TOW # 16 "Angela's Ashes" (IRB)

Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt, is a heartbreaking story about a Frank’s awful childhood, and successful future.  From poverty in Ireland to eventual success in the states, Frank takes his readers back to his dark days emotionally, mentally, and physically. Through the use of childlike tone and guilt motifs, McCourt is able to share how his view on the world changed as he matured.

Frank’s childlike tone is a key part of his purpose. The way he writes allows for some comic relief in passages with somber messages and images. At the very beginning of this book Frank says, “I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would pay money for a head like that” (McCourt 10). Frank, as a child, does not understand the fact that the IRA had a bounty on his father’s head for crimes he committed, and wanted dead. Instead he sticks to the literal translation that they want his head for some sort of decoration. This type of tone is due to Frank’s disconnect from what’s actually happening. Also, Frank’s passages about his friend Mickey show this tone as well. Frank explains how he is jealous of Mickey because every time someone in his family dies he gets a week off from school. He then mentions how he and Mickey both pray Mickey’s sister will die later so that Frank can go to the wake, miss school and eat lots of sweets. This childlike tone symbolizes and foreshadows how Frank’s view of the world changed as he got older, because as a kid he can see the light at the end of the tunnel in every situation, just as he began to see hope for himself in America as he matured.

Guilt is a prominent motif in Angela’s Ashes. The guilt Frank has about the sins he has committed represent how his views of the world, especially his religion, have changed as he has matured. “She must know about Theresa Carmody and the green sofa, how I got her into a state of sin and sent her to hell ,…, I never went to confession after Theresa, that I am doomed to hell myself” (McCourt 428). Religion played a key role in Frank’s childhood, and throughout the book he eventually goes to confession to be forgiven for them. The guilt he feels about his sins are a “side effect” of the greater realizations he is obtaining about how he wants to be a Catholic, but more importantly how he wants to be as a person. He matured, his views matured, and he changed in some ways for the better and some ways for the worse.

Frank McCourt, in Angela’s Ashes, achieves his purpose of beautifully capturing the way the tragedies one faces can impact the way one views the world throughout their life. I would definitely recommend this book to others. 

TOW # 15 "I'll have what she's having" (essay)

“I’ll have what she’s having,” was published in Self Magazine and written by Erin Bried. Bried is the author of previous popular essays such as: How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew, How to Build a Fire: And Other Handy Things Your Grandfather Knew, and more. In this piece Bried writes a “how to” essay on eating with others. In her article Bried investigates eating patterns people have when dining with friends or co-workers. Through the use of personal diction and expert testimony, Bried is able to help her audience learn new techniques to maintain their healthy eating without devolving into peer pressure.  

In the beginning of this article, Bried uses personal diction to help connect with her Self Magazine readers. Instead of using words like “you” and “theirs” she uses words like “we” and “our.” This is very important for the essay in many relations. First, it gives Bried less of an accusatory tone; meaning she is not insulting her audience, because she is including herself as someone who falls to peer pressure when eating sometimes. This helps Bried appeal to ethos, allowing her to have creditability not only to write this essay but also for her readers to accept her ideas. Also, since this essay is a “how to” Bried offers up situations where her solutions will be helpful, and in these parts of the article she cannot write with words like “we” and “our.” Without, the use of personal diction in the beginning of the essay the audience would have less of an opportunity to accept her solutions.

Expert testimony is used in every “how to handle it” portion of the essay. In the section, “Your friend says, ‘Fries for everyone,’” Bried examines how a person reacts when a friend orders a basket of fries for the whole table, but they do not want to eat them. In order to make her audience accept her solution of recognizing the peer pressure and listening to “your body’s cues,” Bried turns to expert Dr. Dana Udall-Weiner, who is a psychologist and founder of ED Educate. By quoting Dr. Udall-Weiner, Bried is putting both logic and creditability to her solution, appealing to both ethos and logos.

I believe Bried effectively educates on techniques that can allow her readers to eat well and free of peer pressure. Through her use of personal diction and expert testimony, Bried was able to connect and inform to the readers of Self Magazine.