What Broke My Father's Heart by Katy Butler

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This photo describes how the father's brain in the story continued to fight and grow stronger but eventually had to surrender. In the meantime, the heart outlived the brain because of a pacemaker. The brain could not uphold the weight it was enduring.

What Broke My Father’s Heart by Katy Butler is about a girl whose father was severely ill for many years, leaving the mother a full-time job to care for her husband. This ongoing job broke the mother into pieces and turned her life upside down. The narrator saw how this job drained her mother physically and mentally. The author, Katy Butler, is a journalist with work published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Best American Science Writing, and Best Buddhist Writing. This essay was written because of the father being sick and the hardships the narrator and her family endured. Because this topic requires maturity and full understanding of the difficult times of sickness, the audience targeted is older high school kids and ages above. It is hard to truly understand the depth of sickness and the toll it can take on a family, unless one is of the mature age in which one can understand easier. The point the author is trying to get across is that sometimes in life it is easier to let a person go than drag out their life and make multiple people suffer. It is torturous for the patient to go through multiple operations, take medications, and still be in pain when there is never a definite answer if the patient will get better or not. It is torturous for the family to care for the loved one all hours of the day, watch them suffer, and not know what is going to come next. Medical expenses go through the roof and finances become hard to manage. Even though it would be difficult to let a loved one go, it is even harder to continue the suffering, and it would be easier to halt the torture when it begins. A rhetorical device used to get this point across is pathos, so the audience can relate to the hardships the family is going through. Another device used is plenty of detail in the diction, so the reader can visualize the story better. I believe the author did achieve her purpose. Because of the multiple accounts of pathos used, I was able to relate and feel for the characters in the story. The visualization helped me imagine the family and understand their story better. What Broke My Father’s Heart is a story that all people of age should read to understand the toll of sickness.

Patient by Rachel Riederer

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This photo relates to this particular story because Rachel Riederer went through a troubled time and there was darkness all around her. Continuing to get through her recovery, she finally sees the light of the situation and makes the best out of it by learning from it.

Patient by Rachel Riederer is about a young college girl who got ran over by a bus and takes the reader through a long journey of recovery. For author Rachel Riederer, this was a true horror story that happened to her a few years back at Havard University.  Riederer's writing also appears in Guernica, The Nation, and Capital New York. She currently teaches writing at Baruch College. The context of this essay is the bus running over Riederer. Her purpose of this essay is to convey that even if one does not believe "everything happens for a reason," one should still believe that "everything happens for the better," and that life throws twists and turns so instead better things can work out. I believe the author achieves her purpose. Throughout the story, the girl is struggling with understanding how people could believe that everything happens for a reason. Her thoughts throughout the story consist of "why me?" and who to blame for this happening to her. Towards the end, her mindset changes. She starts to believe that because of this happening, better things will fall together. "I will meet someone, do something, go somewhere--that could only happen because the texture and timing of my life were changed..." (179 Danticat). Because of this situation, her timing in life will better fall together, or so she believes. In this essay there are multiple accounts of profanity used, therefore the audience targeted is older teens. Since the story is told in first person and the main character is a 20-year old, her thoughts and feelings will be most appreciated by a reader of that age, give or take a few years. She uses humor and a sense of bitterness in a lot of her thoughts, and another peer would most understand that humor. This also is apart of the rhetorical devices used. None of her wording is extremely difficult to understand. She gets to the point of how she is feeling with humorous diction. The story is also cut into 10 different sections, which breaks the story up into different important events. This achieves the author's purpose because all the events come together to form the entire incident, which leads to her understanding that better things will happen because of it. Because of her bitter humor, this new understanding is a big deal to the main character.

Long Distance by Victor LaValle

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This picture shows that what is on the outside is not always what one feels on the inside. The man in the story lost weight and changed his whole appearance, but he still feels the same insecure way he did previously. 

Long Distance by Victor LaValle is about a man recounting the events of his relationships and the lessons he had acquired. He was self-concious about his body, and he would never go out with any lady since he was too embarrassed. Instead he would have relationships over the phone. After losing weight, he started dating different women but never lost the negative view of himself and his body even though all of the fat was gone. The author, Victor LaValle, has 3 novels, an eBook, and a collection of short stories. He has received numerous awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, American Book Award and awards from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Publisher's Weekly. Because some parts of the essay are explicit, the audience targeted are adults, or readers with a mature mind. The context that brought about this essay is the main character reflecting on his past relationships and views on himself. When he was overweight he enjoyed the relationships he had over the phone, content with the fact that they may never meet.  On the other hand, when he was in shape, the physical relationships he had never measured up. Without the reminiscing of his past relationships, the reader would have never known his feelings about them. The author's purpose is to convey that inner feelings and self body image takes a while to change, especially when it is changing from a negative view to a positive one. Even after the main character lost weight and went to have physical relationships with women, he still looked down on himself in the same way. He feels that his old self is still under the new skin and will never be fully replaced. I think the author achieves his purpose well throughout the story. Thoughts from the main character convey that he still feels and acts physically like his old self. After many relationships, in and out of the bedroom, in the end he still feels the same way. Not only does it take a lot of physical work, but it also takes a lot of work mentally to fully change your body image and insecurities.

Topic of Cancer by Christopher Hitchens

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It is important to notice the little things in life before one realizes that life is almost over. The author of this essay lost his life due to cancer, and did not notice the little things that cancer affected until they were gone. 

The author in this article wrote about his cancer he had just been diagnosed with, his thought process during the days and months following his diagnosis, and little things that cancer had affected while he was trying to continue living a normal life. Christopher Hitchens was an author and journalist contributing to multiple publishers such as New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, and Vanity Fair. After having three New York Times best-selling books, Hitchens died of cancer. In this article, he is credible to the topic of cancer because he speaks about his experiences dealing with cancer. Hitchens touches on personal cancer moments like when he was told his "immediate next stop would have to be with an oncologist" (85 Danticat). Terrifying realizations he writes about like "how I discovered that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes, and that one of these deformed beauties--located on my right clavicle, or collarbone--was big enough to be seen and felt" (86 Danticat). Talking about these experiences also leads into Hitchens's rhetorical devices used. The detail and pathos in his diction on the personal level connects with the reader because he is letting the audience feel more connected to him. The audience targeted is young adults to old individuals that understand the topic of cancer. Even if someone has not been affected by cancer, he makes it easy to let the reader connect with him by sharing his personal experiences. The context is because Christopher Hitchens was stricken with cancer, a modern disaster that affects almost everybody, directly and indirectly. The author's purpose was to connect with the audience by sharing his thoughts, thought process, and his life on the topic of cancer after being directly affected by it. I think the author achieves his purpose. He connects with the audience by sharing details about trying to live a normal life while he notices cancer is affecting little things he does as apart of his daily routines. Detail like realizing he no longer has hair to shave on his beard, or his upper lip started to look like somebody's maiden auntie achieves his purpose of connecting with the audience on the topic of cancer.

What Really Happened by Madge McKeithen

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This story is distinct because it is told instructionally, in second person. It is vague in the events of the story and exactly what is happening. This picture displays the injunction and ambiguity of the essay.

What Really Happened by Madge McKeithen is telling a story written in second person in an instructional tone. The story includes no names about a man who has decided to visit another man in jail who killed his wife and the main character's very good friend. Lots of time has passed since the murder and the story describes the events preceding the visit and a few after. It includes the effect of the death on the main character's life. The author, McKeithen, received her education from the College of William and Mary and Johns Hopkins University. She has written multiple essays that have gotten published including a review of a memoir that was published in The New York Times Book Reviews. The context of this story is the murder of the main character's friend, and his desire to visit the offender in jail. The most important thing about this essay is the diction. The author tells a story, but it is in second person, which is very different from other essays. Most sentences are short and to the point while still being detailed about the scenery and events. In many paragraphs, words become repetitive to explain what is going on around in a more clean and cut way. Pathos is used all throughout the essay, focusing around the murder and the distress the main character is in because of it. The audience targeted for this essay is adults and young adults, understanding the concept and effect of murder. The author's purpose is giving advice to release the feelings of distress that are being held in, make amends with what happened in the past, move on and continue living a good life, but most of all, never forget what happened. The main character goes to visit the murderer, make amends with what happened to his friend, he continues to live his life and be sociable, but never forgets his friend. I believe the author did achieve her purpose because it tells the story instructionally to do all of that. In the end, it includes a paragraph instructing how to continue on with life after the visit but also to "Hear her now. Hear love life" (Mckeithen 140) and continue to remember the person who left the earth long before her time.