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Alain De Botton's On Anticipation

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Alain De Botton's On Anticipation
On Alain de Botton's "On Anticipation" Alain de Botton's main argument on the relationship between anticipation and travel is that while one waits in anticipation of a trip they begin to imagine the most beautiful scenario while often leaving out reality. He also explains how when we are going to travel we tend to leave out the thoughts of the actually travel itself. We see ourselves somehow just showing up to this beautiful destination without having any travel or problems. "In my anticipation, there had simply been a vacuum between the airport and my hotel. Nothing had existed in my mind between the last line on the itinerary and the hotel room." (Botton) Botton shows this main idea in his quote explaining then when he got off the airport …show more content…
Botton goes into full indepth descriptions of what he sees and also feels allowing the reader to create their own personal image of where he is in their minds. This may seem like it wouldn't persuade the readers by allowing them to create their own scenarios and image in their head but it does the opposite. Botton uses descriptions in a way that makes you create the image the exact way he wants you to almost making you feel the same emotions he did. Botton says "nothing was as I had imagined it, which is surprising only if one considers what I had imagined. " I picked this quote out of the many other ones where Botton actually describes what he sees because I feel that Botton in a way wrote a light satire about his own use of imagery. Botton also uses Huysman's character the Duc des Esseintes along with his own personal accounts to persuade his readers into thinking that his view is correct. Botton does this by telling des Esseintes story of traveling to London but things don't turn out the way des Esseintes had pictured it to and decides to go home. He uses des Esseintes' story as a sort of backing to his own personal accounts of being let down by the reality of the actual destination because of the images they created in their mind due to the anticipation of the trip. Botton tells his own personal accounts which is very effective because

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