The Roseto Mystery By Malcolm Gladwell

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster teaches readers about the most commonly used symbols and their meanings and the similarities between stories.

The sharpness that the italics create plays an important role in the energy and pace of the piece, forcing you to slow down when encountering an italicized word changing the variation of the story as you read.

¨There was a law against luke. Not him personally everyone like him, kids who were born after their parents already had two babies (pg 6)¨. Would you like a law against you? Among the hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix clearly shows that dictatorship is horrible. In this novel Luke is not allowed to leave the house or be seen. Luke leaves the house in cover and meets a girl the same as him she can't go anywhere so she tries to convince luke to rebel to be like regular people with her but he is to nervous. Luke shows the character traits of brave, jealousy and adventurous as he hides in the shadows.

The way diction is crafted in a novel establishes the atmosphere and the mood of a setting for the reader to interpret. Craig Silvey’s, Jasper Jones, published in 2009, is a novel that uses specific language conventions to create certain moods for the reader. Craig Silvey’s clever use of diction to shape the different settings of summer heat, the glade and Jack Lionel’s house has established a particular mood for the reader to interpret in the novel. The narrative conventions used to shape the setting invokes specific thoughts from the audience to associate that setting with a particular mood or atmosphere.

Punctuation in the form of commas and dashes is used to slow the pacing of the story and create suspense or an unresolved tone. Poe uses these dashes in “The Tell-Tale Heart” to emphasize the narrator’s madness, allowing the reader to hear and understand the fragmentation of the narrator’s thoughts on a much closer level. This is exemplified in one passage, where the narrator states “TRUE! -- nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed -- not dulled them.” This adds to a jolting tone to the passage, as the narrator begins feverently, represented by exclamation points, then suddenly pauses for extended stretches, then starts again. The long pauses between statements caused by multiple dashes in a row evoke this aforementioned madness, due to the fact that, by normal standards, a “sane” person would not speak with such a disjointed

Damon Knight’s “The Country of the Kind” follows a narrator who the audience at first knows little about, who lives in a society that is different from the norm, but is also initially left ambiguous. This sense of the unknown exists up until the narrator stumbles upon a pamphlet which opens up new viewpoints to the reader. The pamphlet serves to create three new perspectives in particular, all of which significantly shift the reader’s understanding of the story. First, it gives the reader a chance to understand the narrator and sympathize with him. Second, it offers a new perspective on society and their overall conception of what defines a utopia. The third and final perspective is that of the people who live within this society, and their interactions with the main characters. These three new perspectives prove to be formative in understanding the main character, his interactions with other characters in the story, and the role of society.

Beautiful imagery laced amidst a wondrous storyline, accompanied by memorable and lovable characters are all elements pertaining to enjoyable works of fiction. Tales that keep one up late into the night forever reading just “one more page” forever propelling the intrinsic imagination for a novel enthusiast. Yet, at times there are deeper meanings hidden between the lines. Symbols, analogies, and latent parallels all connecting to real life events and situations being portrayed by the author. Using literary theory can bring a more profound understanding of the reading material at hand, as well as unique insight as to what the author was feeling or intending to portray at the time of writing.

Malcolm Gladwell defines an outlier as an individual who has accomplished so much in extraordinary circumstances compared to people with normal circumstance. Outliers are individuals that succeed in life despite the odds that are placed against them. However, Gladwell states in his nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success that the success of an outlier “is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky- but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier in the end is not an outlier at all,” (299).

Thomas C. Foster utilizes various allusions and forms of symbolism to apply a multifaceted meaning or message to any piece of literature. In “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” Foster theorizes how an author can assist a reader in getting a better grip on the message or purpose of a work using figurative language including symbolism, tones, allusions, and techniques. The chapters “…Or the Bible”, “It’s Never Just Heart Disease”, and “Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion” all demonstrate how Foster’s theories can be applied to the way authors have written and will continue to write.

Gladwell uses imagery to sketch the story of Stewart Wolf who tried to solve a medical phenomenon: why a small town in Roseto, was so healthy compared to the ones surrounding it. After his conclusive study he determined that external factors did not contribute to this, and that the answer was held in the town’s culture of care to attention and detail. Gladwell incorporates Wolf’s work to analyze the factors that determine success: failure and progress. He captures the reader’s attention with an introduction to a

When the reader first starts reading the text he sees the complexity,but at the same time the simplicity of the sentences making him more intrigued to keep reading and understanding what O'Brien is trying to argue. O’brien sentences are complex in sense of writing but are easy to comprehend,making them more appealing. O’Brien uses a variety of sentences because he knows that too many sentences of the same structure and length can get boring for a reader causing them to get distracted and not understanding O’Brien argument. O’Brien knows when writing this text he has one goal to keep the reader entertained and focused. He does that by putting a variety of sentences that are easy to understand but

The writer’s purpose in this excerpt is to entertain the readers. She makes the readers feel interested and want to continuously read more story. She uses many literary and rhetorical devices. First, she uses commas to give specific details. For example, “Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.” She also uses onomatopoeias to imitate natural sounds such as “BOOM” and “SMASH!” Imagery is another significant device because she makes the reader imagine what character or any element looks like. For instance, “A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.” The author influences the reader by the writer’s words and narrative with dialogs.

Step through as the curtain is pulled back, the wizard considered, and the tools used to create worlds are examined. Nora Roberts has had a long and successful career as a writer and novelist since her first novel, Irish Thoroughbred, was published in 1981. Since then her readers have been rewarded for their loyalty with hundreds of other gems including The Return of Rafe MacKade, and Blood Brothers. Using excerpts from the aforementioned novels, the linguistic elements employed by the author will be carefully looked at to provide explication on how Ms. Roberts created such a unique voice in the wealth of talented writers. In this paper, a detailed analysis of Nora Roberts’ usage of syntax, sentence structure, semantics, the meaning in language,

Throughout the story, Coupland breaks nearly every paragraph with asterisks. This is one of the most noticeable aspects to his style in this story. By breaking the paragraphs apart like this he accomplishes two things effectively: 1) reading for the audience is made easier by grouping single thoughts and breaking up text. 2) It gives a journalistic feel to the main characters experience – like it is his diary. The “diary entry” style really puts emphasis on the isolation aspects of being in a remote location with only single thoughts being given at a time; which also leaves a little mystery as to what is happening to the main character when he isn’t “writing down/giving” his thoughts for the audience. The overall feel to the story is very comedic, satirical and reinforced by the choice of language.

Before the 20th Century, literature was pretty straightforward; the narrators were reliable, the timelines were linear, and the perspective was clear, but then somebody got the idea to mix it up. This is how we got books such as The Great Gatsby and one of our class texts, Orlando. For some, this was a startling and uncomfortable transition from what used to be considered the, “normal” format which was very up front in terms of structure and voice. Others found it to be more exciting and, while it was still weird and unsettling for those people, it forced people to think more about what the books were trying to communicate, instead of just being handed the message; they had to work for it. This has become one of the leading reasons that societies are encouraged to read; if you read a book that forces you to think, your mind becomes stronger and this promotes an increase in intelligence and creativity.