Analysis Essay

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The Midwest: land of TV news anchors, housewives, and dreary, never-ending fields. In her memoir “The Horizontal World”, Debra Marquart uses interesting rhetorical techniques to detail this vast, distinctly uninteresting plain. By using unusual figurative language, outside examples to solidify her points, and a geometric extended metaphor, she paints a picture of perhaps the most boring place on Earth. Throughout the excerpt, Marquart utilizes unconventional imagery to solidify the dreariness of the plains. In the very first paragraph, she describes North Dakota’s interstate as “one long-held pedal steel guitar note”. While also alluding to the country music ever prevalent in the Midwest, she personifies exactly how it feels to pass through such a bland area: an endless boredom and monotony, never punctuated by a new note to add to the song. Soon thereafter, she quotes a comedian as saying that the area “spawns both tornadoes and Republicans”. An interesting analogy that grabs the reader’s attention, when put in context with the descriptions of dullness that precede it, the quote imp...

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