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  • Essay / Analyzing Annie Dillard's Writing Style: A Stylistic Review

    Babies Are Not Always a Good ThingThroughout human history, people have always awaited and celebrated the birth of people , so much so that they have dedicated an entire branch of medicine that deals with it. While typically a hospital nurse deals with death and illness on a daily basis, obstetrics and maternity nurses can help usher in new life every day, several times a day. Even though most people would love to work as a maternity nurse and would be happy and excited to perform these miracles, sooner or later it starts to become just a job, where the joy fades away, like it does in the movie 'Annie Dillard. essay in which she describes the routines that nurses follow on a daily basis. In this play, she uses rhetorical devices to demonstrate a critical and cold attitude towards the nurses' treatment of babies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay When Dillard describes the first scene of her essay, she uses a lot of imagery. In the first to third paragraph, she describes the baby wash station as one would expect it to look like on a factory line. She says they wash newborns like dishes, and the nurses change in eight-hour shifts. This is one of the cases where the author uses images to set the tone of his essay. By painting the picture of a factory line as a baby wash station, the reader can begin to see that the tone of this essay is not positive; babies are treated like objects. With this example of imagery, it is clear that the tone is cold and critical. Another example of images that support tone is on the second page. Lines 35-37 say the nurse packages it up and simply sends it down the line, like one would do in an assembly line. With these example images it is clear to the reader that the tone is cold and critical because normally in the presence of a baby a person would be happy and excited, here the nurses are bored and don't even care two. they now refer to them as objects, not even worthy of names. Besides imagery, Dillard also uses analogies to demonstrate his tone. One of the first examples of analogies is on the first page of the essay. On the first page, the nurse describes the baby's head by analogy, she compares his head to a conical head/donkey's cap. Not only is it an analogy, but it is also a satire because it is mean and critical, the nurse makes a mean-spirited comparison in order to make fun of him. This petty and judgmental analogy really demonstrates that at this point, nurses really don't care about babies, and shows that the tone of this essay is cold and judgmental. Another example of using analogies to set tone is also on the first page. In the sixth paragraph, the narrator compares a clot to the baby. She compares the creation myth of the Koran, according to which Allah created life with a blood clot, with a newborn baby! An object that can disappear/dissolve with TPA (a medication/solution that can dissolve blood clots non-invasively) is compared to a baby, which can only disappear with the use of another human, which constitutes murder. This analogy shows that at this point, nurses actually view babies as objects, which shows that the tone of this essay is cold and critical. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper from our expert now. writers.Get an essay..