Jacob Riis In How The Other Half Lives

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How truly grateful are we for our possessions and what we have earned from the work we have done? Are we thankful for what we possess, or are we still jealous of that one friend, colleague, coworker, or even extended family member that has nicer belongings than we do? Jacob Riis opened our eyes and gave us a true, vivid description and idea of how American families in New York during the late 1800’s lived and worked. This eye opening account shows us today that we should be grateful for what we have and never think that everyone is better than us. Throughout How the Other Half Lives, Riis uses a variety of writing techniques such as word choice, imagery, and . Whenever elementary school teachers ask their students to write a paper or essay,
In some of his sentences, he utilizes key words and phrases to describe the scenes he encounters, while other times he uses dialogue to describe to his readers what the people of that time sounded like. An excellent example of the use of dialogue is when Riis describes a brief account of a landlord talking to an Italian Riis encountered. Using such a variety of sentence structures allows Riis to display his vast knowledge of many ways he can organize his thoughts and use his own interpretations of what he experienced during his studies. He also changed the arrangement of some of the words he narrates with. For example, throughout the narrative, Riis capitalizes words that would not otherwise be capitalize and also splits up individual words into the words used to form the larger words. Riis used his own unique style when composing his sentences to emphasize what he believes is more important and continue to grasp his audience’s attention. Riis demonstrates a variety of his writing skills and techniques throughout How the Other Half Lives. With his word choice, imagery, dialogue, and sentence structure, Riis made his own unique style as he told his accounts as he explored the other half of the New York people. Riis demonstrates and shows his audience that a writer can make simple changes to their text to change the impact of what he or she is talking about and continue to always have their readers’

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