Story Of An Eyewitness

In this passage of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the reader obtains a very in depth description of what the Walls Family home in Welch is like once they move in. The author is this text is conveying how poor of a state their new home is. Walls uses the literary element figurative language to reveal the state of their home to the reader.

On September 11, 2001, catastrophe erupted in New York City, New York. This tragic event sparked a war, united a nation, and conceived various personal encounters from people whom were involved in the experience. In the short story “The Ashen Guy: Lower Broadway, September 11, 2001” Thomas Beller utilizes a chaotic tone that can be observed through his use of details, images, and diction.

On April 18, 1906, an earthquake occurred in San Francisco with a magnitude of 7.9. The earthquake was caused by the San Andreas Fault since the San Andreas Fault slip over a segment. The earthquake could be felt from Oregon to southern California. Buildings in San Francisco was destroyed by earthquake and fires. Fires started after the earthquake occurred and firefighters were not able to stop the fire because the water mains were broken and because of this, firestorms started to develop around San Francisco. Then, the San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called the U.S. Army troops to shoot anyone that is found looting. While the army was doing that, firefighters and U.S. troops tried to fight the fire by dynamiting the city to create firewalls.

Here, author Truman Capote delves into the ramifications of “four shotgun blasts.” He begins with the obvious––the Clutter family is killed––but soon shifts his focus from the immediate consequences of these “somber explosions” to the metaphorical “fires of mistrust” that they spark within the people of Holcomb. Through his specific language (i.e., the words “blasts,” “explosions,” and “fires”), Capote conveys the violent and irrevocable havoc that the simple pulling of a trigger can wreak. Overnight, the entire town’s faith and sense of security is lost: neighbors have become strangers, and unlocked doors are now a thing of the past. What’s more, Capote foreshadows Dick and Perry’s eventual doom when he mentions that the shotgun ended six lives. However, he counteracts the grim reality of the events described with an almost dreamlike narrative, which ensures that his readers feel curiosity rather than dread at what is to come.

Joan Didion’s “Los Angeles Notebook” conveys the effects of the Santa Ana winds, in which it brings out the worst of the city of Los Angeles. Through emotional diction, curios tone, and organized syntax, she delivers this message to readers. The use of emotion-laden diction is seen in her essay. She uses the words “eerie,” “frets,” and “troubled” to describe the effect of the Santa Ana winds.

A well-known Gilded Age author of satirical pieces, Mark Twain, in his text “Dreams Dissipated”, argues the elite and other influential groups he despises, should not be idolized by the public. Twain’s purpose is to reveal the true intentions and behavior of these groups at the face of tragedy in order to stop the public from aspiring to be like them or seek guidance from them. He adopts a connotative tone for his audience who may be unaware of the immoral behavior the elite display during the “great” earthquake in San Francisco. Twain supports this claim by first referring to a tragic event using connotative diction to hint at the animal-like behavior of these groups, then he illustrates a chaotic scene and the ill-fitted reactions of the

Bradbury uses figurative language and archetype to represent the theme of violence. Bradbury uses personification to describe figurative language. When the firemen went to the woman’s house to burn her books, and while they were burning, Bradbury said, “ Titles glittered their golden eyes, falling, gone” (35). This demonstrates how the book feels when they are being burned. Bradbury is personifying to reflect

The main theme of this book is how everyone in the city works hard in order to survive every day of the siege. The men on the hills and the ongoing war have thrown everyone’s lives into utter chaos. In the first chapter, the following quotation is repeated three times: “It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded” (Galloway 1, 3, 6). These two quotations serve as a connection to the beginning of the war and how a single mortar shell transforms the lives of tens of thousands of people.

No matter what lifestyle you’re born into you can still be a better person. Some people are born into terrible lives and some lives become worse. In The Outsiders by S.E. Hilton most of the gang’s lives become worse. The gang faces the other gang and murder takes over gang member’s lives. They face other gang’s and the police. They even face the chance of death and their own families not caring. However, even with all of these issues so to speak, the gang still sticks together and lives their same lifestyle. In The Outsiders the author uses figurative language, both sides of the characters, and a lot of description to show how the characters still push on through tough times.

An infamous, disastrous earthquake is not an everyday occurance. While many have never experienced one in their lives and probably never will, there are those who have unfortunately been through the catastrophe. A man named Jack London was one of those people who had personally witnessed the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and went on to describe the tragedy. Jack London demonstrates the scale of the damage through use of vivid language such as repetition, human characteristics, and emotions in his account of the San Francisco earthquake.

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake” - Jeanette Rankin. On a website called SF Tourism Tips, the author states, “At 5:12 am (pacific time), the earth began to shake and the San Francisco 1906 Earthquake began to rattle the city. According to the US Geological Survey, it was measured at a magnitude of 7.8.” In the eyewitness accounts “Horrific Wreck of the City” by Fred Hewitt and “Comprehending the Calamity” by Emma Burke they both talk about their experiences in the earthquake, some having differences and others similarities. Some of these include the tone and others.

The use of the eyewitness testimony has always been viewed as one of the most reliable forms of evidence when it comes to the court system. Recently many cases have been brought up where the use of the eyewitness testimony has failed and put an innocent citizen into jail leaving the criminal on the loose and a threat to the population. This has caused eyewitness testimony to go from a reliable source to a controversial subject for many. The eyewitness testimony should not be used because memory is corrupted after a certain length of time, interviews push eyewitnesses to identify a subject, and lineups further confuse the witness.

The extremely devastating ravage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was terribly damaging to the city and its population. The earthquake was cause by the San Andreas fault which is located almost directly under San Francisco.

It was good for the story to see what happens through the city from the different points of views gives the reader insight on what happened on all levels. Using metaphors in this story London, gives you a clear picture of all of the devastation that this earthquake has caused around the city. You can imagine in your mind, the scene that he is describing and put it into motion as you are reading along. With fires raging, buildings collapsed, debris, and twisted metal railings you could picture this as a scene from World War 2 in the cities that were bombed during the war. If you could picture a shipwreck you can see people on land with de-bris scattered all over with people trying to figure out what happened, what they should do, and

Personification is a figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes. The non-human objects are portrayed in such a way that we feel they have the ability to act like human beings. Personification is the figurative language that is giving the attribute of human beings to animal, an object or a concept. It is sub type of metaphor, an implied comparison in which the figurative term of the comparison is always human being. (Perrine, 1977: 64).