Addario really caught my attention when she talked about the “Invasion” of Iraq. It starts on page 93 and ends on 97. The most common technique she uses is imagery. Everything she saw, she described in so much detail. The specific phrase that stood out at me was, “Behind us, all I could see was black smoke, a charcoal sandstorm billowing toward us.” The author could have stopped her sentence after black smoke but she instead used vivid words to allow the readers to fully picture what was happening.
Another way Addario draws in the audience is with ethos. The culture she was surrounded with was nothing like any of us know first hand. She described it as “not pro-American” and “hostile area.” All those phrases showed how dangerous the area was.
She also does a great job with pathos. After the bomb went off, she saw the pickup truck full of “dismembered bodies” and she explained how there were people’s insides everywhere. Addario also mentioned that some bodies were just hanging onto their lives. This plays on readers emotions because they never want to have to see that and picturing any person like that is horrifying.
I would really like to use vivid word choice in my blog. I don’t want it to be boring for the readers. I’d like to incorporate logos through proven facts and studies that have been taken. My whole blog is based on how someone feels about themselves so I hope that ties back to pathos. Another thing I’d love to do is make my passion help someone else. Even this one part of the book has so much information on things we wouldn’t know otherwise. Addario did a great job keeping the reader’s attention and always keeping them on the edge of their seat. I hope to accomplish the same with my blog!
Allison,
I love all of the passages you pulled from Addario’s memoir and the techniques you commented on. I definitely agree that her imagery and emotion throughout both the section of text you are talking about, as well as the whole rest of the book, pulls the audience in even more and encourages them to keep reading. You also did an awesome job of connecting Addario’s techniques back to your passion blog in order to set some goals for yourself. All in all, you did an amazing job of answering all aspects of the prompt and making personal connections. My only advice would be to maybe include the exact page number when you’re taking some of the author’s specific phrases so that you are properly quoting from the text.
Awesome job this week!
Shannon