\u201cI thought sometimes that he liked to imagine himself as one of the lead characters in an early Springsteen song \u2013 some furious, passionate nineteen year old romantic, raging against the world at large and his father in particular, looking for one girl to save him. The trouble was, Bruce\u2019s parents had given him nothing to rebel against \u2013 no numbing factory job, no stern, judgmental patriarch, certainly no poverty. And a Springsteen song lasted only three minutes, including chorus and theme and thundering guitar charged climax, and never took into account the dirty dishes, the unwashed laundry and unmade bed, the thousand tiny acts of consideration and goodwill that maintaining a relationship called for. My Bruce preferred to drift through life, lingering over the Sunday paper, smoking high quality dope, dreaming of bigger papers and better assignments without doing much to get them. Once, early in our relationship, he\u2019d sent his clips to the Examiner<\/i>, and gotten a curt \u201ctry us in five years\u201d postcard in response. He\u2019d shoved the letter in a shoebox, and we\u2019d never discuss it again\u201d(Weiner 17).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This paragraph gives the reader a very accurate representation of what kind of character Bruce is made out to be in the novel. Bruce is first introduced as some sort of tragic hero, \u201craging against the world at large\u201d and \u201clooking for one girl to save him\u201d. As the paragraph progresses, however, it transitions into a more unflattering portrayal of Bruce that contradicts the introductory sentence. The repetitive use of negative language in the second and third sentences immediately changes the tone set in the first. Words such as \u201cno\u201d and \u201cnever\u201d accentuate the opposite lifestyle that Bruce lives in comparison to the interesting one portrayed in the description of \u201can early Springsteen song\u201d. The sentence structure in this passage also proves to be very important. Each sentence is relatively long in length, which gives each sentence the ability to provide a statement about what Bruce\u2019s character is thought to be and what it actually is. The use of commas and dashes compliments this type of sentence structure by providing the reader with a more in depth description of Bruce after Cannie makes an assertion, specifically in the sentence that begins with \u201cMy Bruce preferred to drift through life\u201d. She starts with the assertion that he prefers to drift through life followed by examples of how he succeeds in doing so. Finally, the passage ends with short, crisp sentences. It provides a lackluster finish to a paragraph that started out with such high expectations for Bruce. It represents his failure to become something more than a literary hopeful.<\/p>\n
Personally I found that this passage was quite easy to close read in comparison to LAS<\/i>. It was more straightforward and got its point across without having to decipher more confusing language that can be seen in LAS<\/i>. In short, I found that since the language was more modern it was easier to relate to as a reader and therefore easier to analyze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI thought sometimes that he liked to imagine himself as one of the lead characters in an early Springsteen song \u2013 some furious, passionate nineteen year old romantic, raging against the world at large and his father in particular, looking for one girl to save…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":877,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/877"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/guiltypleasures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}