Creating Intended Effect on the Audience. Using Selected details, diction, and imagery

Transcription

1 Creating Intended Effect on the Audience Using Selected details, diction, and imagery

2 Step 1: Identify the author s intended effect on the reader. Prompt: After reading Isabell Allende s And of Clay Are We Created, analyze the author s intended effect.

3 Intended Effects might include *creating sympathy for Azucena *creating sympathy for Rolf *creating sympathy for Eva Luna *criticizing the media *emphasizing that you can t run from your past

4 Selected Detail can help an author create an intended effect If the intended effect was to criticize the media, the specific details could include * In the meanwhile, more television and movie teams arrived with spools of cable, tapes, film, videos, precision lenses, recorders, sound consoles, lights, reflecting screens, auxiliary motors, cartons of supplies, electricians, sound technicians, and cameramen...

5 Example The author used selected detail in this story to make her readers feel critical of the media. The reader is told that a pump for Azucena cannot possibly reach Rolf in the horrible conditions of the aftermath of disaster, but the narrator points out that, In the meanwhile, more television and movie teams arrived with spools of cable, tapes, film, videos, precision lenses, recorders, sound consoles, lights, reflecting screens, auxiliary motors, cartons of supplies, electricians, sound technicians, and cameramen... It isn t hard for the readers to question the fact that if so much equipment can be produced at the disaster site to make sure that the news is perfect, why can t one little pump make its way to the same site. Why doesn t one member of the media corps bring them a pump?

6 Step 2: Identify selected details that the author included in the story to help create her intended effect. Write a paragraph that identifies and explains 3 examples of details selected for intended effect used by the author in And of Clay Are We Created.

7 Diction (word choice) is another way an author can create an intended effect for his/her audience If your intended effect was to create sympathy for Azucena, you need to find a sentence where the author is describing Azucena or her situation and evaluate the word choices the author makes. Identify the feelings or reactions you have to certain words. Identify what words the author could have chose and what effect those might have had instead this helps you decide what effect word choices have on the reader.

8 Diction Cont. Azucena is introduced in a sympathetic way They discovered the girl s head protruding from the mud pit, eyes wide open, calling soundlessly. protruding more brutal mud pit uncomfortable, dirty, smelly, grave eyes wide open images of a corpse soundlessly death, alone, been calling for a long time

9 The author also helps create sympathy for Azucena with her use of diction. For example, when she introduces Azucena to the reader for the first time, she describes her as, head protruding from the mud pit, eyes wide open, calling soundlessly. This whole sentence is designed to evoke pity for Azucena. The word protruding is a rather brutal way of saying sticking up. The use of the word mud pit gives you an idea of a large, dirty, smelly, uncomfortable place that she has been buried in. By choosing to make her calling soundlessly, the reader gets the idea that this girl has been alone and unheard for a long time.

10 Step 3: Write a paragraph that identifies and explains two places in the text where the author used diction to create an intended effect.

11 IMAGERY can help create an intended effect as well. Identify images about the character or situation that you remember to start this process.

12 Images that evoke sympathy for Rolf *Rolf being locked in a closet by his father *Rolf hiding under a table with his little sister *Rolf seeing his mother forced to do something by the Russian soldiers.

13 Imagery Another way the author evokes sympathy for Rolf is through the use of imagery. One of the strongest sequences of imagery in the text occurs when Rolf is finally forced to confront his own past horrors. This sequence begins with descriptions of concentration camp victims dead from starvation,... the naked bodies piled like a mountain of firewood... and goes on to describe a world where his mother was victimized,... his mother, naked, shod in stiletto-heeled red boots, sobbing with humiliation..., his father was a brutal bully, and his sister, Katharina, a sweet retarded child, was dead through Rolf s inability to keep her safe. Each event in this montage of horror allows the reader to see exactly how Rolf had survived horrible odds, and each of these images is designed to make the reader view Rolf as a man deserving of our sympathy.

14 Step 4: Write a paragraph that identifies and explains how one image in the text is used to evoke the intended effect in the reader.