovered this art which causes many to have a distaste for writing. Murray uses his own personal experience with writing and how he first came upon writing with surprise to demonstrate how it change his style and gave him joy and motivation to write every day and to show how it can do the same for students. In order to do this Murray uses ethos, pathos and logos in order to prove his point and relates to his audience specifically.

All writing comes in many different styles and attracts a certain audience in which it strikes their minds and opens them up to a new world of thinking or looking at things. “Writing to Connect” by Mary Pipher tells about this concept and elaborates on it greatly to encourage aspiring writers who may be feeling discouraged. Writing to Connect is a chapter in Mary Pipher’s newest book Writing to Change the World, where she discusses the use of powerful writing, changing aspects of the way people view things, and inspiring others to share their own stories and never be afraid of what you feel needs to be shared. Pipher directs the chapter toward aspiring writers to tell her audience they should never give up and inspires them with the use of rhetorical choices. Specific rhetorical choices provide further support for Pipher’s purpose of writing the chapter, she effectively writes to show her audience it’s never wrong to write what they feel, and to take chances in their writing. In “Writing to Connect” by Mary Pipher, she urges aspiring writers to push past their comfort zone of writing with the use of identification, personal anecdotes, and historical texts/occasions to effectively persuade them to never give up on what they feel needs to be said through writing.

Life writing is a genre that’s more equivocal than other genres. It has its own codes and conventions which help convey its own key ideas and messages. The arrangement of the codes and conventions help the audience recognize the connection between other life writing texts. One of the these is how perspective is used to convey the authors aspects of the real incident. This convention links to the one of the codes, language, where the composer uses languages to create personal accounts of a person’s life. All authors use language to express their experience. This verbalization is what links all life writing texts together.

In an essay published in the 1940’s, an author attempted to delve deep into who renowned celebrity Ellen Terry really was. Through rhetorical devices, the writer analyzes the many facets in which Terry far exceeded others. Terry’s character is developed throughout the piece as somewhat of a jack of all trades being able to master so many skills. Through anaphoras, metaphors and rhetorical questions, along with many other more subtle rhetorical devices, Terry is built up as a figure unlike any before her. The author of the essay begins to embed the idea of Terry’s multifaceted skills into the minds of the readers through her use of anaphoras.

Ballenger, Bruce. “The Importance of Writing Badly.” The Curious Writer. Custom Publishing. 2008. pp. 45–47.

When a wave crashes against the shoreline, it leaves change in its wake. One’s frame of mind is an assemblage of their thoughts that have come into existence as a result of the amalgamation of their emotions and logicality; in other words, the coalesce of pathos and logos interlace with one another and create the culmination of ethos. In the following texts written by Amy Tan, and Perri Klass, Pathos, Logos, and Ethos can be found within their passages from beginning to end. In Amy Tan’s article, “My Mother’s English,” Tan starts of stating how she is a writer rather than an English scholar, then it transitions off to describing her self-consciousness that she had carried when she had delivered an articulated speech toward her mother. Eventually,

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.

In this article, Bartholomae talks about writers and how they need “invent the university” by imitating the particular language their readers use. He makes strong points on how and why writers need to do this. You must do it by connecting your own point of few to the view of your audience, who is reading your work.

Her tenure and success as a professional writer gives her credibility as an author. However, there was nothing particularly different or extraordinary about this particular piece that would have attracted attention. She wrote in her usual style that employs customary pattern of short sentences that relatable yet pithy. This effective use of aphorisms grabs and holds the attention most readers, especially those with short attention spans. Additionally, she displays an exceptional ability to make use of the mundane by making it appear extraordinary.

Knowing about the writer of a literary text can shape significantly the way that it is read. Consider the effect of the writer’s context on your understanding of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.