September 9, 2013
Summer Assignment
Tone
In Peter Singer’s essay, “What Should a Billionaire Give?”, Singer coveys a persuasive tone to convince his audience that the money donated to charities should be donated to foreign countries living in poverty today. People from foreign countries aren’t getting their necessities in order to survive which upsets Singer. Peter Singer’s also creates an informative tone to educate his reader on how much billionaires should donate to other countries and how millions of people are living in poverty today.
Structure
In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay, ”What the Dog Saw”, Gladwell acts as the narrator. First, he gives his audience an example about Caesar’s (main character) past experiences which clearly fall back to Caesar’s occupation. Gladwell’s novel is focused on Caesar. His writing isn’t very organized because Gladwell talks about Caesar’s experiences then automatically go back to explaining Caesar’s occupation and how he runs his business. Gladwell does a great job at forcing his audience to visualize exactly what he is saying.
Diction
Jerald Walker, in his essay “Dragon Slayers”, expresses troubles of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. A white man, who expects to be hated because of the color of his skin, converses with the narrator, an educated black man. The narrator explains how he teaches an African American class that’s focused on “black courage” rather than cruelty from the white people. Walker uses words of same meaning to establish a clear tone.
Syntax
The word structure in Marione Ingram’s “Operation Gomorrah” is very interesting to me. I’ve never been interested in reading a writer’s essay who words their sentence such as, “I was thrilled to be outdoors, unsupervised, in charged.” I, personally, would have structured that sentence (as well as her others) a bit differently. For example, “I was thrilled to be the boss outdoors.” It seems simple, although it is plain. I understand why writers