Preview

Creative nonfiction - Werner

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
956 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Creative nonfiction - Werner
Jo Ann Beard is primarily acknowledged as a writer of creative nonfiction. What is creative nonfiction you ask? Creative nonfiction is the writing of real events using the same techniques used to create fiction; however, the writing does not contain facts from the incident. One of the many creative nonfictions written by Beard is “Werner.” Werner Hoeflich heads home to his apartment in New York City after spending the evening at his catering job. Between the hours of four and five A.M., Werner catches sounds of squeals and he wakes up to discover a tremendous amount of smoke floating in his apartment. Werner jumps out the window into the next door building; he astoundingly survives the devastating fire. Beard very effectively illustrates the process going through Werner’s head in the heat of the situation. Her words clearly describe how Werner jumped back and forth from his mind flashes, giving the reader a marvelous amount of information about Werner’s history. Beard is trying to reach out to readers who enjoy reality molded into nonfiction. She is reaching out to readers who enjoy creating scenes in their minds while interpreting the text. The information Beard is trying to convey is pretty straight forward. She is trying to convey how Werner, the main character, felt during the terrible incident. She wants to convey to the reader that every scene was conceivable even though it was now a work of creative nonfiction. Beard wanted to go to the extent where the readers would believe that they were there while the apartment building had been caught on fire. She wanted them to be present in the moment, be alive with the character of Werner. The success of the story starts right from the beginning. Jo Ann Beard grabs the readers in by using the ominous effect. For those who don’t know, the ominous effect is the feeling created by the author that something is either about to go wrong or has already gone wrong. By using this, the author is warning the readers that

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    From the stylistic point of view the text falls into two parts. In the first part of the story the author uses a lot of literary stylistic devices such as epithets, trite metaphors and similes. For example metaphors: Frogs were flying all around me; similes: like a schematic diagram of an amphibian; like a deflating football; like a kicked tent. The author uses a lot of cases of epithet: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing; winter-killed grass; dumbstruck. The reason of using epithets and similes is to create…

    • 344 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gilded six bits

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The narrator’s use of figurative language such as stated affects the tone of the story by slowing it down, giving the reader the affect that from now on in the story things would be slowing down and not like they use to be.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Santa Ana

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Diction and imagery accompany the appropriately selected details used in creating an unearthly atmosphere. The suspicious and dangerous attitudes of the Los Angeles community provide insight into the negative effect of the winds. Examples of neighbors roaming around with machetes and parties ending in fights prove to the audience that dangerous and mysterious things occur regarding the arrival of the wind. Alluding to Raymond Chandler, a crime fiction novelist, adds to the un-predictableness when describing meek little wives staring at their husband’s necks while holding a carving knife. Didion ended off Chandler’s quote with “Anything can happen” providing a cliffhanger to what the winds and nature could do next.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Early on, the whole story is given a creepy undertone due to the established tone. Using similes, the author can relate the grave situation at hand to other things to be relatable. The selection from the text, “empty as a jungle glade at hot high…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The tone, along with the foreshadowing used in the beginning of the story, create a mood of anticipation and uncertainty. The purpose of all this is to create suspense and to make the story move along faster. For instance, halfway through the story the reader gets a clear feeling that something bad is going to happen, which helps to build up their expectations and alerts them that the story will take an unexpected turn soon. The line, “It became clear at once that help was needed, because the husband was not pleased” is an example of the foreshadowing in the story, because it is at this moment that the reader realizes that the wife’s good intentions did not have a positive effect on her…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Nonfiction Reaction

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages

    from then on. He would be able to see, hear, and feel Jesus in his soul.…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    For example, In the porch I met my father crying” (Heaney, 4) This is the first sign in which the author knows something horrible has occurred. “The patriarchal image of the father-figure in the 1950s is torn down here.” (TheEnglishTutor). Heaney goes on to state even more descriptive circumstances taken place that day, “At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived- With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.” (Heaney, 14-15). The author describes that as the exact moment he and his family saw the young boys body for the first time after the accident. The author goes further on with the accidents visuals, “Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, -He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot- No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.” (Heaney, 20-21) Heaney describes his little brothers body being so perfectly intact without scarring, due to the fact of the car bumper immediately killing him with one hit. These images are crucial to understanding just how much emotion is taking part in this story, seeing your baby brothers body as if he were not dead but simply sleeping, must be the hardest part of the authors task in accepting his grief. “The young boy sees his brother for the last time and faces death for the first.” (TheEnglishTutor). Nonetheless he must also come to terms with having to keep family and friends from falling apart, the brothers’ corpse is real now, not only a tragic…

    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Foreshadowing can be overlooked when reading through a story the first time. It is not until one goes back and re-reads a story after knowing the ending that they can truly see the signs along the way. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor has an unexpected ending but it comes as less of a surprise if the reader pays attention to the details in the story. In this particular story, O’Connor describes the way grandmother dresses, the graves, and the automobile that the Misfit drives. Those details may seem innocent during the first read-through but they are not missed when one realizes, at the end, their true meanings.…

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “ You can tell a true story if you just keep on telling it” Tim O’Brien…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In literature, mood evokes certain feelings in readers through words and descriptions. In the beginning of the lottery, the author sets the mood for a nice, relaxing day that could even give the reader a sense of happiness. But as the story drags on the mood begins to set off a suspicious or even eerie feeling that has the reader on the edge of their seat. -quote-. Unlike the lottery, the Possibility of Evil starts with a calming and pleasant mood, but very quickly flips to one of surprise and horror. There is no build up to the suspense.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson, Ms. Strangeworth stops her town from becoming evil by writing anonymous letters. The overall theme of the story is everything is not what it seems. Jackson utilizes the story to show how a person may not seem like the person you thought they were. Ms. Strangeworth appears to be a sweet old lady, but is she really? Throughout the story her true colors begin to reveal. Jackson develops this central idea through the use of irony. Through all three types of irony the theme is expressed.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Irene sniffled and sat up a little straighter. She awaited her many readers to come for the book signing. It happened to be on the anniversary of her rescue from the Aushwitz concentration camp. Not many people truly know what had happened to her. Unfortunely it is a nightmare she relives constantly. When she was reunited with her husband and children she cried for days at a time. Cries of fear of losing her family once again. She had found her old writing journal and the tears had ceased. Irene wrote for hours, writing everything down as to not risk her forgetful thoughts. She had gone through a dozen notebooks, at least, and chose one to be published. She wrote of a world without war, and the simple pleasures in life. An outbreak in the writing industry occurred as it was published. Thousands upon thousands of copies were sold all across the world. Irene was labeled as one of the most aspiring authors of the 20th century. That is what brought her to the little book shop in her hometown. Where hundreds of people lined up to talk to her about her work. She realized as she wiped her tears, that these were not tears of sadness or loss. She cried out of joy. Irene felt happy, which she had not truly felt in a very long…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the narrator, throughout the story Fowler paints a picture of himself as a reporter, an observer, but continually tries to convince the reader that he is "not involved." However, as the narrative progresses, we see that Fowler's attitude toward the events surrounding him become one of ever-increasing engagement. With this increased level of involvement, he begins to feel somewhat personally responsible for the events occurring around him. Likewise, as his involvement increases so does his true nature arise.…

    • 735 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tom Wolfe's New Journalism

    • 4521 Words
    • 19 Pages

    ... is a form that is not merely like a novel. It consumes devices that happen to have originated with the novel and mixes them with every other device known to prose. And all the while, quite beyond matters of technique, it enjoys an advantage so obvious, so built-in, one almost forgets what power it has': the simple fact that the reader knows all this actually happened. The disclaimers have been erased. The screen is gone. The writer is one step closer to the absolute involvement of the reader thatHenry James and James Joyce dreamed of but never achieved.[19]…

    • 4521 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hill uses many techniques in her writing in order to build and sustain tension throughout the novel. Through the careful crafting of language she creates engaging and intriguing characters, atmosphere and settings and had crafted a novel that few people can put down. Using powerful adjectives the writer has created a deathly tone when describing the first time we see Eel Marsh House. The author’s use of language is significant because it has a ghastly effect, which makes us feel anxious. For example the writer uses the powerful verb “bone pale” within the sentence “Here and there were clumps of reed, bleached bone pale, and now and again the faintest of winds caused to rattle dryly.” In the sentence the writer uses “bone pale” which has sinister connotations of emptiness and death. This will make the reader feel anxious when first reading the setting around Eel Marsh House because Hill has created a deathly tone by using this quotation. ‘Pale’ has connotations of death because when you die your body turns pale, hard and stiffened. “Bones” are sinister because they give the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen, bones also remind us of death. The use of pathetic fallacy “faintest of winds” in conjunction with the powerful verb “rattled” makes us feel confused because of the use of imagery. This powerful verb “rattled” has connotations of being empty, misty and abandoned through the use of pathetic fallacy. This creates an image of the woman in black being extremely wicked, venomous and malevolent. This could be important to the story because it adds a feeling of tension, as the reader would empathise to the character being solitary. Hill also uses the emotive verb “rattle dryly” as this gives the reader a sense of suspense. The verb “rattle” gives us a warning of danger, because the word reminds us of animals in particular a rattle snake, these creatures normally…

    • 531 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays