A Look at Essays and Articles in Cynthia Ozick's Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body

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Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Just write. Use your imagination. Let your thoughts run wild and write with a passion. Is this what defines an essay? This is the ability to freely write of someone’s desires and dreams…all through an essay. In her excerpt “Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body”, Cynthia Ozick uses diction, irony, and metaphor to help distinguish an essay from an article.

Relating to an essay, words can have a very powerful meaning. According to Ozick, the words to an essay do that very thing-they portray power. An essay is “a movement of a free mind at play” while an article is simply “gossip”. Such words are so very different and they cause the reader to better understand the difference between the two. With an essay, the writer has no limits; they are free to write their most spontaneous thoughts. On the other hand, gossip defines an article. Since when has gossip ever been viewed as something that is positive? Gossip is “likely to be stale within the month”, according to Ozick. The essay is also “ancient” and “various” which describe essays in a way of referring back t...

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