Neither Here Nor There Bill Brryson Analysis

Bill Bryson, the author of “ Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe”, writes about a time he backpacked in a foreign city called Luxembourg. Bryson’s purpose is to elucidate to the reader how Luxembourg contrasts from cities in the United States, like New York, and how strange it is to be surrounded by objects and people we have never seen or experienced before. He adopts a humorous and amazed tone in his writing in order to appeal to new travelers sense of adventure.
Bryson opens his short story with a humorous tone by elaborating on the size of his backpack, “I had brought with me a yellow backpack so enormous than when I went through customs I half expected to be asked, ‘Anything to declare? Cigarettes? Alcohol? Dead horse?’” By using
a humorous tone, Bryson successfully hooked the audience into reading his short story about his personal travels until the story concludes. Bryson wanted to appeal to his audience, whom could be new travelers, that traveling is full of amusement, and apparently, luggage.
Bryson shifts to applying anaphora in the second paragraph by identifying all of the objects he has never envisioned before. Anaphora is used to emphasize the importance of something by repeating the phrase, or word, over and over again. Bryson reiterates the quote, “ I had never seen..” or “never seen…” numerous amounts of times over and over again. While overstating everything he has never seen before countless times, he was appealing to the audience’s sense of adventure to spot something out of the ordinary. This qualifies his argument as to why travel is so unique and exciting.
Bryson’s goal in his writing is to clearly explain the adventures of traveling in places you may have never imagined previous to reading this short story. By employing a humorous tone and anaphora in the structure of his story, Bryson successfully portrays his view of traveling to enhance audience’s desire to travel.