Case Study on Dave Barry
Much can be learned about Dave Barry's personal life by reading his books, which are compilations of the articles that he has written. His articles can be seen every Sunday in the Daily Break section of The Virginian-Pilot. He is a comedy writer who often points out annoying aspects of everyday life and makes fun of them. All of the following excerpts have been taken from the book entitled, "Dave Barry is not making this up" (unless otherwise noted).
He uses a lot of parentheses to add asides, which further explain what he has written.
Another technique in his writing that I have noticed is personification, sometimes in the form of quotes. All of these techniques are used in the following excerpts from an article entitled, "Food For Thought."
Another problem is that our ant is starting to sag, both in the front (or, in entomological terms, the "prognosis") and in the rear (or "butt"). It doesn't look like one of those alert, businesslike, "can-do" ants that you see striding briskly around. It looks depressed, like an ant that has just been informed that all 86,932 members of its immediate family were crushed while attempting to lift a Tootsie Roll.
But the ants that showed up at our experiment were total morons. You'd watch one, and it would sprint up to a Cocoa Krispie, and then stop suddenly, as if saying: "Yikes! Compared with me, this Cocoa Krispie is the size of a Buick!" then it would sprint off in a random direction. Sometimes it would sprint back; sometimes it would sprint to another Cocoa Krispie and act surprised again. but it never seemed to do anything. There were thousands of ants behaving this way, and every single time two of them met, they'd both stop and exchange "high-fives" with their antennas, along with, I assume, some kind of ant pleasantries ("Hi Bob! "No, I'm Bill!" "Sorry! You look just like Bob!"). This was repeated millions of times. I watched these ants for two days, and they accomplished nothing. It was exactly like highway construction. It wouldn't have surprised me if some ants started waving orange flags to direct other insects around the area.
A technique found often in Barry's articles are graphic indicators, especially italics. The above excerpt shows how he uses them to indicate exaggeration ("This was repeated millions of times") and also to emphasize words ("…accomplished nothing).
Discovering Dave was about a slave in the 1800s with an unbelievable gift. The story tells about a Dave Drake a slave who used he’s skill as a craftsman to create beautiful pots. Dave was a great craftsman he created many pots and poetry during his time. This documentary tells Dave’s story how he left his mark on history.
By breaking the terms down, hes gives clear images of what he wants to show the reader, and he personifies actions a nonliving organism does, and he uses metaphoric language as well as
For example, she says “if then” statements like, XXX. She strengthens the persuasiveness of these statements with an authoritative and informed tone. She also references a poll about how people feel that the Bush administration should deal with security in the United States. Poll participants were asked if they felt the government under Bush was adequately dealing with the matter of security and it was found that “only 11 percent thought the administration had gone too far” (251). She may rely on such techniques so readers do not react too strongly to her essay and instead focus on the validity of her
ants were walking on the ground of the day; an earthworm peeked out of a
“Style” strives to explain how writers can improve clarity, cohesion, usage, and elegance to become a more effective writer. This book is not meant to be read once, for the full potential can not be achieved unless it is absorbed several times. Packed from cover to cover with real life examples ranging from the worst imaginable to greatly improved, Williams provides a detailed explanation of how to transform any writers work. Charts, graphs, and diagrams may add some confusion but can be helpful for individuals who depend upon visual aids.
He doesn’t assert anything. He merely suggests and notices things around him, then lets you make the obvious connections. Maybe Baldwin uses this writing style for no purpose or maybe he just writes this way naturally without noticing. Baldwin may have written these essays with the intent to make a point, or he may have written them for some other reason. It was not my intent to assign a purpose to Baldwin’s writing, but rather to note an interesting and powerful writing technique Baldwin uses, and how it results in writing that is extremely easy to agree with.
The story begins at a bar in a train station in Spain. A man and a woman order some drinks and begin to have a conversation. Though there are no descriptions or narrations as to what the conversation is actually about, through subtle hints in the story we can infer that the conversation being discussed is about an abortion, whether to go through with one or not. The first major hint is in the title of the story itself. A white elephant is defined as a possession that is useless or troublesome, something that is expensive to maintain and or difficult to dispose of. One can definitely assume that the term “white elephant” in the title serves as an analogy to the baby that is being carried by the woman. Hemingway drops a second hint when the conversion take a sudden turn, going from the couple making small talk of beer, to the man bringing up what seemed to be the random subject of an operation, “It’s an awfully simple operation, J...
With over 12, 000 described species, ants, from the family Formicidae, are the most diverse of all social insects. They occupy “virtually all major terrestrial habitats” displaying a “remarkable range of social behaviors, foraging habits and associations” with other organisms (Bolton et al, 2006; as cited in Ward, 2007).
...ct religions and accustoms can also be included. I believe the catholic church closes most people's mind into believing everything is a sin and forgetting what it really means to be a good person overall.
Charles Darwin was a man of science. He had a true passion for all things involving both plants and animals. Darwin made many contributions to the field of science, but his main contribution that he is most well-known for involves his theories of evolution, or more specifically, how species tend to change over long periods of time through a process called natural selection. Natural selection is defined by Darwin as the “preservation of favorable variations and the rejections of injurious variations“ (Jacobus 900). Even though many of his theories have now been embraced by the scientific community as natural laws in motion, much controversy remains over whether or not his ideas should be perceived as true scientific law. Despite the discoveries of overwhelming amounts of evidence, many people still believe that evolution is exactly what Darwin called it—a theory, and nothing more.
The ants of the colony can be seen as beings who have had their “individuality and personhood” trampled because of the grasshop...
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Isobel Murray. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie. New
Another way some ants can communicate with one another is by sound.
I like how Mrs. Gomez compared one of my childhood movies to human trafficking. As a kid, I believed the movie to be very innocent and that the ants were just taking their lives back. Now that Mrs. Gomez broke down what was actually happening in the movie, I realized there was a darker theme to the movie. The ants were slaves to the grasshoppers. They were forced to work twice as hard to be able to feed the grasshoppers and be able to find food for themselves as well. It took them to realize that they have strength in numbers and they should stand up against the