TOW #4- Hyperbole and a Half (IRB)

            When scrolling online whether it’s through blog posts or tweets on twitter it never feels as if you’re reading as you would read a proper novel. When I read any text for school I am conscious of myself reading at all times and I have one purpose in mind: get it done. Reading Hyperbole and a Half simulates reading a text message, or a funny article online.

            Allie Brosh has created an assortment of stories that can teach someone a lesson as well as make someone laugh. Brosh doesn’t write about her love of family or the meaning of life she writes about how she found out her dog was retarded and how she gets things done by procrastinating. These stories actually happened to her which giver her automatic ethos.

            Her placement of stories is random. It is not in chronological order. The first story is when she was ten years old and in the second story she is living alone with a dog. This forces the story not to focus on becoming the person she is today but rather the true stories and their meaning. This helps Brosh achieve her purpose of helping her readers relate to her and learn from her mistakes.

            On every page there is at least one illustration. These illustrations are not detailed pieces of artwork. They are stick figure sketches that have a joking animated style to them. Each sketch is simple in order to not draw too much attention to them however they keep readers interested and they help convey emotion. For example, in a story about the authors need for cake at her grandmothers birthday party Brosh says that while her grandmother was holding her she “lapsed into a full scale psychological meltdown”. On the next page there is a drawing of Brosh in her grandmothers arms as a blur to show how quickly and violently she was moving. This assists the reader in picturing the event.

            In the end of each story there is a lesson to be learned. For example, in Brosh’s story about depression she ends by saying that not knowing the future is a strange ray of hope. She says this in order to help people currently struggling with depression or relate to the ones who already have.

            Whether it’s through her comedic illustrations or meaningful endings, Allie Brosh makes the reader feel as if they are not reading a book, rather just listening to someone tell a story. She also manages to fit meaning into what seems like the most pointless story.

TOW #3- Visual Text

            As technology starts gaining popularity, the need to hold a book and flip through the pages is declining. When the iPad and Kindle surfaced so did a popular trend called eBooks. Now you can have a library of your favorite books wherever you go in one tiny device. Not only can you read your books from your mobile device, but now you can listen to them as well. Almost every book from classics to new releases can be found in audio form. A company called Penguin Group is one of the most popular providers of audiobooks.

Penguin Group released an ad campaign of seven ads. In each ad it is an image of a famous classical book. In each scene there’s a penguin, the icon for Penguin Group, acting as a boom pole operator camouflaged to look like it is apart of the scene. A boom pole operator is the person who holds the long pole with a microphone attached in order to record a better audio of the scene. The boom pole operator has the intention of portraying that listening to a Penguin Group audio book makes you feel like you are in the scene, apart of the action. In each image there are artistic differences to represent the context of the book, like the genre or time period the book was written. For example in the Frankenstein ad, the scene is surrounded with many pieces of intense technical equipment. The penguin has a piece of equipment across his body, unlike in other scenes, to contribute to the overall theme of the image. In the D-Day ad, the Penguin has on a helmet, just like the other soldiers. In the Alice and Wonderland ad, the microphone is wrapped in a leaf in order to blend in. The illustrator did not make the penguin a different color or bolder in order to stick out, they made the Penguin blend in in order to portray that the Penguin Group audio books sound like they were recorded straight from the actual scenes. Listening to them feels like you are actually physically in the event. Sometimes it is hard to identify where the penguin is. Mirroring that it is hard to identify if you’re listening or if you’re actually there.  

Also, there are seven different ads, each portraying a different book. The books include Frankenstein, Moby Dick, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Tales of the Greek Heroes, Don Quixote De La Mancha, and Dracula. The wide range of genres from fantasy to science fiction and nonfiction, helps the Penguin Group appeal to many different audiences. All of the books mentioned are classics. This could possibly be targeting an older audience. Most older people that like these classical books are not used to listening to audio book. Seeing these ads may open their minds to it. Overall, these ads clearly get their meaning across as well as showing great artwork.    

TOW #2- Big Boy

This week I read an essay called Big Boy from the book Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. It was a short story about a time Sedaris went out to dinner with his friends and went to the bathroom. When he arrived in the bathroom there was the largest #2 he had ever seen in the toilet. After trying to figure out what to do for 10 minutes he started panicking. He didn’t want to leave it because people would think he did it. It finally flushed and he walked out to his friend saying “Finally, took you long enough”. The author’s story is very credible because he experienced it first hand. Sedaris is trying to relate to his audience, which is people similar to him, adults living on their own. The story seems very pointless until the last paragraph. The author puts a lot of meaning in a few final sentences and forced me to reflect back on the whole essay. The purpose of the story was to teach a lesson that you should not care too much about what other people think about you. The main and most effective device used was definitely rhetorical questions. At the end of the essay he states, “the person who abandoned the huge turd had no problem with it, so why did I? Why the big deal? Had it been left there to teach me a lesson?” These questions have obvious answers because it can easily be inferred that the author is hinting there was a meaning by clearly stating the meaning in the first question. Just after this statement he uses wit to convey that changing isn’t quite that easy. As soon as you can infer the purpose is to stop thinking about people judging you he says, “I resolved to put it all behind me, and then I stepped outside to begin examining the suspects”. I laughed at this because he just stated to not judge people however he then says he’s going to judge everyone. I think he said this in order to show it isn’t easy to change.

IRB Intro #1- "Hyperbole and a Half"

For my first IRB I chose a book called Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. This book is a collection of stories that the author personally experienced about "unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened". I chose this book because it's high on the list of Humorous Memoirs and Non-fiction on goodreads.com. Also, when I looked at it in the library it seemed very interesting with the illustrations and different color pages.

TOW #1- How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

In 1958, Paul Roberts helped write the textbook Understanding English. He wrote an excerpt called How to Say Nothing in 500 Words. Throughout the passage he explains how to write a well-executed 500-word essay that will earn a high grade in a college course. He expands on ways to make every word count and choosing the write topic and supporting details. Along with this textbook Roberts also helped write many other textbooks including English Syntax, Pattern of English, and English Sentences. This gives Roberts the necessary credibility for the topic.

            In the first page of the text he uses second person to show that his audience is college students attempting to write a 500-word essay. He relates to his audience by saying that after your English instructor assigns an essay it “puts a good big hole in the weekend”. He also goes on to explain some difficulties of writing an essay. For example you don’t feel strongly about the topic or have enough words to say. By saying these things he is relating to his audience, which helps them to connect to the passage and better understand it.

            Also in the beginning, he forms an anecdote. He tells a short story about you, a student, who struggles with a 500-word essay on school football. Included in the story is your difficulty in finding time to write the essay and the full process of your mind while writing the essay. The short story hits the nail on the head when talking about students writing essays which greatly appeals to his audience. However Roberts also sets a foundation and context for the rest of the text. He makes the reader know that every tip he gives is to better their essay and increase their grade.

            By using an anecdote and appealing to his audience in many ways Paul Roberts definitely achieved his purpose of presenting helpful strategies to students in attempt to better their writing.