Anne Dillard “An American Childhood”
1. Summarize what happens in the story.
In the beginning of Annie Dillard’s story, “An American Childhood,” she describes playing football and how she and her friend Mickey were chased after throwing snowballs at a man’s car. The author compares the chase scene and the description of football to convey that in both it is “all or nothing”.
2. Give two writing strategies the author uses. (Dialogue? Detailing? Dramatic Arc?)
Dillard uses dramatic arc and dialogue to present the people and places involved in her childhood experience. She uses active verbs to create the rising action or dramatic arc as the angry man chases Dillard and Mikey relentlessly through streets and backyards. This enables the
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For instance, the word chased names an action in the story as seen in the sentence "He chased Mikey and me around the yellow house and up a backyard path….” The author also utilized details and vivid descriptions as a strategy used in remembered event writing. Descriptions are used to give a reader thumbnail images of the characters.
Using words and details in a story can provide the main impression by telling rather instead of showing an author’s feelings and thoughts in the childhood memory. In the showing and telling technique and author may use verbs like “felt” or a noun such as “thought” to create the dominant impression.
Direct strategies may use words that tell the reader which thought or emotion is experienced in the story. Steam of consciousness is a technique used when an author is writing about remembered thoughts and feelings as they occur in the author’s mind at the time of the experience. In autobiographical stories writers demonstrate what they remember thinking and feeling at the time of the event using the perspective of the present.
In St. Martin’s Guide read Chapter 14 NARRATING: pp. 561—bottom of 568 (stop right before “Narrating a Process”) and summarize the material in each of the black subheads “Using calendar and clock time…” etc. (skip all green
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