Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?
Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?
Ursula K. Le Guin
To start her essay, she states “This was to be a talk about fantasy. But I have not been feeling very fanciful lately.” This is kind of a play on words with the word fantasy. She’s not feeling so fanciful because people, mainly Americans as the titles suggests, are hesitant to accept the fantasy genre. She repeats the word “fantasy” several times in the first two paragraphs. She might be trying to make the reader more comfortable with fantasy, also uses similar words like fanciful and fantastic to make the repetition more effective. When she says in the title Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons, she really means fantasy and not dragons. This makes the title much more interesting and intrigues the reader right off the bat. She has a friendly tone, effectively making the reader more comfortable with fantasy once again and less afraid. The tone changes when she mentions moralistic censorship. It then becomes more abstract as now she’s serious and wants to truly prove a point about the fantasy and sci-fi genre. After her introduction she sets a short paragraph repeating the title to emphasizes it. She is now saying that she is going to get on with it. This is effective because she repeats the title and now she can start fresh and get straight to the point while still having her backstory introduction from the start. When she was a child, she tried to take our The Hobbit from the library but the librarian said that she doesn’t feel escapism is good for children. This is ironic because when she quotes people on why they don’t read fiction they said “Fairy stories are for kids” and “I used to read that science fiction stuff when I was a teenager, but of course I don’t now” but when she was young they kept the fiction for adults only. Her most effective line would be “Equally, in the businessman's value system, if an act does not bring in an immediate, tangible profit, it has no justification at all.” She’s saying
Ursula K. Le Guin
To start her essay, she states “This was to be a talk about fantasy. But I have not been feeling very fanciful lately.” This is kind of a play on words with the word fantasy. She’s not feeling so fanciful because people, mainly Americans as the titles suggests, are hesitant to accept the fantasy genre. She repeats the word “fantasy” several times in the first two paragraphs. She might be trying to make the reader more comfortable with fantasy, also uses similar words like fanciful and fantastic to make the repetition more effective. When she says in the title Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons, she really means fantasy and not dragons. This makes the title much more interesting and intrigues the reader right off the bat. She has a friendly tone, effectively making the reader more comfortable with fantasy once again and less afraid. The tone changes when she mentions moralistic censorship. It then becomes more abstract as now she’s serious and wants to truly prove a point about the fantasy and sci-fi genre. After her introduction she sets a short paragraph repeating the title to emphasizes it. She is now saying that she is going to get on with it. This is effective because she repeats the title and now she can start fresh and get straight to the point while still having her backstory introduction from the start. When she was a child, she tried to take our The Hobbit from the library but the librarian said that she doesn’t feel escapism is good for children. This is ironic because when she quotes people on why they don’t read fiction they said “Fairy stories are for kids” and “I used to read that science fiction stuff when I was a teenager, but of course I don’t now” but when she was young they kept the fiction for adults only. Her most effective line would be “Equally, in the businessman's value system, if an act does not bring in an immediate, tangible profit, it has no justification at all.” She’s saying