TOW #2

In The Art of Flight, author Fredrik Sjoberg retells the story of his cross country travels in his endeavor to understand his favorite painter’s motives and inspiration. Fredrik Sjoberg is a columnist and a best-selling author for his autobiography, The Fly Trap. In Chapter 7 of The Art of Flight, he is trying to explain the immense beauty and size of the Grand Canyon to anyone who has not yet seen it before. His overall goal in doing so is to help himself and the reader understand why Gunnar Wildfross, the painter, would make so much art depicting the same scene. Fredrik Sjoberg employs the rhetorical devices of imagery and similes in an attempt to capture the Grand Canyon and all its magnificence. Sjoberg describes the South Rim of the Grand Canyon on page 103 of the book by stating, “the climate is warmer and drier, the forest sparser and bushier, more or less like Southern Europe” (Sjorberg 103). He uses imagery to give the reader a clear image of the glorious view he is witnessing so that they might be able to comprehend the artist’s reason for painting it so many times. He uses a simile to compare the image to Southern Europe, a more universally known image, to further describe the view and give a more distinct idea of it to the reader. He wants to be able to capture the beauty of the Grand Canyon in his words and transport that scene to the reader of his book. By doing so, the reader will not only appreciate the incredible journey Fredrik made to reach that point, but they will also be able to sympathize with the artist and comprehend his slight obsession with the natural phenomenon. I found Fredrik Sjoberg’s description of the Grand Canyon to be very helpful and almost vital to fully comprehending his point. His excellent imagery allowed me to understand and feel what it was like standing on the edge of the immense canyon and absorbing its beauty.