TOW #16

Brian Doyle wrote “The Wonder of the Look on Her Face” about discovering some of the best writing tools while he was talking to a curious young writer. In order to properly explain the tool and to give it the justice it deserves, Doyle employs whimsical personification. Brian Doyle is an avid writer; he is editor of Portland Magazine and the author of a few renowned novels. This short story described his interaction with a nine-year-old girl who has an interest in writing as she asks him countless questions about his writing process. While talking to her and considering her questions, he was able to discover his favorite way to write a book. Doyle figured out that he likes to start writing books without clear outlines or any idea of how it is going to end so that he can make it up as he writes. He explained this tool, writing, “that didn’t seem as much fun as having a rough idea what might happen and then being startled quite often by what did happen. I said that I rather enjoyed that the people and animals in my books didn’t listen too much to what I thought should happen, hard as it was sometimes for me to watch.” (Doyle). His tool was to write without knowing the full course of the story so he could see where it led him. He used whimsical personification by saying that the animals didn’t listen to him because they were writing the story on their own. This assists his purpose of explaining how helpful the tool is by showing how unpredictable it made his stories through his use of rhetoric. He enjoys letting his story ‘write itself’ so he and the reader can be surprised by how unpredictable it is. I found this tool to be helpful in knowing how he uses this tool to write his books, and it also helped me understand how it is helpful in the writing process.

TOW #15

Young the Giant’s newest album, Home of the Strange, has a very interesting cover which employs vibrant color and unique imagery to accompany the songs in conveying an immigrants journey to America. The first single they released off the album, Amerika, tells the story of how Sameer, the bands lead singer, struggles to fit in to American society as an immigrant. Amerika, as a word, describes the worst aspects of America, for example its corruption, fascism, and racism. The song Titus Was Born explains his journey as a baby coming to America on a ship during an intense storm, which reflects the tumultuous environment he found himself in. The album cover is a valid expression of the theme of the music in the album itself. It shows groups of people of unique shapes and vibrant colors, which symbolize the diversity of people, holding distinguishable flags and entering a dark mountain in the middle of the cover. The dark, gloomy mountain has narrowed eyes and opens its mouth to allow the immigrants to enter. The image of the mountain shows how condescending the nation is when it invites people in but then puts up countless obstacles to prevent them from feeling completely at home in a foreign land. This conveys a message about how many people from different cultures and ethnicities excitedly come to America where they are promised freedom, when in reality, they are greeted with hostility and face many difficulties when trying to fit in and be accepted as Americans. I believe that the cover art of this magnificent collection of songs successfully achieves its purpose of helping the reader understand the harsh reality of immigrating to America. I think that the album as a whole, including the image and the music, has really helped me understand what people have to deal with when coming to this country.