The article has a tone of 'Journalistic figure'. I noticed it when I was reading author's quotations of actual taxidermists which can be found on phrases like 'One of the champions in the whitetail division said to me."They are my babies."(page2)'. This kind of interview makes reader to trust the article more. Which is in other words, gives article a ethos. Every time author delivers the attitudes taxidermists have and telling which kinds of people taxidermists actually are. By hearing the saying of people working on those fields, It was easy for me to comprehend their passion, their hardships, etc.
Not only that, she tries to informs the reader a lot about taxidermy, which is not familiar to many of us, by introducing the overview of it. Susan Orlean tells us about the history of taxidermy, their events, as well as its representative pieces of work.The one example I found is 'Taxidermy, the three dimensional representation of animals for permanent display, has been around since the eighteenth century(page1)', I didn't know even a minimal part of taxidermy before reading this part, however, I got to know the concept and able to infer its origin by reading this part and become interested to know more about taxidermy, which led me to dip into this article throughly. Like this this kinds of basic informations about the topic makes it easier for the readers to have more interest about the thing article is talking about. This is the typical style of an article explaining and introducing about some interesting topic. I can also say this article as 'A promotion material of Taxidermy' because it boosts reader's interest towards taxidermy and improves taxidermy's image as well as informs a lot about it. Susan wants readers to have positive image about the taxidermy, make them understand the attitudes of people who makes taxidermies,.
I think the her intention to wrote this in the form of an article instead of other forms like personal travel sketch was to make the writing more reliable and trustworthy. If she delivers same informations about taxidermy with other more personal forms, it may have some friendliness, but loses the credibility instead. The form of an article enables the writers to use interviews they made, make people not to have doubt about the information which are mentioned in the article.
I see several writerly choices that you could focus on for your Lifelike essay. It's great that you include your personal reaction to those choices too, like how the history Orlean gives helps you understand the profession.
ReplyDeleteI like the expression "Journalistic figure" cause it notes that the author is journalist as well as shows that this article is mainly descriptive, introducing tone. This expression makes me to think that the article's tone is resulted because she is journalist.
ReplyDelete