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The Pentadic Analysis Of Kenneth Burke's My Girl

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The world is thriving in a miscellaneous collection of well-known types of media that allow people to indulge in new societies, sophistications, and stories they have never known before. Correspondingly, there is an assortment of ways to analyze this media to further understand the reason behind having meaning in literature in addition to the recipients’ responses to these specific meanings. In particular, one method used to examine media, as well as its ongoing objective in both classic and contemporary society, is Kenneth Burke’s dramatic pentad. In response to evaluating narratives from divergent perspectives, the pentadic analysis is composed of five parts: agent, scene, act, agency, and purpose. For instance, by applying this analyzation technique to the 1991 Howard Zieff film My Girl it can be illustrated through which means these five elements create value in a fictional composition. Specifically, My Girl is primarily an agent-based film focusing on Vada's Sultenfuss' exploration of life through the means of death. However, Vada's circumstances of her mother's passing during childbirth and father's house-run funeral parlour creates a narrative focused on purpose by being the initial reason Vada has an obsession with demise and disease. To further elaborate, the film follows 11-year-old hypochondriac Vada Sultenfuss through her summer of 1972. From the beginning, it is demonstrated that although Vada clearly has an infatuation with death she does not truly understand it. In fact, Vada reads the report of each dead body her father brings home to prepare for viewing and then reports herself to the doctor claiming she has the same disease that killed them. Under those circumstances, Vada has also lived her whole life believing that she killed her own mother. Her father, a maladroit widower named Harry, cannot seem to connect with his daughter so, in response, he ignores her as he journeys through his new adventures with dating. In the midst of her father’s new engagement to Shelley, her admiration of an unavailable teacher, and her believe she is a killer who is dying of a new disease every week, her best friend Thomas dies from an allergic reaction. Vada is left to manage her own grief and pain as she

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