We Are at War

A particularly compelling and vivid part of Part II of It’s What I Do is Addario’s summary of her relationship with Uxval. She juxtaposes her feelings towards her new boyfriend with those towards her passion of photography, a deliberate move to foreshadow the conflict between the two. The first indication of this conflict is the use of “painfully” to describe how she loved Uxval. Addario purposely leaves the interpretation of “painfully” to be ambiguous. The reader wonders if she means that she loved Uxval intensely or if it hurt her to be in a relationship with him because it overlaps with her photography. Most likely, Addario is trying to elicit some combination of both of these interpretations. This juxtaposition of opposite passions, one of love and the other of photography, forms the basis for this particular portion of the chapter.

In my passion blog, I hope to also include some sort of juxtaposition in describing cooking. Flavors are all about working together, and the best dishes contain some sort of balance between two or more overarching, major flavors. When describing a dish, some sort of comparison will work well as a rhetorical method to convey the necessary descriptors for the reader to interpret my message as I expect them to. This use of comparison could be extended to a broader use when I talk about combining different styles of cooking into one cohesive dish.

While the use of this juxtaposition can be used in my passion blog for cooking, it will be difficult to replicate the emotions and deep themes that Addario elicits through her comparison. Therefore, the use of this rhetorical device should be used sparingly, unless I can actually recreate the this type of emotional connection to the language.

One thought on “We Are at War

  1. Hello 🙂
    Reading your RCL, I’m a bit confused to what part of Part II you are referring to. If you quoted the sentence you’re talking about and guide the reader through it just like you did in your first paragraph, I think it’d work well. I also believe that you should make a more clear transition from the part of the story that intrigued you and how your blog relates to this method she used, then go on to discuss how you’d do it. Mentioning that cooking is easier to visualize when using comparisons is a smart idea, however in order to make effective comparisons I also think it’s important to know your audience so you can appeal to them properly instead of potentially confusing them more. Overall, I like how you chose to interpret her use of adjectives and comparison for your cooking blog and use that to convey the instructions you plan to write in your blog effectively. I agree that you should use it sparingly within each blog, but using it for every post on parts that are specifically confusing is a good idea.

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