TOW # 21 "After Life" (essay)

In a short essay in the New York Times, an author examines the afterlife, but not the life after death afterlife. Instead the author tries to define life as a never-ending cycle of abrupt changes and when that happens, a person’s old life ends. In the essay the author uses parallel structure and personal accounts to prove his theory that life changes occur when everything is ordinary.

In the essay the author begins with four short sentences:

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.  

He then repeats this way of structure after one paragraph, and then again later on in the essay. The use of these short abrupt sentences allows the author to change the tone of the essay very quickly. This foreshadows the entire purpose of the essay; things change, life changes, and it all happens in an ordinary instant. Throughout the essay the author debates the word “ordinary.” The setting of this essay is that the author is writing a document on his computer, and he is stuck. He has only written a few words in a year, and the phrase “The ordinary instant” is one he debates adding. While trying to decide, the author uses personal accounts to show how life changed in an instant when everything was ordinary. He recalls the time he interviewed witnesses who were at Pearl Harbor. He writes, “they all started off tell me what an ‘ordinary Sunday morning it had been.’ It was just an ordinary beautiful September day…"he also references to testimonies of 9/11. All of these expert testimonies that he has collected over the years, provide the evidence necessary to prove his point. That life changes when you expect everything to stay the same. However, the most influential testimony present in the author’s essay is his own. “The entire point slipping into the sea around us was the kind of conclusion I anticipated. I did not anticipate cardiac arrest at the dinner table.” This information is presented at the very end of the essay; it is the clincher, and it is the last piece of evidence to support his point. The effect of this sentence is not just that it shows how one’s life can end without dying, but also it appeals to the author’s ethos, and gives him the credibility to write this short essay.

            I believe that the author of the essay successfully proves his argument. That life changes on the most ordinary of days, and when that happens your old life is gone, and your new life, your afterlife begins.