King manipulates the rules of writing in order to emphasize the meaning of the passage, which is to describe an early childhood experience, so the reader will come away from it with a better understanding of the man behind the book. It is obvious that King is not writing an academic piece of work, although this is a memoir about his life, which also includes instruction about writing. His style is extremely informal and it shows in the voice of his work. His use of first person throughout the piece, as well as his use of diction makes it seem as if he is sitting in front of o, on the couch, telling his life story.
His style of writing makes the reader feel as if they have witnessed the events firsthand. You can almost visualize and feel what he went through when he wrote, ‘After having a two-hundred- pound babysitter”. The hyphenation of the words two hundred pound place emphasis on her size and brings it to the readers’ attention that this is a huge woman. King chose his words carefully in order to make the greatest impact on his readers. The tone seems to be a mix of reminiscent, carefree, exasperated, and somewhat horrified. He is reliving a part Of his past that wasn’t particularly pleasant.
You can tell that his family had moved frequently by his choice of words, “њduring our Wisconsin period”, stress placed on the word period. ‘Tla stream of babysitters” is the way he chose to describe the amount of people that watched him and his older brother. He lets the reader know right away that there were many babysitters. In the description of his most memorable sitter, he chose to italicize the word “dangerous”. By choosing this type of font, it causes the word to stand out ND places emphasis on the type of humor she had.
In the first paragraph, in one sentence there are three gerunds. “C]. Hand-sapping, butt-rocking head- tossing outbursts of glee”. His use of repetition in this sentence puts stress on what is causing her to be happy; the reader knows automatically that she finds pleasure in punishment. This paragraph is also the only one that has extremely long sentences separated by semi-colons and many comas. King also chose certain terms to describe Eula-Bellay, which can be described as rhetorical features. “C. He was as big as a house”, is supposed to describe how big the sitter was.
He over exaggerated her size since no one can be as big as a house. The phrase is perfect though for this passage: he was trying to get across that she was huge and the phrase definitely did its job. Another phrase in the last paragraph stands out as an oxymoron. “l remember the dark, the sense that was suffocating, and I remember laughing. ” Who would laugh when it feel like they are suffocating? The phrase was used to let the reader know that even though what EULA did to him was sick and disgusting, rating in his face must be funny to a child, he found humor in the situation.
Kings use of diction and grammar creates a passage that is easy to read. His paragraphing style and syntax structures further aid him in accomplishing the clarity of his voice. The use of specific rhetorical features places emphasis on his descriptions and creates a picture for the reader to imagine. As a whole, King’s use of the seven elements of writing assisted him in drawing the purpose, meaning, voice, tone, and style of the passage together to create a well-written piece of work.
